Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster

by Kristen Johnston

  I’m not going to go into minute detail about my experience in rehab, because really, haven’t we read enough books about that? However, if you are brave enough to go, I have just a few pieces of advice: Shut the fuck up and listen for once in your life. And even if your counselor has a dream catcher above her desk, I don’t care, listen anyway. Oh, and people who are your best friends in rehab will very likely ring your doorbell two months later with tiny coke rocks falling out of their noses, asking if they can crash on your pullout.

  So go there to get better. Not to be adored by everyone. That one took me a while.

  Last, if you’re scared to go, imagine walking into the cafeteria for your first shaky meal only to be greeted by the sounds of trays dropping and people freaking out as they recognize you (hey, rehab’s a fairly monotonous place). Imagine being treated to a lengthy, daily sermon from some bizarre alcoholic writer who claimed to be a fan (?) of 3rd Rock and who felt he could improve upon story lines you now no longer even remember. Or imagine coming out of the shower on your first morning there only to be greeted by the vision of your roommate rifling through your luggage. Okay? So man up, get over yourself, and think, If so-and-so could do this, so can I. (My reference was Kate Moss.)

  One life-changing thing happened to me while I was there. My counselor, Grace, was one tough-as-nails lady. She wasn’t charmed by me at all; in fact, she reminded me of a tiny British nurse I once knew. Someone who had taught me well the delicate art of navigating those who are both diminutive and rude. Therefore, around my second week there, I pulled Grace aside in the cafeteria and boldly said, “I think I’m trying to get you to like me.”

  “Gee, ya think?” she said.

  I was taken aback. “Is it that obvious?”

  She then rolled her eyes (I swear) and said, “Kristen, why don’t you stop worrying about how everyone else feels about you and start concentrating on yourself? How do you feel about people? How do you feel about situations? Because right now all I see is someone who doesn’t have a clue as to who she really is or what she really wants.”

  My face went hot. I was about to tell her she had her head up her ass, but I couldn’t. I knew she was right. Then she softened a bit and said, “Kristen, isn’t it time you learned how to see yourself through your own eyes, instead of everyone else’s?”

  I looked at her, lost. Fragile. Empty. Speechless. For some reason, this made her happy. She grinned and said, “Well, there you are, Kristen. Welcome to rehab.”

  I left Arizona dazed and confused, with nothing to show for my thirty days but my sobriety, a coin they give you to remember to stay sober (helpful!), and a bunch of shitty turquoise jewelry from the rehab store. Here’s another thing about rehab—it’s profoundly fucking boring. Thus, I became obsessed with purchasing anything I could get my hands on in the rehab store. These treasures included IT WORKS IF YOU WORK IT SO WORK IT YOU’RE WORTH IT key chains, kitchen magnets with sayings like “Don’t run so fast that your guardian angel can’t keep up!” and a couple hundred dollars’ worth of turquoise nonsense.

  Maybe this’ll help you understand the depth of the boredom: Upon my mother’s arrival for “family week” (God bless her), she had in her purse some Juicy Fruit gum and a rolled-up copy of More magazine. Contraband! I grabbed them from her purse as fast as I could and threw them under my bed.

  “Why did you just—”

  “Nevermind, Ma.” My mother has never liked it when I broke rules. I distracted her with “I’m dying for you to meet my best friend here, he’s a sex- and crack-addicted pedophile. He’s a hoot, you’ll love him!”

  Somehow I made it through family therapy, dinner, and our nightly group therapy session, and I was free. I ran as fast as I could to my dorm and plopped into my tiny bed and chewed through the whole pack of gum before my roommates got home. I was in heaven as I feverishly read “ten ways to stay cool during hot flashes” and a very in-depth article on Beverly D’Angelo. It was fantastic. For the first time in twenty-three days, I was other.

