High On Arrival

by Mackenzie Phillips

  I’d been invited to Aspen for the 2001 Comedy Festival for a tribute to American Graffiti. I agonized about going—I knew the end was near for Dad—but I decided to honor my commitment. On my last visit to the hospital before the trip I said, “Look, Dad, I have to go out of town.”

  He said, “Fuck you.”

  We’d made our peace, and I wanted to keep it. Which meant I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I said, “No, you’re not going to do this again. The time for you to rule my emotions is over. You can’t destroy me with a word or a look. Not anymore. What I want you to say is, ‘I love you, Max. Have a good trip.’ ”

  He looked at me with his tired eyes and said, “I love you, Max. Have a good trip,” a little like a reluctant teenager obeying his parent.

  I said, “That’s more like it Pops.” I kissed him and turned to leave.

  Then he said, “Hey Laura-bug, you dropped your bag on the floor. Don’t forget it.” There was nothing to the words themselves, but in his voice—in the tone and the way he said it—there was an apology, the regret and love I’d always known was there but had so desperately needed to hear. Shane and I went to Aspen for five days. We went skiing and snowboarding, saw comedy shows, and met cool people. We had a great time. By the time we came back Dad had taken a turn for the worse. He was intubated and unable to speak. He never spoke another word.

  At the end, Dad was suffering enough that my brother and I asked the doctors to up his morphine. Even though he was so out of it that he couldn’t talk, we were reasonably sure that if anyone should go out under the influence of an opiate, it was Dad.

  I sat with him for a couple hours. He wasn’t conscious, but I told him stories. I said, “Remember when we were on the road and we had that food fight and you used the clear plastic food dome as a shield over your head?” And “Remember when the band got stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel and you made us sing ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ in four-part harmony for hours?” And “Remember in Norway when you were holding Shane and you slipped in the snow, but Shane didn’t get a scratch on him?” I sang songs we’d written together. I knew it was over and I just stayed, holding his hand, loving him.

  Watching Dad slowly dying was like watching a great tree fall. A beautiful, old, majestic, noble oak with tree rot and disease spreading through him. His core was tainted and you could see it in his eyes. He was so sad and so sick and so isolated, by design. I thought about his life and his body of work—his potential had been limitless, but after a certain point the production was a bunch of crap. What a waste. I could spend time being furious and damaged, but what was the point? My father didn’t get that he was connected to others, that the harmful stuff he did to himself was harmful to other people. Harmful, in some small way, to the universe.

  That night, as I walked out of UCLA, I passed a chapel. I detoured in and picked up a prayer card and a little orange pencil. I wrote, “Please take my father, tonight if possible.” I folded it, put it in the box, sat there and cried for a while, then went home.

  At five the next morning Farnaz called. She told me it was the end. I tore ass over the hill, listening to Coldplay, frantically dialing Bijou, Chynna, Jeffrey, and Tam. Nobody was answering the goddamn phone. When the phone rings at five a.m.—that’s when you’re supposed to take the call. Bijou later told me that she knew exactly why I was calling and couldn’t bear to hear it.

  By the time I got to the hospital, Dad’s eyes were fixed. As I stood at his bedside, I watched Dad’s heart rate drop all the way down to three. Farnaz screamed, “John! Don’t leave me, John!” His heart rate shot up and slowly started falling back down. Farnaz screamed again and his heart rate went back up. This was going on and on. Farnaz was screaming and crying on her knees. Remembering how Dad had silenced Genevieve at his mother’s bedside, I said, “Can you shut the fuck up and let him die already?” If I could let him go, she could let him go. Farnaz quieted and Dad flatlined. He was gone. I called Mick. Dear Mick got in his car, drove to the hospital, and played his guitar and sang to my dad’s body. It was a Monday. Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day.

  Owen Elliot worked with Lou Adler, my dad’s longtime producer, to organize the memorial service. It was held at the Roxy, one of my old Sunset Strip hangouts. It was open to the public and the marquee on Sunset Boulevard said “All the leaves are brown.”

