Crash and Burn

by Lange, Artie

  To make things worse, months before, I’d agreed to appear in a film as a favor to my friend Maria Menounos, who is best known as a host on Extra and Access Hollywood. She writes, produces, and directs movies, and she’d said she’d only need me for a day. That day happened to be July 5, which I forgot all about (of course) until that week. Maria was great; she let me postpone my day of shooting until the sixth.

  I slept in on the fifth, but I didn’t want to get up at four a.m. to get to the shoot in Connecticut on time, so I drove the hour and a half to Manhattan and checked into the Mandarin Oriental, once again in a $1,500-a-night room. Adrienne went home and I told Maria to send a car at six a.m. to drive me the two hours to Connecticut. Maria is a sweetheart, but this was the last thing I wanted to do on a holiday weekend. So I locked myself in my hotel room and numbed out by snorting heroin all night. I didn’t want to oversleep, because I was responsible, so I did the smart thing and stayed up all night. Makes sense, right? I then got up and had a healthy breakfast of Kit Kats from the mini bar, which cost around $800, and got in the town car Maria had sent, completely fucked up, with a bunch of heroin in my pocket to “get me through the day.”

  I slept all the way there and when I woke up did my best to pretend that I was okay. I went through hair and makeup and gave Maria a big hug when I saw her. I met the director, who explained the scene and what they wanted from me, which was great because I hadn’t even looked at the script. My job was to play the older brother of a kid who goes on to become a serial killer, probably because of how often my character called him an asshole, which I did in every scene. I really don’t know what the fuck that movie was and I barely remember doing it, but I love Maria and I hope it worked out. I tried to learn my lines, but I was all fucked up, and there was nowhere for me to get some privacy. There were no trailers; the best they had was a spare sedan, so I climbed there and, in the heat, dozed off in the middle of “rehearsing.”

  After a fourteen-hour shoot, the car took me back to the Mandarin Oriental, where I crashed for another night because I was too fucked up to do anything else, flushing away another $1,500. That night I had an out-of-body experience where I realized that my life had become a dream or something worse. It had become something I was watching as an audience member, and it no longer seemed real. I was on the biggest radio show in history, living the life I’d always wanted, but I was so detached from it all and I’d forgotten how to care.

  I kept on and it got worse as my on-air “fatigue” became a regular feature of the show. It got so ridiculous that one day when Kathy Griffin was our guest, I fell asleep so deeply and snored into the microphone so loudly that Howard couldn’t continue. He could only be heard between snores. Howard turned it into gold, of course, but after they’d finished laughing at me, they woke me up and suggested that I sleep it off (whatever “it” was for me that day).

  “Art, why don’t you just go into the dressing room and sleep,” Howard said. “We don’t need you for the Kathy Griffin interview.”

  “Fine,” I said, so during the commercial break they kicked Kathy and her hair and makeup people out of her dressing room so I could get back to snoring.

  “You’re kicking me out so Artie can sleep?” she asked our producer, completely dumbfounded. “I have an Emmy.”

  I intended to doze through her interview and rejoin the show, but instead I slept there until two p.m., three hours after the show was over and everyone had left. I walked out the door, got myself home, ordered some pizza, snorted whatever I had left in my pocket, and went to bed. That was just another day at the office. The only reason I didn’t lose my job was that Howard is so brilliant at making anything funny—even a fat addict sleeping—that I became a source of humor and a regular joke. My naps were a recurring theme because he turned it into a bit the way only he can, even though it was a huge burden for him to bear each day.

  The top that was my life started really spinning out of control this time. I was so physically addicted, and it had happened so quickly and I really didn’t care. It was horrifying to me: I’d hired guys to get me clean and I’d made such a show of it on the air on Stern, and even in my own stand-up DVD, that I was ashamed of what had happened. There was no way I was going to cop to the fact that I’d slipped. I was going to keep this front up no matter what.

