Crash and Burn

by Lange, Artie

  “Is that your girlfriend?” Letterman asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Artie, if I were you, I’d start doing something,” Dave said.

  That got huge laughs, of course. And he was right.

  None of that was planned, which made all of it cooler. Adrienne was very shy in front of the camera too, which made me even more attracted to her.

  By the time I began to relapse, she and I were so connected and so serious that she didn’t run away. I slid all the way down, back to heroin, back to pills and any other drugs I could find. She saw it all and she fought for me. She fought for us, really, because by then there was an “us.” I’m well over two hundred pounds and she’s just over one hundred, but there were many nights when she tried to wrestle the drugs away from me, unafraid. She fought for me and fought to save what we had. She was the light of my life for those few months. Every time she smiled I saw everything good in the world. I’m a very dark person, so that’s not what I look for or ever see if left to my own devices, but when she smiled I did. In those moments I saw everything I’d been missing in life.

  My career had taken me all around the world, but I’d still never been to Paris. It’s hard to believe that the Funny Bone comedy empire hasn’t staked its claim in Paris, otherwise I may have been booked there. Adrienne is well-traveled in every way, so during her time at Oxford she met people who were in a different zone wealth-wise and had subsequently been to Paris a few times. She loved Paris and she always told me all about it. She told me how romantic it is and how beautiful it is to walk those streets. We both love the movie Casablanca, and like so many other couples we always quoted the line “We’ll always have Paris,” even though we’d never been there.

  Adrienne always promised that if we ever went to Paris she’d show me everything, and I couldn’t imagine anything more romantic than that. I was forty-one and she was twenty-five when we met, and I can’t describe how great it is to find true love at forty-one because it rejuvenates you. It was like I was born again. Just as I’d come to believe that I knew what this world is all about, she came along and reminded me that all the good exists here right alongside the bad. It made me happy to be alive. Adrienne was my little angel.

  She wrote me the most beautiful card I’ve ever gotten from anybody about what we were going to do when we went to Paris, all the activities she had planned for us, and it became a dream and a plan we talked about. We were going to Paris and we were going to experience it together. This was before I completely crashed and burned the first time. After we said good-bye on December 9, 2009, I never thought I’d see her again. I didn’t have the capacity to think about how she felt; I was too caught up in my own spiral into hell to be capable of that. Or to care. I didn’t realize, because I couldn’t even understand what it meant, that she was stuck on me just the way I was on her. In the moments I thought about her, I figured she would walk away and have a happy life because she wasn’t like me—she could do that. But that wasn’t the case because what I didn’t realize is that real relationships aren’t like that. True love runs both ways.

  Adrienne’s birthday is January 1, which makes New Year’s Eve a big night in her life. When we were at our best she told me that, so I concocted extravagant plans for that first birthday of hers we’d spend together. The first of many, I’d say, but it never happened, though I tried. I left rehab early, pretty much to be with her, just to try to fulfill at least one promise because I’d fucked up so many others. I came home with every intention of celebrating her and proving that I was changed. All I did was retreat into my broken lair and get high, drunk, and as fucked up as I could, just everything I’d done before, once again. She was living with her parents at the time and I didn’t even call her, I didn’t make any kind of effort at all, because I was in full addict isolation mode.

  New Year’s Eve 2009 was awful. It was the cherry on the crap cake. I wanted to be with Adrienne and I wondered where she was. I didn’t know because I hadn’t reached out. I hoped she was somewhere free of the kind of bullshit I’d made her deal with. I hoped she was smiling, having a good time, and enjoying her birthday. I hated every single second of those two days because all I wanted was to be with her. I didn’t have the courage to even call, text, anything. In that hole I went and dug for myself there in my living room, I didn’t even know how to communicate with someone who had become closer to me than anyone. So I did drugs, I drank, I numbed myself to the point of oblivion so I’d not think about how fucked up that was and how alone I felt. And I kept going and, as I’ve described as honestly as I can in these pages, on the morning of January 2 I stabbed myself.

  That was my rock bottom. I’m fine with declaring that moment officially as my rock bottom. I mean, shouldn’t it be? If it wasn’t I’d like someone to step up and tell me what is, because I can’t think of a deeper pit of hell. If it exists, I’ll take your word for it and hope I never go there. When you hit rock bottom as a heroin addict you realize something that is very simple and very clear. It’s something that people tell you all along your path to that dark existential shit hole of a place. It mystifies me how this easy-to-remember fact gets lost in the shuffle for all the months or years that addicts like me insist on stumbling along.

  Here it is—and please listen up. Heroin addiction is a story with only two endings: death or quitting. You will die or you will quit, and that’s it. When an addict finds their rock bottom, that might be their end, because they might not live through it. If they do, unless they’re completely deluded, that last straw will turn their ship around and make them want to get better. I hate to spoil things, but given that those are the only two options and that you’re reading a book by me, it’s safe to conclude that I chose the second option.

  If you’re math-oriented you already have calculated that it took me a full two years to get straight. From psych wards to rehab to my mother’s house, I marched through my own personal hell and brought too many loved ones with me. When I came out of it and got back on the radio, Adrienne came back into my life, and as a sober man, that relationship and all the love I feel for her was more powerful than ever. I really couldn’t believe that I was getting a second chance. The love of my life, who I finally realized loved me too, was back. And I had a new job!