  The place was packed with friends, family, musicians, celebrities, and fans, including Denny and Michelle, the surviving members of the original Mamas & the Papas; Scott McKenzie; Spanky; my siblings: Jeffrey, Bijou and her then-boyfriend Sean Lennon, and Tam; Mick and Shane; Tim Curry; Warren Beatty; and Ed Begley Jr. Chynna was not at the memorial service. She had already committed to performing at a Brian Wilson event, so she didn’t come. Hanging on either side of the stage were poster-size photos of my father. One showed him in what he had worn for his Wolf King of L.A. album cover—he was standing at the ocean’s edge, with long hair and a beard, wearing a raccoon fur coat, skintight stovepipe jeans, and a silver silk top hat with a rhinestone hatband that Leon Russell had given him. The other poster was the author photo from my father’s book, Papa John. It showed him clean and sanitized, the dad who never quite was.

  After a video tribute, the live-music portion of the program started. Shane, who was just learning guitar and had never performed onstage before, sang a song by Silverchair called “Miss You Love.” “I’m not too sure how I’m supposed to feel or what I’m supposed to say,” he sang, and I thought, That’s my boy.

  When my turn came I sang a song Dad wrote about me called “Fairytale Girl.” In the middle of the song, one of the photos of my father fell down. I picked it up and walked around the stage, carrying it and singing the song.

  Once upon a time I knew a fairytale girl.

  She flew her plane all around the world.

  It all went well until she couldn’t find a place to land.

  Jeffrey joined me and others up onstage to sing “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreamin’.” Dad’s light shone in that room, the powerful words and music that drew us all to him, and the imposing, large-as-life presence that made us want to be part of his world.

  Two weeks after my father’s funeral, Shane and I walked into a pet store at the Northridge Mall and I saw a pug puppy. I said, “Look, Shane, it’s Max.” Shane said, “You’re right.” It turned out that Max had been born on January 15, 2001, the day I bought our house. He was meant to live there. We brought him home. The same day, unbeknownst to me, Bijou went out and bought two dogs.

  Max was my first dog, and he was exactly what I needed right then. I’d kneel on the floor next to my bed and say, “Max, I feel so sad and lonely and scared and my dad is dead.” Max’s buggy eyes looked up at me with that unconditional dog love that replenishes the soul.

  When Max was still a tiny puppy, I got a card from a guy named Lee Allan, who asked if I remembered him from acting class. Of course I did. Lee was tall and athletic—a devoted beach volleyball player. He was bright and extremely funny—a working comedian. In acting class we’d had a scene together in which we were supposed to kiss. When the moment came, we started kissing and didn’t stop. The acting coach tried to interrupt: “Ahem … you guys?” Lee was in a relationship at the time, so that kiss stood alone, but soon after my father’s memorial Lee’s condolence note arrived. It started, “Dear Fairtytale Girl …” It gave his phone number, and we started dating. Little Max was like our child. We raised him, and Freddie—another pug I got as a companion for Max—together. It looked like I was moving on.

  During this time I was invited to perform in a production of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues in L.A. The producer asked if I had any ideas for women to perform with me. I knew not to suggest Valerie—she would never say the word “cunt.” I suggested Michelle, and she signed on. We did the show together every night for a month. Our dressing tables were right next to each other. Our makeup was done side by side. We were onstage together for the whole performance. M
ichelle was always a presence in my life. Over the years we talked on the phone and spent time together with the family, at dinner parties, going to premieres, but now it was amazing for me to sit with her as two adult women, to have the opportunity to become girlfriends.

  One day I asked her to teach me how to dress like a lady. I wasn’t a slob, but I had always been a bit of a tomboy, wearing boots and jeans. Michelle took me to Beverly Hills and had me buy stockings and garters and ladylike dresses. More than thirty years earlier she’d been like a mother to me, spoiling me with Beverly Hills finery, and now we were dressing me for an entirely different stage of life.

  The age difference between us was not great, but any woman can learn a lot from Michelle. She is beautiful, ballsy, and bright. She raised a wonderful daughter. She is the last surviving member of the Mamas & the Papas. Years ago, when the band briefly threw her out, she said, “I’ll bury you all,” and she did, and I was not surprised. Michelle is a force of nature. She endures. I, on the other hand, was, underneath it all, weightless and exposed, soon to fall prey to an unexpected wind.