  When I got home, so much was completely different, yet hauntingly familiar. It’s a bit like having déjá vu twenty-four hours a day. Yes, that’s my coffee cup, my couch, my dogs, you tell yourself. But they feel different, as if they’re props in some play. When almost every joyous, sad, upsetting, thrilling, boring, fun, angry, heartbreaking, stressful, celebratory moment since high school has been accompanied by alcohol and drugs, you have to learn how to deal with them all over again. And, at forty, that wasn’t easy. I’m still trying to figure them out.

  I think that there are many different ways of getting and staying sober. Like religion, I just don’t think that one way is the only way. I always think of something said to me years and years ago. I was at a benefit and found myself seated next to an addiction therapist (I know, bummer, right?). I was pretending to be normal, nursing a single glass of shudder-inducing white wine. This was at a time in my life when I was starting to wonder if I might be on the autobahn to nowhere, which is what inspired me to casually clear my throat and say, “Excuse me, sir? I’m just curious. What do you think really keeps people sober?”

  He gazed at me over his glasses, which made me think, Uh-oh, he knows.

  But he just smiled. “That’s a good question. And fairly impossible to answer.” Then he said something that has resonated with me ever since: “If pushing a peanut up a hill with your nose keeps you sober, well, then, just push a peanut up a hill with your nose.”

  thirteen

  WELCOME TO THE PLANET OF THE APES

  it’s August. The good news is I no longer want to murder people sitting outside at a café daintily sipping white wine. That’s pretty much been my lament since May, when I reentered my so-called life in New York. God, I despise drinkers. Don’t they realize how annoying they are? “Ha ha HA, I can laugh really loud because I’m drunk!”

  Thank God I was never like that.

  Oh, shut up. Regardless, I really enjoy judging them, it makes me feel superior and less murderous.

  Overall, it has been the most treacherous, difficult, exhausting summer of my life. Alone. In the sweltering city. All of my friends either happily nursing their own beloved addictions or snug with their families. My closest friends all on the annual jaunt to a friend’s magnificent family compound on a hilltop way above Saint-Tropez, where we guzzled so much of the local rosé, I began simply referring to it as “water.” As in “I can’t believe I’ve plowed through six bottles of water and it’s not even noon!”

  It’s the first summer in five years I’m not going, and I know now that I’ll never go there again. I’ll never get to be with all of my nearest and dearest in one stunning place, laughing through an eight-hour dinner. This fills me with unspeakable sorrow, and not just because the rosé was so good.

  You see, some of these wonderful, artistic, and insane people are no longer alive, and even though I was already sober, their deaths felt like the final nightcap to one endless, sometimes fun, sometimes nightmarish, twenty-two-year party. The fat lady sang, and it went a little something like “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

  Loneliness and fear and regret and sorrow have become my new companions. In the beginning, I would wake up every morning and squeeze my eyes shut and pray, Dear someone. I know I think I don’t believe in you, but you’ll still help a girl in need, right? Just please help me not to use, and I won’t kill myself until tomorrow.

  And slowly, very slowly, the cloak of deep, thick sadness was lifted, just enough to navigate that one day. Barely, some days. The relief comes in such tiny doses it’s impossible to feel it; until a month has passed and you laugh at a joke. You realize, Wait, do I feel better? But you don’t dare dwell on it for fear it’ll leave as mysteriously as it came.

  I diligently, desperately tried to follow everything they told me to do in rehab. I concentrated hard at the meetings I went to every single day, so hopeful that maybe this would work, you know? Maybe
someday I would breezily come to these meetings lighthearted and jovial, cracking jokes and making lunch plans. Maybe someday I’d look as if I actually wanted to be there.

  I wondered if these people were aware that a lot of the stuff they say makes them seem kinda, well—drunk. It’s like they’ve all guzzled the same Kool-Aid, one that removes any savviness and common sense. They talked endlessly about things like higher power (Um. Hi? Drunk?) and rigorous honesty, which to me sounded like what some rich dumbass would name his sailboat, but instead meant “to tell the truth all the time.” Can you stand it? What a bunch of adorable assholes. I’d be laughing if I weren’t already crying.