  Adrienne had tried to come see me when I was in rehab, but my family wouldn’t let her. They kept anyone from my life who wasn’t actual blood to me (a very Italian move) at a huge distance. I can’t blame them. I was a completely vulnerable person, but they didn’t realize that she would have helped. My family wouldn’t let Adrienne visit when I needed her most and I’m still disappointed by how much they misjudged her. I couldn’t explain to them how much seeing her face would have cheered me up during those dark days. They were trying to save my life—and they did—and I understand why they didn’t want me to see her. I love everyone I’m talking about so much, for very different reasons. All of them had the right intentions, so I hold no grudges, and neither should they.

  I called Adrienne once during those bleak times, during a period when my life coach/sober coach was living with me at my mom’s place. I’d flown him in from LA to be with me twenty-four-seven. He was sleeping on the couch at my mom’s, doing all he could to get me to leave the dark bedroom down the hall. He was there when I called Adrienne, and she was still taking classes and studying at the time. I had come a long way by then and under the sober coach’s supervision, I was allowed to have my BlackBerry back again. Maybe a day or two later, as fate would have it, I got a text from Adrienne telling me how she was at Radio City Music Hall seeing a band that she said reminded her of Springsteen.

  When Adrienne and I were together, she made me feel young, she tuned me into what it is to feel young and happy again and in return I turned her on to Springsteen. She and I were like “Thunder Road,” and she texted me that night to tell me she was crying because of the memories of us there. I texted her back from the heart. I said, “I hope you’re okay.” It was the start
of a conversation, because the next day we got on the phone.

  We talked for a long time and I thought that seeing her would be really good for me, but that’s when she told me that she’d started seeing someone a few weeks earlier. That is why she’d been so emotional at the concert the night before—she was there with him. I couldn’t blame her for dating someone else, but at the same time, I realized just how much I still loved her, because hearing that she was with another guy broke my heart. I was happy that she’d moved on, but it tore me to pieces.

  What surprised me was just how much she’d fallen for me and how she hadn’t forgotten what we had. She’d been so moved by the memories of us that she wasn’t able to contain that emotion at the concert. I was surprised but so fucking happy to hear how much she still loved me. I’d been too fucked up to realize it when we were first together, so it was a complete shock in the best possible way.

  “Artie, please just let me see you,” she said.

  I was speechless.

  “You want to go for ice cream?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to do that. I couldn’t. I love going for ice cream, but I just couldn’t. She’d call and ask and I’d just say no and hang up. I didn’t want to see her if I couldn’t have her. I expected I’d never hear from her or talk to her again. She was going to be just another good thing that left me because of me, because of drugs.

  But against all odds, and against how I saw things, our romance started up again once I began to crawl out of the dark. We had a few months of bliss where we’d go to dinner in downtown New York and we’d walk around Greenwich Village. She’d come see me do sets at the Comedy Cellar. It was almost like we were dating again, but also for the first time somehow, because I was clean and everything was brand-new to me. It was like we were dating the way we should have when we first met.

  When we came back together, Adrienne was trying to get into medical school and was studying and working like crazy to do it. She had her schedule and I had mine, which was pretty open compared to what I was used to before I crashed and burned. But the better I got, the busier I got, and that schedule filled up. When I started going on the road again, things changed between us. I don’t think either of us could have predicted it, but feelings of resentment and anger came over the two of us. She had never been able to express them and I’d never acknowledged that she should have them. I was also seeing my life clearly for the first time and had a bundle of uncomfortable feelings to deal with. I loved what I saw of our past and I wanted another shot, but I knew that she was worried about dealing with me and how hard it was still going to be, to say the least. All of these things bubbled up between us and we went through a few really bad months.

  No matter how hard it got, we never stopped talking about going to Paris together—it was like this promise we wouldn’t let go of. And that, to me, seemed like the best way to get us back on track. I wanted what she had talked about in her card—all those plans and dreams—to come true so she’d see that it could work. I told her that I had a vacation from the radio show and that I wanted to go to Paris. When it came time to book that trip, we had been fighting nonstop, and what I should have done was say that the best thing for us to do was stay home and work out our problems during my time off, but I didn’t do that. Instead I went for the grand gesture and booked a trip to Paris during a moment when she and I weren’t even talking. What a fuck-you that was! I didn’t get her a ticket or anything, I just told her about it, I guess to rub it in, but I guess also because I wanted her to come. Somehow we made up before I left, so I ended up using a bunch of air miles to get her on my flight at, literally, the very last minute. It was a recipe for disaster before we even left, because we hadn’t resolved anything we’d been fighting about.

