Copyright © 2013 by Bob Forrest
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Forrest, Bob, 1961–
Running with monsters : a memoir / Bob Forrest with Michael Albo. — First edition.
1. Forrest, Bob, 1961– 2. Singers—United States—Biography.
3. Rock musicians—United States—Biography. 4. Drug addicts—United States—Biography. 5. Ex-drug addicts—United States—Biography. I. Albo, Michael. II. Title.
ML420.F736A3 2013
782.42166092—dc23
[B]
2013019969
eISBN: 978-0-7704-3599-8
Jacket design by Nupoor Gordon
Jacket photograph: © Piper Ferguson
All photographs are courtesy of the author unless otherwise credited.
v3.1
For Sam, you’re the best thing that I’ve ever found. Thanks for putting up with me. Elvis, I love you! Elijah, I’m proud of you! And for addicts everywhere, please know that redemption is possible …
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Before We Get Started …
Huck Finn at 120 Degrees
School Days
La Leyenda
A Monster Comes to Life
Hazelden
Super-Secret Societies
Viper Room
Photo Insert
My Boy
Arise, Lazarus, and Walk!
Redemption
You Come and Go Like a Pop Song
The Education of Bob Forrest
Showtime
Treatment: It’s Up to You
Happy #12 and #35
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
BEFORE WE GET STARTED …
Who am I? That’s a good question. I’m the guy with the horn-rimmed glasses and the hat that you’ve seen on VH1’s popular TV show Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. I’m also known in some circles as “the Junkie Whisperer.” It’s a title I worked hard to earn. I’ve helped addicts from all walks of life and have offered them support, encouragement, and guidance based on my own firsthand experiences as I navigated the stormy seas of my own drug and alcohol dependency. I know the pain and desperation of addiction from the years I spent wasted and from my many futile attempts to get sober. It’s been a strange trip. I started out as a teenage drunkard from the Southern California suburbs and became a sidekick of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, later, Dr. Drew Pinsky. Now here I am.
Last night, my wife, Sam, and I got into a little argument. About what isn’t important. It was just a typical married couple’s squabble that quickly deteriorated into “You don’t feed the dogs!” and “Well, I feel unappreciated.” Blah blah blah. You get it. Everyone who has ever had a relationship has had those fights. I went into the den—what my precious two-year-old son, Elvis, calls “Daddy’s room”—and I started to think. I thought about my life, what it means, and how I got to where I’m now at. This book has mind-fucked me about a lot of things. It hasn’t been easy to write. In fact, it’s been painful. It hurts to look back over my childhood; my young adulthood; the music career that I threw away; the friends who have come and gone; survivor’s guilt; gossip; stupidity; genius; joy; my older son, Elijah; all the mistakes I made; all the people I have let down; and the drugs. Constantly the drugs. No matter what, always the drugs. I was bound to them forever, I believed. I was never going to stop. There was no way to stop. I had no desire to stop.
Drug addiction has changed since I was young. Back then, there were certain prerequisites for the lifestyle. You read authors like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson. You listened to bands like the Velvet Underground and the Sticky Fingers–era Rolling Stones. You found out about this lifestyle through the popular culture. There were course requirements to become a drug addict. Of course, only a small percentage of the people who enrolled in those classes actually graduated to the addict life, but they were pretty well versed in what to expect by the time they took that first hit of heroin or cocaine.
But prescription drugs have become huge. Today’s addict is fed a steady diet of these medications—which are often prescribed by doctors for so-called legitimate reasons. Later, maybe, these addicts might shift over to heroin because it’s cheaper—and better—but modern-day addicts will often just stick with their prescribed medications and go from doctor to doctor to get more of what they need. OxyContin, Vicodin, Adderall. A whole palette of multicolored pills to bring you up or bring you down. But it’s still the same old drug-addict lifestyle that I knew: the Big Hustle and the Endless Search.
However, I was fortunate enough to experience a miracle. I managed to stop using and my reward was a new life beyond what I or anyone who ever knew me could have envisioned in their wildest dreams. I write this foreword as a completely different and changed human being. My name is still Bob Forrest, but that’s about it. I am square and middle-class, and I live in a tract house in the mundane San Fernando Valley. I am happily married and I have a young child. We go to the zoo and I almost fit in with all the other dads. When I meet parents at my son’s preschool and shake their hands, I think to myself, If they only knew. Oh, my God, if they only knew who I used to be.
What you’re about to read is the story they don’t know. It may seem sensational and a little surreal, but that’s just how it was. Hollywood has always been a crazy place, but it was particularly so in the 1980s and 1990s. If I’m a little fuzzy on the dates, I apologize. I tell time by album releases and popular music. Unless it’s something particularly momentous, I mostly associate the events of my life with what was playing on the radio at the time. But even then, a lot of those years I spent in a walking stupor, so I still may be off a little. It wasn’t like I kept notes. But I did keep it real. And I hope I’ve done that here.
—Bob Forrest
