The Harder They Fall
Page 22
I remember this so distinctly. We were driving to Vegas and Sheryl had a glass of white wine, and I hated wine. I said, “Let me have a sip of that.” I had one sip of her wine, and by that night, I had three bottles of whiskey hidden around the house, and I was drinking again. It wasn’t like I slowly started drinking again. I was right back to where I was. It wasn’t gradual at all. So anyway, I went to the hospital a second time. This time I went in there with a purpose to stop. I think any alcoholic better get that idea into their head, that if you’re going into a hospital, you’re not going in to slow down. You’re going in there to stop drinking. When I came out, as much of an alcoholic as I was—you never saw me without a drink—I came out of the hospital and went to a bar, sat down, had a Diet Coke. I knew I was going to be around alcohol, and it never dawned on me to have a drink. I never went to a recovery program, never went to a psychiatrist. I just never had another desire to drink. It was as if I never had a drink before in my life.
To this day, when I’m on tour, people around me drink beer or whiskey, and it never occurs to me to have a drink. Never in twenty-two years have I had a craving for alcohol. It’s like I had cancer one day, and the next day didn’t have it.
I’ve been married to Sheryl for twenty-eight years, and I’ve never cheated on her. And I quit drinking twenty-two years ago, and I never cheated on that.
I became as addicted to being straight as I was to being drunk. I can admit one thing: I love the taste of beer, cold beer. But I won’t even tempt myself by having an O’Doul’s nonalcoholic beer. Why would I do that? Maybe just lighting that wick that doesn’t need to be lit.
Looking back at my drinking days, I don’t even recognize that character. It was another lifetime ago. And I look at the character of Alice Cooper, and when I was a drinker, Alice on stage was a victim. He was a character that was always getting beat up, always getting killed. He was the brunt of every joke and the outcast. I look at my posture on stage and I was always bent over. Always the whipped dog. And that was Alice Cooper.
The very first time I went back on stage as Alice Cooper—the very first time playing Alice Cooper sober—can you imagine that? I got four platinum albums as Alice Cooper, three number-one albums, all while I was drinking. The alcohol was part of the formula. Now, I’m standing there ready to do a show in Santa Barbara, and it’s the first time I’m ever going to put on the Alice makeup sober. I’m thinking, “What is going to happen? What if I walk out on that stage and Alice doesn’t show up?” I’ll tell you what, I wore a path in that dressing room rug. All day I walked in a circle going, “What’s gonna happen tonight? What if I get up there and nothing happens, and I’m just me, and Alice doesn’t show up? And I’ve got an audience in front of me.” That was the most afraid I ever was in my life.
I got up on stage. I’m covered in leather. All of a sudden, I thought that Alice is not the whipping boy but Alice was going to go in the opposite direction. He was going to be the arrogant villain. The super villain. Which means he stood straight up. He was Captain Hook now. He was going to be the elegant, arrogant bastard. I stood up there. My spine was straight. I had a riding crop in my hand. I looked at the audience and said, “You’re mine!” It was an entirely different Alice. This Alice was in total control, whereas the other Alice had no control. I created a new Alice in one night! I never saw this Alice coming at all. All of a sudden, this Alice stood there and said, “I feel great. I own this audience.” And they loved it. That’s how I play Alice now. Now the character wants total control. Before he didn’t want any control. He gave into the alcohol and said, “Okay, I’m at the mercy of everything,” whereas this Alice says, “Everything is at the mercy of me.”
I really enjoy playing Alice now. I can’t wait to get on stage. Off stage, I’m just the nicest guy in the world, talking about my family, talking about baseball, but the moment I go in front of that audience, the moment Alice is standing there, the spine straightens. The whole attitude is different. It’s like, “Okay, you’re mine.” People love the character.
The transformation takes place totally because of my sobriety. Now Alice has more ego than Mick Jagger. The character looks at the audience and thinks, “You are so lucky to be here tonight.” Which is just about the opposite of the way I think. Alice became completely fearless—bigger than life.
Sheryl and Shep were the two people I cared most about, and they both went through it with me. But Shep only saw the fact that everything was fine. He was never there in the morning when I was throwing up blood. I never let him see that. Sheryl was the person that picked up that I was sick: “He may not come off as being sick, but he’s sick. We have to get him to a hospital.” Shep was saying, “What do you mean?” and Sheryl was telling him, “You don’t understand, he’s throwing up blood in the morning.” And of course Shep was like, “Are you kidding me? He never told me that.”
Looking back now, I was probably the most gregarious drunk around. Me and Keith Moon of The Who, we were probably the nicest, funniest drunks there were. Neither one of us was destructive, except to ourselves. We were the life of the party. But you never saw Alice when he was in a dark, black mood.