  For so many years I thought I was meant for a junkie life. That was who I was. It was just live it and do it and screw it. When I got sober I learned not to think that way anymore. I was in the world; I was functional; I thrived. The moment that my father and I had in the hospital—when I told him he was no longer the ruler of my emotions—that moment was important. I’ve never been good at defending myself. I turn my anger inward or act out with drugs. But I did it. I stood up for myself. I assumed my power and said good-bye. It was the closure that pointed to a future life of sober joy.

  But for all the healing, for all the stability, for all the trappings of a functional life, I wasn’t the pillar of sobriety that I appeared to be and that I thought I was. My father was gone, but the monster, the sleeping addict within me, was yawning and stretching.

  28

  When I first went to Alina Lodge, I noticed that clean, sober graduates of the program would visit and sit with the program’s founder, Mrs. Delaney, at her big table. I thought, One day I’m going to sit at that table with my car keys and my purse—the accessories of a sober life—and I’ll have lunch with her. It came to pass. Day after day of not doing drugs. Week after week of not wanting drugs. Month after month of not even thinking about drugs. Year after year of living a normal life. I lunched with Mrs. Delaney. She became my friend. I joined the Lodge’s board of trustees. Eventually I celebrated being sober for ten years.

  I had reentered the world, rebuilt my life, rewired my brain, and even though I still went to support groups, I had a life in which I stopped thinking of myself as an addict. The past faded. The idea that there were people in dark rooms shooting cocaine became foreign. Who would do that? Why would anyone want to live like that? It was disgusting. I wasn’t that kind of person, and it was hard to imagine I ever had been that kind of person. I could never be there again. I was so sure that the monster inside me was dead and gone. But that complacency, that arrogance would be my downfall.

  Back in 1999, when I was on hiatus from So Weird, I’d had cosmetic eye surgery. I’d always thought that one of my eyes looked like a puffball compared to the other. It was particularly obvious to me when I saw myself on Hollywood Squares at age eighteen. Now the asymmetry was compounded by age. I had my upper and lower eyelids done, and I was happy with the results. I was a working actor, and staying youthful was part of the job. Along with the surgery came pain medication. I took it as prescribed. At the appropriate time, I stopped using it. No problem.

  A couple years later, not long after Dad died, I decided that I wanted to have liposuction on my thighs. And I figured that while I was doing it I might as well get my breasts done. The thigh and breast surgeries were for me. Nobody was having trouble photographing me, but I wanted to stem the tide of aging.

  I delayed the surgery for a week to play for charity on the quiz show The Weakest Link. I was playing for Children of the Night, a charity that helps child prostitutes get off the streets. I knew firsthand how quickly and easily a kid might find herself willing to do anything for drugs. During the years I was clean and sober, I spoke all over the country to thousands of people about addiction. My focus wasn’t just the addicts but their family, friends, and colleagues. Obviously, my father would never have considered warning me about drugs. But all those other people who cared about me, worried about me, and wanted to help me—and there were many of them—had no idea how to intervene. I told my story to thousands of people. I talked about the signs of addiction. I did anything and everything I could think of to help those who might be as lost as I had been.

  Now I was fighting for street kids, and I was on a roll. When the nutty English host-lady of The Weakest Link chided me about my “checkered past,” I said, “That’s all different now.” The audience cheered. In a dramatic contrast to the fucked-up eighteen-year-old who couldn’t do a spelling test on David Letterman, I answered all the questions right until everyone had been eliminated except me and one other girl. I lost on the last question. I was the weakest link. Good-bye.

  The silicone breast implants were more painful than I expected. I was bruised purple. It was agonizing. The sleepy monster opened an eye. I think about that moment when I made the decision to have the surgery, and I wonder what was really going on. Cosmetic surgery is painful. It usually requires narcotic pain medication. But I had long before lost my right to take pain medication. Had my ability to handle the medications they gave me for eye surgery made me think I could do it? Or did the eye surgery make me want to have more surgery so I could get more pills? I don’t know the answer. But it soon became a chicken-and-egg question, one I couldn’t answer and one I hope I won’t have to face again. The fucked-up result was that my doctor, a family friend, gave me Thorazine, Demerol, Vicodin, Xanax, and Valium.