  There was another reason I wanted to go to Paris in July 2012 rather than any other time: Bruce Springsteen was playing two shows there over the July Fourth weekend. There is nothing more patriotic than seeing Bruce—and seeing him in Paris was a double win—so I planned to fly out on the fourth after doing the Nick and Artie Show to catch Bruce on the fifth. Thanks to my friendship with the E Street Band’s brilliant and kind guitarist Nils Lofgren, whom I am lucky enough to call a friend, I was able to arrange tickets and passes for me and my friends. I can’t say enough how much Nils Lofgren has been a source of inspiration and a positive force in my life in every single way you can imagine. We first met in 2004, when he and his wife, Amy, came to see me do comedy in Arizona, and after my set Dan Mer, the owner of the venue (which was the Tempe Improv), introduced us. Dan came back to my dressing room to let me know that Nils wanted to come meet me, and honest to God I’ve never said, “Please bring them back,” quicker in my entire life. We have been friends ever since and I’ve grown to love him and his wife very much. I almost feel bad saying this because I’m just not worthy, but I’m so privileged to say that Nils has even begun to give me guitar lessons. It was his idea: as a guy who has been sober for decades, he told me I’d need to find a hobby, a passion, something to put my energy into aside from what I already did, and that guitar was perfect. He’s right; it’s a great meditation for me and I don’t care that I’ll never be Hendrix, Clapton, or Nils, I just like the practice. It’s a habit I won’t have to quit. And guitar lessons from Nils Lofgren? It’s great to be alive, as far as I’m concerned. I also hoped that I’d see Bruce for at least a minute or two because I really wanted to tell him just how much that phone call from him when I was at my lowest had kept me going. He really helped save my life—I mean that very literally.

  All in all, even though Adrienne and I had been fighting, I had high hopes for this Paris trip. I booked a really nice hotel and I invited a small group, which included some good friends, like my cowriter, Anthony Bozza; my radio show producer, Dan Falato; my AA sponsor, Don; and my travel guru, John Valestri. And I might as well come clean now: I planned to ask Adrienne to marry me on that trip. I’d set up a place for us to go ring shopping, and I was going to propose under the Eiffel Tower. Once I was there I changed my plan; I decided an evening cruise would be more romantic. It would be more of a cliché, but I didn’t care, I wanted to be as romantic, cheesy, whatever you want to call it, as possible. Because that’s how she makes me feel.

  Unfortunately my anger and overall addict behavior took over the moment we landed in Paris. I started a massive fight with Adrienne at the airport that just kept going all the way to the hotel and resulted in her not coming to the Springsteen concert that night. This is something I’ll regret forever. She and I had talked about how much we wanted to hear “Thunder Road” together in Paris. I heard it, and she didn’t, because my knack for being an asshole ruined the evening. What’s even worse is that Nils, in addition to getting my friends and me passes for the E Street Lounge and whatever else we wanted, invited me to have a bite to eat with him and his wife before the show, where I got to meet Roy Bittan, the genius piano player in the band. After that my friends and I went backstage and we hung out with Steve Van Zandt, which was incredibly cool. I’ve gotten to know Steve over the years, so it wasn’t strange when he came up and said: “What? Were you just in the fuckin’ neighborhood?”

  Steve has seen it all, and I’d been honest with him about my struggles with heroin, so for that reason I was excited to tell him that I’d beaten it and was finally clean. Steve grabbed my cheek and, in the way Silvio did when he scolded Christopher on The Sopranos, said the most simple, truthful thing anyone could ever say about heroin—take note of this.

  “Why would you ever mess with that shit?” he said. “It ends one of two ways, and one is death.” He had one more observation that’s equally important: “Why would you mess with something that gets in the way of your fucking?”

  The show, as any Springsteen fan who keeps up with the band can tell you, was amazing. There was no air-conditioning in the sold-out arena full of seventeen thousand for two nights. I’m overweight, so that kind of heat affects me, but I don’t care what anybody says: it felt
like it was about two hundred degrees in that place. The air was so hot it was almost visible. But let me tell you something: the first time I saw Bruce in concert was August 31, 1985, at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. He played for about four hours and I was sitting in the very last row of the upper deck with my friends Danny McGrath, Charlene Cole, and Sue Solofski. We were all seventeen. That is still the best show I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been to fifty-plus Springsteen shows since then and I can say with no doubt about it, that the Paris show on July 5, 2012, was easily the second-best Springsteen show I’ve ever seen. It’s a natural follow-up to my first show way back in the sumer of ’85.

  Bruce opened that Paris set with “The Ties That Bind” off of The River. That is one of his greatest songs, if you ask me. It’s a track about being young and rebellious, and it’s something hard-core fans know and love. It’s the kind of song that would make sense for him to open with in Jersey, though it would still be a welcome surprise because it’s a very rare thing for him to do. But in Paris? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! During the show he played about seven tunes off of Born in the U.S.A. and Nils outdid himself during the solo in “Because the Night.”

  The most surreal thing of all was hearing seventeen thousand people sing “Born to Run” in thick French accents! And as he did throughout the tour, Bruce took the house down with a heart-wrenching video tribute to Clarence Clemons in the middle of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” that came right after he sang the classic lyric, “When the change was made uptown / And the big man joined the band.” The show ran just under four hours with no intermission and no air-conditioning, and it was nothing short of amazing. I had to piss four times during the show, because it was that long. The man is sixty-three years old! I have no idea how he does that, I’m just glad he keeps doing it.