  Because, hello, everybody lies, all the time. Right, don’t they? I learned from the time I could talk that life is built out of the millions of lies you tell yourself and especially anyone else. “I’m fine.” “Of course I’m happy.” “It’s not you, it’s me.” “Really? I thought you lost weight!” “Nonsense, who said you’re too old for a trucker hat?” Or the handy and well-worn “Your performance left me speechless.”

  White lies are all I’ve known since birth. Smile when you’re sad, laugh when you’re angry, and if an adult says, “The color of snow is orange,” then it’s damn well orange. I thought every kid was taught this important life skill, along with saying please even if you don’t mean it and thank you even when Aunt Lydia gave you a shitty Christmas sweater for the fifth year in a row.

  Therefore, this new world full of church basements crammed with earnest truth-tellers seriously freaked me out. Which is why I was so startled to realize I was actually beginning to be charmed by their beautiful innocence. I almost felt as if I’d discovered a hollowed-out tree in the forest containing singing dwarves.

  Then something magical did happen. I think it might have changed my life in a forever kind of way. Once you’ve been sober ninety days, you’re encouraged to tell your complete tale of addiction to everyone. My idiotic, about-to-be-fired “temporary sponsor” made me sign up.

  Me? Me. Tell every mortifying thing I’ve done to a crowd of fellow New Yorkers? I mean, I just came clean in rehab three months ago, and that was in group therapy with people I’ll never have to see again. Even then I was paralyzed with shame, anxiety, and fear. Even then I minimized it so people wouldn’t call their wives and tell them what a loser the tall blonde from 3rd Rock became.

  Why the fuck can’t we just get a cupcake? I mean, why on earth punish people for being sober for three months?

  I go to a daily 12:30 meeting, which is usually around a hundred people stuffed into a room meant for fifty. A lot of regular crazies like yours truly. . . and, of course, many, many, many utter nutbags. Complete lunatics who say things like “I’m so grateful I’m an alcoholic. I just love having to be sober every single day for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t change a thing!”

  I’m not from this land of sharers, and I am so, so homesick. Where I come from, people don’t discuss bad things. I’m desperate to escape back to the New York I’ve known for the last twenty years, back to the familiar landscape built entirely of booze and bullshit.

  Now I understand just how Charlton Heston felt at the end of Planet of the Apes when he saw the remnants of the Statue of Liberty and realized that all this time, he was really just trying to escape to where he already was. I’m completely overwhelmed with grief and sorrow as I begin to grasp that this is both my ruined past and my new forever.

  That morning, I’m more terrified than I can ever remember. So I comforted myself with the knowledge that of course I’ll exclude the more embarrassing details of my addiction. I’ll keep safe all those things so awful and mortifying I’ve never told another living soul. Right? I mean, who’d ever know anyway?

  To my complete bafflement and utter horror, I tell the Truth.

  All of it.

  For the very first time in my whole life. To people I don’t know.

  I tell the Truth.

  About stealing Vicodin all the time from my best friend, who had migraines. About stealing them from my mother, who had just had knee-replacement surgery. About lying constantly to everyone who loved me. About taking painkillers prescribed for my own sweet dog. Thank God they weren’t beef-flavored, because that would’ve been really embarrassing.

  I say everything that I’ve known for years that if anyone else ever knew. . . well, the shame. The total fucking shame.

  The real me was horrified, screaming, No! Stop it! What the fuck are you doing? but I was possessed by some completely unknown and terrifying thing. A ghastly, truth-telling ghoul who just didn’t seem to care about the well-being of the completely fake person that I had worked so hard my whole life to pretend to become.

  When it was over, I sat there weeping, in shock and beyond mortified, surrounded by the defeated chunks of my former life. Forty years’ worth of lies. I was violently contemplating any immediately available suicide options (can earrings kill?) when all of a sudden I was distracted by something. I looked up to see that people were fucking smiling at me. Nodding. Some of them were crying. And they were all clapping. I know they do it for everyone, but it didn’t matter.