  Mick came over to see Shane. He took one look at me and said, “You’re high.”

  I said, “I’m in pain.”

  He said, “I’ve known you forever. You are high.” I was on opiates, and Mick could see that I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t getting out of bed. I wasn’t happy. When I ran out of medication, I was sick.

  My beautiful little sister Bijou was twenty-two. She had been a crazy wild-child in New York, dancing on tables, allegedly almost cutting off the tip of someone’s finger with a cigar cutter, fake raping someone with a dildo on the dance floor. She was on Page Six of the Post several times a week. I knew why she acted out—born into madness and raised by wolves—and I spent hours and days talking her through various dramas. She looked to me as a mother, or a big sister at the very least. Now she was a hot model, dating a guy named James, still living a high life, but not such a wild one.

  Knowing that I was on pills for pain, Bijou teased me, offering me ecstasy, saying, “Come on, roll with me.”

  I said, “No, I don’t do that stuff.”

  • • •

  I assumed that the pain from surgery would diminish, I’d stop taking pills, and I’d resume my life. Instead, I started having unbelievable pain in my neck, my lower back, and my joints. I’ve always had problems with my spine—I had scoliosis as a teenager and wore a back brace for two years. But this was different. My knees, wrists, hips, every joint was on fire.

  I went to doctor after doctor and was diagnosed with brain vasculitis, lupus, carpal tunnel, scoliosis. All of the above.

  I was desperate for relief. James and Bijou were into a pill called Norco, which was like Vicodin but much stronger. James had huge bottles of them. I arranged to get one, but when I went over to pick it up, Bijou tried to intervene. She’d invited someone sober to confront me about taking Norco. I was the stable one. I was the one she could count on. For all her teasing and trying to get me to party with her, Bijou wanted, needed me to stay sober. But my enormous pain was my excuse and I stood by it.

  At first I had real pain and used pain medication exactly as it was prescribed to me. But the monster was stirring. In re
hab they tell you that if you ever use a drug again you’ll immediately be right back where you left off. I know people who may be clean—but if they go out and use, they are on their knees within a week. That’s what you see on TV too. It wasn’t the case for me. The pain pills I was taking for the surgeries were so strong that my addict drive kicked in. By the time I switched to Norco, I was already on the path to hell. But I still functioned really well for years—until I didn’t.

  When I finally started the inevitable slide, my family noticed right away. In January of 2005 I went to the Sundance Film Festival for the premiere of The Jacket, a movie I was in starring Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley. I had a martini at the screening. Then Bijou and I walked the red carpet together, doing our thing. The next day I got a text from her. She said, “I know you’re drinking. I smelled it on your breath. You have to stop. You’re going to die.”

  Back home Owen told Bijou that I was wearing the Fentanyl Patch, the same narcotic that had been Dad’s drug of choice. We’d all lost Dad. This was more than Bijou could take. She came over to my house and went apeshit. She burst through the door, yelling, “You can’t do this. What’s wrong with you? You can’t be on this medication.”

  People were talking about me. Mack was taking pills. Mack was drinking. Mack was using narcotics. I was pissed. I had legitimate pain—nobody seemed to get that. The pain was intense, and the doctors were saying to me, “Just imagine if you weren’t on painkillers. How could you function?” My doctors wrote me multiple prescriptions for the same pills and told me to fill them at different pharmacies. My doctors put me on so much Fentanyl that it’s amazing I didn’t go into a coma. These are what they call “rock docs,” doctors who are essentially legal dealers. You don’t actually have to be in pain to get prescriptions from them. But I was. I was in so much pain that I had to walk with a cane. I tried acupuncture, a shaman herbalist, kinesiology, irradiology. I truly thought I was going to end up in a wheelchair. I didn’t see any way out, and now the people I loved were trying to take away the only relief I had.