  I’d wire money to dealers who would leave me pills and powder wherever I was traveling, and I was back in that cycle again. Everyone started to pull away from me again: my mom, my sister, my friends, and Adrienne, who began to spend most of her time at her parents’ house and fewer and fewer days with me. Because even though I wasn’t admitting a thing, they could feel that I was lying. And it got very bad very quick. This wasn’t a slow slide—this was a nosedive.

  When Stern went on break for two weeks in July I stayed at my shore house doing nothing but getting high in my bedroom. The shame of failing at being sober was so heavy upon me that I couldn’t even consider trying to fake it by being social. I hid out from everyone except the one person I couldn’t avoid: my mother. She came down for a few days, and got sick with some kind of flu, probably because she was stressed out over me. Her doctor called in an antibiotic to the CVS a half mile from my house. The night before, I’d taken some sleeping pills, so that morning I was still groggy as I got into the car and drove to get my mother her medicine. I was pretty out of it, so some woman who saw me swerving called 911, and before I knew it the cops were following me. That didn’t help my concentration any, and by accident I bumped the car in front of me while coming to a stop just a few blocks from my house. No one was hurt and there was no damage, in fact the two teenage kids in the car got out and recognized me and asked for autographs and pictures as if nothing had happened.

  The cops behind me decided to give me a sobriety test, however, which became an unscheduled improv show, because the whole time they made me walk the line and touch my nose, people were pulling over to take pictures and watch. Thank God I didn’t have any drugs in the car, because they weren’t satisfied with my performance and decided to arrest me on suspicion of DUI. Thankfully the cop agreed to take my mother’s antibiotics to the house before taking me in to be arrested. My poor mother. She thought her son was going out to get her antibiotics until a cop showed up to deliver them and told her I’d been arrested for DUI.

  My mother was my one phone call. She then called my buddy Al, who is one of my best friends from childhood—Al’s father was the guy who got me my job at Port Newark back in the day. It took him a few hours, but eventually Al bailed me out. For the record, I blew a 0.0 on the Breathalyzer because I wasn’t drinking, and when they took my urine sample I told them the truth.

  “Listen, I have a prescription for sleeping pills and I took them last night, so that’s all you’re going to find,” I said.

  “That’s great,” the cop said. “Get a lawyer, because you’re gonna need one.”

  They took my mug shot and threw me in a cell and about twenty minutes later one of the detectives who’d booked me came back all smiles.

  “Looks like you made TMZ, congratulations.”

  Really? I’m not sure what is more nauseating, how giddy the guy was about it or the fact that it took TMZ something like fourteen minutes to report that I’d been arrested for DUI but CNN still can’t find the weapons of mass destruction.

  “That’s great.”

  I tried to sleep on the floor until Al showed up, but that didn’t work out too well, because, contrary to what you might have been told, jail cells aren’t very comfortable.

  When I got home my mom was crying, and it looked like she’d been at it for a while.

  “Ma, don’t worry about this, it’s nothing. I wasn’t drinking, I was just sleepy from my medicine,” I said. “I’m calling my lawyer and this whole thing will be gone.”

  It was the truth, but it didn’t put her at ease one bit.

  My lawyer said later that day. “You blew a zero; they’ll never be able to convict you. This who
le thing is bullshit. They’re just out to make some money.”

  What he didn’t count on was the small-time prosecutor in the seaside town where my house is thinking he’d make a name for himself off of whatever little fame I have. The guy told my lawyer in no uncertain terms that he planned to prosecute this case to the end.

  “I plan to read his book in the courtroom,” the guy said. “The public needs to know how much of a drug abuser he is. I’m going to subpoena tapes from The Howard Stern Show, I’m going to subpoena his mother and his friends. Artie Lange is a public menace.”

  My lawyer knew we could beat it, but we would have to go through with a trial.

  “If we go to trial, he says he’s going to subpoena Stern Show tapes and my mother will be called as a witness?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so, Art.”