And the party was continuous. Sheryl and I had been married five or six years. We went to dinner every night with Bernie Taupin, Rod Stewart, and Elton. We were living the Beverly Hills life, which entailed drinking every night. But when I got to the point that I couldn’t get out of bed anymore—for three or four days at a time—Sheryl said, “That’s not you. I don’t know who this is.” At the beginning she just thought I was sick—the flu or something. Then she realized that I hadn’t eaten in about a week but that I was drinking every single night. Yeah, she went through it with me, but she believed in me the whole time. Although there was nothing to believe in for a while.
Then when I went to the hospital and came back out, I said to her, “It’s over. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but let me prove it to you.” Now, twenty-eight years later, we have never been happier.
I find myself running in circles
Lost and half insane
And I need a cure sometimes
To knock out the pain
So I yell out for some kind of angel
To come down and rescue me
Be as soft as you can
Put a drink in my hand
I’m as scared as I ever could be
Gimme lace and whiskey
Mama’s home remedy
Double indemnity
Fills me with ecstasy
La-aa-aace and whiskey
Lots of things I really want here
Lots of things I really need
There’s an animal soul inside
That I’ve gotta feed
The hot mama living above me
Always gets a rise from me
She’s so soft in my hands
I give her all she can stand
Make a full fledged man outta me
Gimme lace and whiskey
Mama’s home remedy
Double indemnity
Fills me with ecstasy
La-aa-ace and whiskey
La-aa-ace and whiskey
I ain’t hard assed
So babe don’t make me mean
I want a hot place
To go and show you things
Gimme lace and whiskey
Mama’s home remedy
Double indemnity
Fills me with ecstasy
La-aa-ace and whiskey
I’ll end up a broken old hobo
With red and yellow eyes
Swear’ and drunk and dyin’
But no one’s surprised
That’s a long long way from today babe
As far as I can see
So shake off your shoes
Go and get me my booze
Lay your love and your laces on me
Gimme lace and whiskey
Mama’s home remedy
Double indemnity
Fills me
with ecstasy
La-aa-ace and whiskey
La-aa-ace and whiskey
La-aa-ace and whiskey
La-aa-ace and whiskey
—“Whiskey and Lace”
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul? or what
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
—Matthew 16:26
Pat Day
(jockey)
* * *
PAT DAY LEARNED to ride bareback as a boy on his parents’ small ranch in Eagle, Colorado. His father was an auto-body repairman who had been raised on a ranch in South Dakota. Pat helped his father break and train horses for neighboring ranchers. He was a natural-born rider with an uncanny ability to relate to horses. After high school, Pat managed a gas station and, on weekends, rode in rodeos. It was by riding bulls that he learned how to fall and get back up again. This is a talent that would serve him well as a jockey and as an alcoholic/drug addict.
I met Pat for our interview at his condominium in southern Florida, while he was rehabbing a shoulder injury prior to the winter racing season at Gulfstream Park. Pat was about to resume riding after a six-month layoff. He was eager to get back in the saddle, and I could feel his excitement as we spoke. Pat’s story is flamboyant, but he tells it quietly. He seems to want to minimize what addiction did to him and to focus on the part of his life when he found salvation and got back on track.
Coincidentally, my sobriety date, January 2, 1983, was the date of a wild binge for this then-young jockey. I was throwing in the towel, while Pat was going the other direction. Both of us had long runs, and abused drugs and alcohol for many years, but Pat hit the wall without ever getting thrown from the saddle.
Pat found sobriety through his religious conversion, which he speaks of with great enthusiasm. After we finished the interview, Pat invited me to go to a prayer meeting with him. Looking for an opportunity to experience his world, I readily agreed, thinking that we’d either be going to someone’s house or perhaps a local church. I said, “I’m Jewish, but I’m happy to come with you to this thing.” He nodded. “Good.”
I took my own rental car, as I planned to continue on to my hotel after the meeting. Following Pat in his new Chrysler convertible, I noticed his license plate says “JESUS.” We drove for what seemed like a very long time, passing some unique attractions along the way: a sushi diner where you can get sushi for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and an intimidating-looking roller coaster situated only a few feet from the highway. It looks like the old, wooden Cyclone at Coney Island. The hand-painted sign says “Ride All Day for $10.”
Finally we arrived at an extremely large parking lot, the kind you find at a major sporting event. Pulling in behind Pat, I observed a theater-like structure with a huge marquee proclaiming the evening’s prayer meeting. I thought we were going to a Bible study with a few friends, but it turned out to be a full-scale revival with more than four thousand loyal followers. The meeting was fire, brimstone, and spectacle. Standing next to Pat, watching him completely caught up in the spirit of his God, I was truly impressed by his dedication and devotion.
Pat is a terrific example of what someone living a sober life can achieve. About a year after our interview, I saw Pat on a beautiful summer Sunday afternoon at Saratoga Racetrack in New York. He is still one of the premier jockeys in the country. To be at the top of this demanding game at more than fifty years of age is quite an accomplishment. I’m sure if you asked this humble man, he’d tell you he owes it all to Jesus and sobriety.