  As someone who’s had her fair share of applause, I can say that never, ever has it meant more to me than it did on that day.

  But I haven’t even told you the most beautiful moment of all. The memory of it still humbles me and gives me goose bumps to this very day.

  One by one, people raised their hands and started to tell their shames, the secrets they had never before said out loud. As I listened to them all, a feeling washed over me that was foreign yet kind of familiar, a feeling from a long, long time ago, a feeling that was almost as good as a fistful of Percocet. It slowly dawned on me that the feeling was pride. I was actually proud of myself for the first time in many, many years. Because by telling the truth, other people did, too.

  Me. I did something good, for once. I felt something shift, or my molecules reassemble in some new way.

  That’s when I started to understand. If you’re somehow brave enough to tell people how ugly you really are inside, people won’t hate you. In fact, they respect you. They’ve all done things that horrified them, that they knew they could never, ever tell.

  Just by telling people what an awful person you’ve been you can inspire them to become a better person.

  Learning how to tell the truth, for the first time in forty years, has been just joyously freeing and impossibly awkward. It takes a while to grasp that people don’t always want to hear the truth. Jackie summed it up best: “You know, Kristen, just because you’re ready to tell the truth doesn’t mean everyone’s all of a sudden gonna be dying to hear it.” But it makes me feel like I’m becoming a brave, decent person. As if I’m becoming someone I might actually like.

  I know I have so far to go. I have dreams that I still don’t think I’m good enough to have. I still fuck up constantly.

  But that one hour changed my life more than anything else ever has, because it was the moment I finally understood that NEVER EVER AGAIN WILL I ACCEPT THAT SOMEONE ELSE’S REALITY IS MINE, JUST TO MAKE THEM HAPPY.

  It also was the moment I was finally brave enough to face my biggest nightmare, revealing the hideous, revolting monster I had tried so desperately to hide from people my whole life. Me. The real me.

  No one ran screaming from the room. Orderlies didn’t whisk me off to Bellevue. I didn’t die. The world didn’t end.

  I simply walked home, the words I’m enough pumping over and over through my somehow still-beating heart, and I was who I really am, for the very first time in my life.

  epilogue

  when I told the people in my life that I was writing a book about my addiction and the events that led to my recovery, almost everyone’s reaction was extremely positive. A lucky portion of these people have willingly read this book many times, in many incarnations. An even luckier few were forced to listen to me read every single chapter out loud, sometimes more than once. (Don’t worry, I kiss you
r asses in the acknowledgments.) But a few people, who I love and respect dearly, have some very serious misgivings about it. They simply can’t fathom why I would expose myself like this when I didn’t have to, when most people didn’t really know I was an addict in the first place.

  Trust me, at first I felt the exact same way. Well, I never imagined I’d even have the balls to write a book in the first place, let alone one about a subject I was so ashamed of I couldn’t bear to mention it to therapists for most of my life. But something weird starts happening when you get sober. Out of the blue, you find yourself saying yes to things you would never even have considered before. Suddenly, instead of napping, there you are, wholeheartedly agreeing to everything from the ridiculous “Sure, I’ll try skydiving!” to the sublime “I’d love to teach acting at NYU!”

  Life starts to become fun again. But the best part is, it also becomes scary again. Not the kind of scary you’ve grown accustomed to, like waking up with two black eyes, a loose front tooth, and ten voice-mail messages letting you know that your totaled car was found last night on the Long Island Expressway. No, this is the good kind of scary, the kind where you can’t even believe that you’re actually swimming with sharks off the Great Barrier Reef.

  It’s almost as if you’ve become an old toddler, unhampered by any preconceived notions of how awful things usually turn out. This innocent stupidity is what led me to agree to write this damn book in the first place. One fine day last summer, I was wandering around my agency, Paradigm, spreading my sparkling wit and dazzling charm to anyone bored enough to pay attention to a forty-two-year-old boisterous baby. That’s when Lydia Wills, a literary agent, introduced herself to me and said, “Ever thought about writing a book?”