Babylon Confidential

by Christian, Claudia

  I kept on searching for a medical answer and in the spring of 2008 decided to go on Antabuse. My SAG insurance wouldn’t cover it, but I figured it was worth the $350 if it worked. I did my research first and found myself in the same predicament as with Vivitrol. You think the list of side effects you hear rattled off on TV commercials for prostate drugs is bad? Here’s the small print on Antabuse:

  Seek medical attention right away if any of these SEVERE side effects occur when using Antabuse:

  Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); blurred vision; changes in color vision; dark urine; loss of appetite; mental or mood problems; nausea; numbness or tingling of the arms or legs; seizures; tiredness; vomiting; weakness; yellowing of the eyes or skin.

  I mean, seriously, who’d put that in their body? Alcohol seemed like a milder poison than that. Good Lord, addicts are a confused lot! And a poor lot. Being an addict ain’t cheap: $200 an hour for therapy, $350 for Antabuse prescriptions, $3,500 for detox, $30,000-plus for rehab.

  I was half mad with frustration and physically, emotionally, and financially drained.

  But those angels must have been watching out for me, because while researching Antabuse, I stumbled on an article in the British newspaper The Guardian about something called The Sinclair Method. I didn’t know it then but that article would change my life.

  That detox from hell, with all its horrific side effects, would be my last. The monster didn’t know it yet, but she was beaten.

  EXTINCTION AGENDA

  In the time leading up to my discovery of The Sinclair Method, I could sense that change was in the wind. For starters, after three years of silence, the phone rang and I booked a job on the TV show Nip/Tuck.

  But would the coming change be for better or worse? Life is seldom cut and dried. Something that starts out well can turn bad and vice versa.

  After my stint in the detox center I’d moved out of the place I was sharing with David. I needed space to save our relationship, space to see whether the wind would turn for or against me. I had an acting job, and that, as always, was my life raft. I clung to it, focusing on getting healthy and staying sober.

  I was living with my friend Trish and running laps around Lake Hollywood, working out as hard and as often as my body could take it; I had to appear naked on TV. The anxiety I felt as a teenager about seeing my butt on a fifty-foot-high screen was nothing compared to that of being a detoxing fortysomething who was going to bare her all on a popular TV series.

  What I failed to keep in mind was that a fortysomething body can’t be molded as easily as that of a young woman injecting horse piss on a 500-calorie-a-day diet or even a woman in her thirties doing hundreds of lunges in preparation for Playboy. I pounded the pavement so hard it threw my back out. My pelvis and lower back felt like they were swimming beneath my skin, and each time they moved (which was any time I did anything apart from lie on my back) I felt a debilitating pain.

  Luckily, that happened toward the end of my training regime, so I looked great, but it meant that I was in extreme pain all the way through the shoot. That would have been fine if we were shooting a period drama and all I had to do was sit in a high-backed chair and look statuesque, but for this particular episode the scriptwriters had come up with some particularly weird shit.

  I was cast as a woman who pays Julian McMahon’s character to satisfy a bizarre sexual fetish. First, he would throw me into a tub filled with ice and keep me there until my heart stopped from hypothermia, then he would carry my numb body to the bed, throw me on it, and fuck me back to life, the heat from his body kick-starting my heart back into action.

  I mean, how fucking weird is that? But it didn’t stop me from taking the role. My career was as frozen as my body when the stunt man ripped me out of the bath and threw me on the bed. Maybe this job, so long in coming, would drive the life back into it.

  When Nip/Tuck wrapped I drove straight to Trish’s house and raided her cupboards. The pain, combined with the stress of creating what I hoped would be my comeback performance, had knocked down the last of my defenses. I found a bottle of vodka and drank practically the whole thing in one sitting.