  “Fuck it, I’m not going through all that. I’ll plead guilty.”

  That’s what I did, and the judge suspended my license for six months.

  One night during those months when it was clear that I wasn’t all right I came home to my apartment and found my mom sitting there in tears. She came right up to me and got in my face as soon as I got through the door.

  “Artie, I love you,” she said. “I’m afraid you’re going to die and I don’t want to go to your funeral.” She had to pause to catch her breath. “Artie . . . I don’t want to bury you.”

  I’ll never forget that moment, but as poignant as it was—and it was one of the most poignant moments of my life—it didn’t slow me down. I couldn’t slow down, but I knew I had to do something, so I promised her I’d quit stand-up because the road was to blame, I said. I wasn’t entirely lying; touring had always been my trigger, but the problem was, I enjoyed pulling it. I hated flying, so I’d medicate; to deal with the crowds at an all-night book signing, I’d medicate. I had so many reasons to take my medicine that I was always on it. In an effort to remove the stress of air travel and to keep a better eye on me, Mike began to book me a tour bus. That way there was no hotel room for me to hide in and get up to no good. This worked out well because I liked the bus. The rocking movement actually helped me sleep. I liked it so much that I booked even more live gigs. Besides, I’d found ways to bring drugs around: I began to carry a small bag full of papers that I said were my notes for stand-up and I forbade Mike, Joe, or anyone from looking in it. I wasn’t completely lying; there were ideas on notepads in there. But usually there was also a stash of as many pills as I could get my hands on.

  Listen, even I knew this party couldn’t last, because I’d lost my edge—I just didn’t want to admit it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do anything about it. I just wanted to bullshit my way out of trouble, hoping I’d make up for it the next time. But that wasn’t happening. I continued to make a fool of myself and a fool of the Stern Show every morning because I’d become the weird guy in the corner shouting nonsense—and that was a good day for me. I kept telling myself I’d get off the road but kept accepting offers I thought I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t even know what motivated me anymore, because as much as I was greedy and felt like I should get all I could before it all fell apart, I kept doing things that made no sense and I kept wasting my time and money.

  That September I got a fan letter from a kid in Detroit whose brother was a quadriplegic, asking me to do a charity gig at the Detroit Opera House to raise money to buy the special equipment he said his brother desperately needed. Any extra money raised would benefit quadriplegic care facilities at their local hospital. I’d done a few things like this before because my father was a quadriplegic and shit like this moves me, so I got in touch with him and agreed to do the gig.

  The moment I got off the plane I realized I’d been duped because it was clear to me that these people had money and didn’t need a handout. What sucks is that I would have hung out with them or done something else for them that didn’t involve me coming to do a gig, because that was literally the last thing I needed on my plate, since I was already under so much pressure and being watched so closely. I only did it because they said they needed the money. That said, the kid was an inspiration. He was doing everything he could possibly do in life and not letting his condition hold him back. He had the most positive attitude that you can imagine and I kept wishing that my father had shared this kid’s point of view. If he had, he and I could have enjoyed a few more years together.

  I put this whole trip together myself, so I flew up to Detroit solo. I’m sure Joe and Helicopter Mike were fine with that, because they’d gotten sick of my shit by then and were taking a big step back, even from just flying me around. My whole circle was coming apart—I’d even fired my driver of eight years, whom I’m going to call Alice Cooper, for no good reason at all by then. Alice Cooper had been so good to me and always looked out for me and kept me safe, but because of that very quality, Mike and Joe felt that he was a weak link in the chain and pushed me to let him go. Alice was almost too nice, they said, so he was the kind of guy that could be manipulated by me. They weren’t wrong, but they also weren’t exactly right: if I’d told Alice Cooper not to get me drugs no matter how much I begged or tried to bribe him with cash, he would have done that for me too. Alice was loyal above all, and he got me to work as on time as best he could every day for eight years.

