What I really remember is getting back to my room at two or three o’clock that morning and stripping off my jacket and settling into a soft chair and pulling out the fresh bag and feeling that first real hit—not the rushed test hit I took earlier in the car with that blazing-eyed stranger looking on hungrily from the passenger seat. And then I remember why I’m remembering all of this: the sensation of being instantly transported—at something like warp speed, as if riding bareback on a rocket ship—to some far-off, beautiful place.
Remembering all of those things feels like a terrible betrayal of where I am now. It induces an urge that’s completely counter to how far I’ve come. When you realize the effect those recollections can have on your mind and body, causing them to work against your deepest desire not to be in that place, you fear their ability to lure you back in. They prompt feelings of shame and guilt that, to be honest, only stir an enhanced sense of hellish excitement.
Addict-think.
I hate it. I hate recalling it. I hate the damage it caused, to me and others. Most of all, I hate still longing for the peace it provided.
It was definitely not one of the beautiful things my brother talked about.
Folks at the wellness ranch in Sedona started blowing up my phone to find out when I’d be arriving. I ignored them. I finally got a call from Joey, who’d checked in days earlier and knew I’d pick up for him. He then put the Grace Grove people on, at their insistence. I minted a new excuse with each call: last-minute business complications, unforeseen family issues.
Joey knew the drill: he understood from his own experience what was going on without my having to tell him. He just stayed the course and waited me out. After four days, I’d already given up on the notion of driving cross-country and booked a flight from Nashville to Phoenix, with a short pit stop in Los Angeles. I’d leave my car in Tennessee and pick it up when I flew back.
I repeated the same sorry routine of smoking and rebooking I’d performed at Dulles. I cloistered myself inside my car at the airport, terrified I’d get busted going through security, or that I couldn’t handle the four-hour flight without a hit. I missed one plane after another.
Finally, I boarded a late flight and made it as far as my two-hour layover at LAX. Desperate to smoke, I slipped out of the terminal with my carry-on and whatever drugs I had left and fired up in a parking garage stairwell. I knew I wouldn’t make my connecting flight. I phoned Hallie briefly. She alone knew about my trip out west, and I told her what I planned to tell everybody: I’d made it to Sedona and everything was fine.
I stayed that night at a hotel in nearby Marina del Rey, immediately calling a crack connection I’d made during a previous West Coast business trip. I’ll call him Curtis here. I’d first found him by using an alternative MO to my superpower: browsing online escort service ads, not for sex but for slipped-in references of offers to “party,” which meant, of course, they sold drugs.
Before long, Curtis arrived at the hotel with crack, his prostitute girlfriend, and Honda, a tall, gaunt, affable twentysomething who had been a professional skateboarder until he broke practically every bone in his body. He’d since transitioned to a second career boosting Hondas. During a later stay in L.A., inside a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, Honda would patiently teach me how to cook my own crack.
My unscheduled pause turned into a six-day bacchanal. Curtis and his crew made my suite their party house, rotating in and out for hours at a time. They blared music, ordered room service, and cleaned out the minibar—all on my dime and with my consent. They took advantage of my largesse but not unreasonably so; I was totally, completely out of my fucking mind. They preferred booze and weed to crack, while I hit the pipe like there was no tomorrow, strolling around in my underwear and generally acting insane.
I never slept. Ever. I made a reservation each day on a puddle jumper from L.A. to Sedona, and each day I canceled it. I couldn’t make myself get on a plane.
In time, even the night world’s regulars became uneasy. During one mix-up too stupid and tangled to detail, I nearly got in a fight outside an after-hours club on Hollywood Boulevard. Before the club’s two massive bouncers could intervene, one of their friends, a Samoan man built like a brick shithouse with braided hair down to his ass, pulled me away to cool me down.
He went by Baby Down, a nickname derived from his older brother, Down—so-called because he could put anybody who hassled him “down” with one punch. You didn’t want to mess with Baby Down, either. As I’d learn, he was related to the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., a local group of Samoan gangsters-turned-rappers whose music became popular in the late 1980s and ’90s. Branches from that tree, I was told, had a monopoly on the doormen who worked LA’s strip clubs.
That night, Baby Down ushered me to Mel’s Drive-In on Sunset and ate and talked with me until I settled down. It felt like a real, rare heart-to-heart. As badass as he looked and likely was, Baby Down seemed empathetic and bright beyond his obvious street smarts. He talked about helping me get cleaned up and back on my feet.
I finally decided to rent a car and drive to Sedona. I left Marina del Rey around four in the morning, on no sleep and in a cavernous Lincoln Town Car, taking I-10 out of California to start the five-hundred-mile jaunt.
I made it as far as San Bernardino, seventy-five miles east. Snow-capped mountains emerged ahead in the breaking twilight. Exhausted, I checked into a hotel. I still couldn’t