I was raised in Eagle, Colorado, in a great environment. My mother and father weren’t opposed to having a drink on occasion, but they were not drinkers. My father was home every night. He wasn’t an alcoholic that we had to pull out of the bars; he was probably the most responsible man I’ve known. If my father told you something, you could bank on it. He was a person of integrity, and the environment in which I was raised was opposed to over-abuse of anything.
I didn’t have my first drink till I was a junior in high school. I started drinking a little bit of beer with kids on the weekends and didn’t foresee it being a problem. After I graduated, it slowly became a problem, an every-night thing.
Two years after I graduated high school, I got introduced to the racing profession. In Arizona I went through the trenches, so to speak, and in July of 1973, I began riding races. I started doing very good almost immediately. My life-style at the time was going to the bar as soon as the races were over, partying until all hours of the night, and then getting up and going to work in the morning, going to the races in the afternoon, and starting right over again. It didn’t seem to have a real negative effect in that I was able to do what I was doing and do it with tremendous success.
After I’d been riding for about a year, drugs started becoming readily available. I went from drinking daily to messing with drugs. I began smoking dope and using little speed pills known as “white crosses” or “bennies.” The next winter I was riding down in New Orleans, which is a pretty wild town, and the partying continued. In the spring of 1975, in Chicago, I had drug paraphernalia and some drugs in my car. I was searched and they were found. I was suspended for fifteen days and put on probation for six months. You’d have thought that would have been a wake-up call of some kind, but it wasn’t. Success, especially in the sporting arena, can lead you to believe you’re above the law. You can get out of a lot of jackpots, which just perpetuates the problem.
By the grace of God, I was able to regroup after that. I got my business back together and started doing good again. Then cocaine became my drug of choice. As time wore on and I continued to do well, the thrill of victory on the racetrack and the success I was having didn’t seem to satisfy me. That gave me a good excuse for drinking and doing drugs. I told myself, “I’m in a high-stress environment, and I need this to unwind.” When you want to do something bad enough, you can make some pretty good excuses why you could or should do that. That’s what I was doing at the time.
Doing coke made me feel I was bigger and better. I remember going into the jocks’ room with coke on me, but determined I wasn’t going to use that day. I would go out and ride two or three races and wouldn’t do good. So then I would succumb to the temptation. I’d do some coke, and it seemed like the next horse would win. Which further convinced me that “Yeah, that’s my go-to medication. That’s what I need.” There again it’s a lie right out of the pits of hell because it takes you down the road to destruction.
I’ve ridden considerably better without the drugs than with them, but while I did cocaine and rode, I had myself believing I was much superior when I indulged. It was a false sense of bravado. Eventually I phased out the drugs, but I was drinking every night. I was a blackout drinker.
I failed to tell you that I was raised in a Christian home. I was confirmed in the Lutheran faith. We went to church. I wasn’t living a Christian life-style yet considered myself a believer—there was never any doubt on my part of that. In 1982 I was the leading rider in the country, but as time wore on, that success didn’t hold the meaning or feeling that I thought it would. That sent me searching for answers and asking some serious questions: “Exactly what am I here for?” “What is life all about?” “What is my purpose in all of this?” I remember vividly going out at night and looking up at the sky, at the immense heavens, and saying, “Where do I fit into this picture? There’s got to be more to life than what I’m doing.”
I think probably in large part due to the fact that I’d been raised in a Christian home, taking that upbringing for granted, ultimately that would be the last place I would look. I thought I was a Christian, and that didn’t seem to be the answer I was looking for. Sort of like in that old country western song—“looking for love in all the wrong places”—only I was doing that for the meaning of life. I was looking behind every bush and under every rock, figuratively speaking. Yet I think God had been working on me ever since I’d gone to church,
that I was raised the right way, but during the early years when I made a name for myself in racing, I kept patting myself on the back. The fame and the abuse had developed a horribly destructive mind-set. My ego had got more and more out of hand, and I was not listening.
Where cocaine gave me a false sense of superiority, I never drank and rode. I’ve come to realize that drugs of any kind are mind-altering merely in that they send you in the direction you’re already going. People think if you drink it will lift your spirits. I believe it plays as a catalyst. For example, if you are down and depressed, alcohol drives you farther down. Now if you go out for an evening and are having a great time and have a couple of drinks to loosen up, it could enhance your evening. But I wouldn’t recommend that, you see; I’d recommend instead you just go natural and enjoy it, just have fun and try to live each moment to the fullest.
There was a cartoon some years ago captioned “The Power of the Martini.” The first frame depicted a bar with a man at one end and a woman at the other, both not very handsome or attractive, not blessed in the area of looks. And it shows one martini and they’ve changed and are looking better. Two, and they look a lot better. Then three. By the fourth martini, they’re glamorous—you’d think it was some god and goddess sitting there. The power of the martini to change your perceptions: I’ve thought about it often, how drugs and alcohol mess with our perception of people, places, and situations.