  I don’t want to get off track, but I do need to say that I feel horribly guilty about the way I let Alice Cooper go. The last morning he came to pick me up I was really late—I think I had about eight minutes to get from Hoboken to Sixth Avenue and Forty-Ninth Street in midtown Manhattan. I was under a lot of pressure and a lot of scrutiny and I couldn’t be late, so I insisted that Alice let me drive. My license hadn’t officially been suspended because my court case was pending, so technically this wasn’t illegal. I was, however, high on pills and booze at the time.

  “Alice Cooper, you gotta let me drive,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we need to run red lights and speed, and I’m willing to do that,” I said. “I don’t want you to get a ticket, so if we get one, let me be the one who gets it.”

  I drove to work, high, like a man possessed. I ran every red light. I passed garbage trucks on the shoulder and crossed into the oncoming lane whenever I needed to.

  “Art, you’re fucking nuts!” Alice shouted.

  I was swerving and I sideswiped a bus, breaking the mirror off of Alice’s car on the driver’s side.

  “What are you doing? You’re crazy! What the fuck are you doing?”

  I made it just in time, which must be some kind of record, but it was the last trip to work Alice Cooper and I took together. The next day we fired him and he’d done absolutely nothing wrong. About a year and a half later I saw Alice in front of a pizza place in Hoboken and we hugged and talked it out and I explained everything that was going on with Mike and Joe trying to control me. Alice understood, but I still feel like shit about it. Anyway Mike and Joe replaced him with some driver they knew from Long Island I’m going to call Sebastian Bach. I drove his car a number of times too, by the way, always when I was high and late to the show. I’d swerve in and out of traffic and pass in the space between lanes if I saw an opening. I actually broke Sebastian’s mirror getting there one morning, which I dealt with by giving him $800 when we got there.

  To give you an idea of how bad I’d become, my sister, Stacey, insisted on coming along with me on this trip to Detroit, and she had long ago reached the end of her rope with me. But she loves me and I’m her brother and she knew that I was in very deep trouble, no matter what I said. So she came along, taking a break from her job as a clothing designer at American Eagle to do so.

  When we landed in Detroit I realized that these people weren’t hard up at all. It was the weekend of October 11, which was my forty-second birthday, and I’d been flying high on opiates for two days when Stacey and I checked into The Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, which is just outside of Detroit. That place is a beautiful, kind of stuffy four-star hote
l with generic hallways that look like the pictures you see of the inside of the White House. The people that hang out there, however, are not stuffy: the bar was always happening. I would have warmed up there with a drink, but withdrawals had kicked in, so there was no way I could be social. Besides, Stacey was with me, so I had to play it cool. I went to my room, realized that I didn’t have nearly enough painkillers to get me through the weekend, and cursed myself to high heaven. I didn’t know what to do—I knew no one in Detroit, and the measly number of pills in my hand weren’t going to mean shit in about eight hours. I took them all, knowing I was in trouble, and did the only thing that made sense: I downed half the booze in the minibar, tipping back one little bottle after another, straight with no chaser, in about forty-five minutes. I remember thinking that was taking it easy, telling myself, Okay, let’s not get crazy here. I wanted to drink all of it, but the other half was my backup plan in case I couldn’t find pills at the gig. And it was the best I could do: with Stacey just next door I couldn’t order booze from room service or sneak out to the bar.

  I feel bad about it now because my minibar spree probably cost the kid and his family a mint. I usually pay for my excesses, so I feel guilty because this was the type of hotel where a bag of cashews costs twenty-five bucks and I’m pretty sure the minibar was the kind where moving anything incurs a charge. I’m guessing my bill was in the high hundreds because every time I went for another bottle I’d move the Diet Cokes and Toblerones I had no use for, which probably charged the room again. I also kept taking bottles out and looking at them, deciding which to drink first, then putting them back before I’d take them out again and drink them. By the end of this tour through the minibar I felt as decent as I was going to, which was great because it was showtime.