  The Sinclair Method has successfully helped moderate alcohol drinking in Finland, where excessive alcohol use is a major national problem, as well as other countries including Israel, Russia, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Venezuela and Estonia. A statistical analysis of the data obtained from clinics in Finland shows highly significant reductions in alcohol drinking. The method is successful with more than 78% of alcoholics. In Florida the success rates since 2002 have been more than 85%. During the treatment program when shown on a graph a pattern emerges. It was always a classical extinction curve: drinking and craving became progressively lower with each week of treatment.

  That was from a scientific article I read called “Clinical Evidence from The Sinclair Method Clinic in Sarasota, Florida.” The Florida clinic was the only one in the United States offering the Sinclair Method. The clinic’s website said:

  Internationally hundreds of thousands of people have been helped using the Sinclair Method.

  More than 80% of all the clients in the program were successful in long term control of their alcohol consumption, some to acceptable levels (“Social Drinking”) and others to complete abstinence. For those who desired to control their alcohol consumption, their drinking was reduced to an average of 1 drink per day. These same individuals had at one point consumed anywhere from 24 to 50 drinks or more a week. Some of The Sinclair Method’s successful patients had consumed more than 200 ounces of alcohol a week prior to the program.6

  An 80% success rate! Apart from the grim reaper, who has the only 100% guaranteed cure for addiction, I’d never heard of a treatment with such a high rate of success. What’s more, the article made an astonishing claim—that The Sinclair Method was a genuine cure for alcoholism.

  The word “cure” is a powerful one and can’t be used lightly. The Sinclair Method makes use of a drug called naltrexone, which creates a state of pharmacological extinction in the addict’s brain. It doesn’t block the effect of alcohol; rather, it gradually resets the brain back to the pre-addiction condition, making it a bona fide cure.

  But there was one catch: the cure only remained a cure as long as you took the pill, every time before you had a drink, for the rest of your life. Otherwise the endorphins released when drinking would not be blocked by the effect of naltrexone and would lead the brain to revert to a state of craving alcohol.

  I researched naltrexone and found that it had been available and FDA-approved for the treatment of alcoholism since 1994. It was nonaddictive, and the side effects were minor and temporary—nausea, headaches, and insomnia. Sign me up!

  The Florida clinic charged $3,800 for treatment, beyond my budget by that stage. Luckily, I found a book, The Cure for Alcoholism by Roy Eskapa, PhD.

  The book had an introduction by David Sinclair, PhD, who developed The Sinclair Method, which described alcoholism as a learned chemical addiction of the brain. Sinclair maintains that abstinence only makes the problem worse, and I’d made the biggest mistake in the book: I’d gone stone-cold sober after every binge. The sudden deprivation of alcohol only led to stronger cravings. This not only leads to eventual relapse but also damages the brain and internal organs. What no one at rehab or detox centers ever tells you is that you can detox by gradually reducing your alcohol intake. The reason no one thinks to mention this is that most alcoholics aren’t capable of doing it. But with naltrexone it’s made possible by one amazing, almost unbelievable fact—that The Sinclair Method only works as a cure if the alcoholic keeps on drinking.

  You take naltrexone to reduce your consumption, and at the same time it kills off your addiction. My armor was battered and hanging on by its fraying straps, but now I’d have something to fight the monster with that I’d never had before—a weapon. I’d always been on the defens
ive, on the back foot while the monster attacked at will. If the claims about The Sinclair Method were true I just might be able to obliterate that bitch once and for all.

  The Cure for Alcoholism contained all the information I needed to start The Sinclair Method solo. The first step was to find a doctor who would prescribe naltrexone, which costs about $30 for thirty 50 mg pills—about a dollar added to the cost of a night out. Even better, I was able to use my SAG insurance, which brought the cost down even more to $10 for thirty pills.

  By taking one pill one hour before drinking I could begin the process of pharmacological extinction.

  I was still not turned on by the idea of taking a pill forever, but hell, if it worked it was better than going to an AA meeting and fighting the war every fucking day for the rest of my life. And the other thing that resonated with me was The Sinclair Method’s treatment of alcoholism as a disease, like diabetes or high blood pressure. It was a relief to know that someone had devised a safe, medically proven, nonaddictive way to combat it.

  Following on from the use of naltrexone, the book encouraged using the beneficial effect of the drug to strengthen healthy, alternative behaviors—eating tasty meals, exercise, sports, even sex.

  I went in to see my doctor, armed with a copy of The Cure for Alcoholism. I’d been fighting every day for the last ten years. I wanted peace, I wanted my life back, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  The doctor was a nice young guy who a pill-popping friend had recommended, one used to dealing with addicts. I’d seen him once before when I was suffering a combo attack of flu and alcohol withdrawal. He’d prescribed some anti-anxiety pills to deal with the monster and an antibiotic for the flu. The flu went the way of the dodo; the monster didn’t bat an eyelid.

  I was back and this time asking for naltrexone. I’d also printed out pages of the clinical papers I found on the Internet, and I sat with him and discussed The Sinclair Method. He looked up the drug in his pharmaceutical reference book and finally, with trepidation, he gave me the piece of paper that represented my last hope of recovery, my hopeful stay of execution.

  I had to go to a compound pharmacy (one that makes special drugs to order) to fill my prescription. Within fifteen minutes I had fifteen pills. I stopped by Trader Joe’s on the way home and bought a bottle of red wine and a steak. I was PMS-ing and David was out of town. It was the perfect time to schedule the first experiment.

  I shook the plastic pill bottle at the traffic lights, like a witch doctor rattling bones for good luck. The wine sat next to me in the passenger seat. The way home involved driving right past the khaki-colored bus stop on Coldwater Canyon. I turned and looked at it as I drove past and was overcome with emotion. I had to pull over.

  I couldn’t believe that the pills could work, that I didn’t need to abstain. It was too good to be true.

  Nothing’s for free, babe.

  The very idea seemed to go against everything I’d learned at AA and in rehab and at the detox center. The monster was rattling around in my head. I was shaking, tears streaming down my face. The bus stop, the ride to rehab with Holly and my mom, the back of the rapist’s van, the sight of my mom in a bloodstained shirt holding Patrick’s bandana in her hand, it was all the same place—the monster’s cave, its place of power—and I’d been trapped in it for so long that I didn’t know if I had the courage to leave.

  Claudia, honey, this is just another dead end. Everything else you’ve tried has failed and you know you swore never to pop pills. Throw them out the window and go home. We’ll enjoy the wine together.

  As soon as I got home I took the pill. It was 5:45 p.m. on February 22, 2009. I waited until 6:45 before having a glass of wine—I wanted to make sure the pill had time to work. I was nervous, but I’d gotten my courage back after the bus-stop incident. I was so hopeful!

  After I drank the wine, I felt a little dizzy and found that I could only eat a little of the steak and spinach on my plate. I also felt a little stoned and not at all clear-headed.

  Why are you doing this?

  The monster was still posturing, but I noticed that her voice lacked power. She was anxious as well. I didn’t dignify her with an answer, and she knew why. She knew that, more than anything, I wanted to be normal.

  Soon I was struck by a revelation: It’s 7:15. I’ve only had one glass of red wine and don’t feel like having another. By now I should be well on my way to polishing off the bottle.

  It was a week before I touched another drop—this time, three glasses of wine. I slept like crap and woke up tired and thirsty the next morning, but the monster was still silent. The binge that I was sure would overtake me like a tsunami had arrived as only a minor swell and quickly receded.

  A month after that, I took my pill before having my first social drink, a glass of wine with people in my writing class. I was hyperaware of how strange it felt to be normal. It was as if I were standing outside my body watching myself laugh and socialize. I kept waiting for something bad to happen. Nothing did. A month earlier I’d have been on my third glass and working out how to sneak the unfinished bottle into my bag when no one was looking.

  Another week passed, and I attended my first post-Sinclair dinner party with David. I found that my body was adjusting to the pill. I didn’t feel so dizzy anymore.

  It had been a month since I’d seen the monster in the mirror, and though she was still running around in my mind, threatening and cajoling, I could sense she was getting desperate.

  Then came the real test: a trip to Napa to visit my mom and stepfather. It’s feeding time in the lion enclosure and Claudia’s on the menu. I took two bottles of red to last the whole trip.

  And then the carnage began. My mom questioned my latest attempt to fix my life. My stepfather once again posited his carefully thought-out theory that I was injecting hard drugs. I stayed cool like Fonzie. I drank my wine, a glass a day, and returned to L.A. without going on a single binge, having tamed the lions.

  It seemed that while I was on The Sinclair Method nothing could trigger me to drink. I still have cravings when I have PMS or if I have a long, difficult day, but there seems to be a disconnect between the voice of the monster and the dangerous behavior it previously triggered.

  I took on another big challenge—a trip to Italy with David. Tuscany, land of the luscious red. I resigned myself to drinking only at night. No repeat of the turmoil in Tahiti. I wanted to remember my time in Italy.

  I was still thinking like an alcoholic. I obsessively counted my supply of naltrexone, ensuring I had enough, but I was anxious without cause. I took my pill as instructed and only drank too much on one occasion—four glasses with a gorgeous meal of pasta puttanesca—but even that didn’t lead to a binge.

  I returned from Italy triumphant, a Roman emperor having vanquished the barbarians.

  By the time I’d used The Sinclair Method for six months the dizzy feeling was completely gone. I cut out drinking during the week altogether, only imbibing on weekends, and then only on special occasions—a few glasses at a dinner party or on a getaway with David. My desire to consume alcohol steadily declined, taking my abnormal behavior with it. I didn’t feel dizzy at all or experience any side effects. My life was back to how I remembered it before the monster came along. Drinking, I could honestly take it or leave it.

  But fear is the hardest of human emotions to conquer. I was still reluctant to declare total victory; I didn’t want to be like George W. Bush and hang out the “Mission Accomplished” banner before I’d really won the war.

  It wasn’t that long ago that, when I wasn’t thinking about what to drink or where to get it, I’d kill time calculating how many days I’d wasted recovering from binges (165) in the hope that the sheer number would deter me from wasting any more.

  But my confidence slowly grew. The bottles of wine in my cabinet were only used at dinner parties. The cooking wine that I used to guzzle desperately could rest easy in my pantry beside the Marsala and Cognac—they’d
only ever be used as intended, to make sauces for my recipes.

  My brain was changing, and as it did I was reclaiming my life.

  It took another year, watching the monster slowly wither and retreat from sight, until I made the call, the official announcement. I’d battled the monster for close to a decade, and now I’d finally won. Print the headline: “Armistice Announced—the Enemy Has Signed the Treaty—Peace at Last!”

  It was the spring of 2010, I’d been on The Sinclair Method for a few months, and I was getting a manicure-pedicure at this Korean beautician’s place when my phone rang. It was Adam Rifkin, my director friend from the good old days.

  “Claudia, I’m working on something right now for Showtime. It’s a TV version of my movie Look, do you want to be in it?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “It’s a really funny character. Her name’s Stella. I wrote her specifically for you. I’d love for you to be in it.”

  I was so grateful, so happy! By “funny” he meant that she was a paranoid, alcoholic cokehead and, according to the production notes, a fortysomething MILF.

  “Claudia, you still there?”

  I was so stunned, I’d forgotten to talk.

  “I’m still here.”

  “It’s really low budget, so there’s not much money in it . . .”

  “But I’m gonna be back on TV?”

  “Yeah, you’ll be on Showtime.”

  And there it was. My career was back. I felt the world change around me, the final piece fall into place. I knew it was real. It felt just like when I got my first role on Dallas all those years before. The drought had been broken.