let loose and party. I went to sunny Spain, stayed stone-cold sober, and had the worst vacation of my life. The travel agent booked us into a hotel on the wrong side of the city. We were supposed to be staying in the sexy party zone; instead I found myself sharing the beach with fat German businessmen and obnoxious Brits who wore black socks and were orbited by screaming, sunburnt kids. I was unemployed, sober, living in a foreign country, and my birthday sucked. Life didn’t begin at forty, it damn well ended.
I went back to my flat in London totally miserable only to discover that the annual Notting Hill carnival was taking place right outside my front door.
The monster had picked its moment well, because, right then, those words rang with authority. They made such perfect fucking sense!
So I listened. No falling off the wagon this time; I threw myself off the fucking thing, right into a tasty pint of lager at my local.
That’s one of the things I fucking hate about the monster. I’d lasted it out. I’d buckled up and ridden the fucking bull for half a year, and then one slip and I was back to square one. It’s beyond frustrating; it’s a disease that swallows hope.
When I was finally done with my birthday binge, I looked up the address of the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous and headed on down. I was desperate; I was a mess. The room was filled with cigarette smoke; I sat in the back row and kept quiet.
That wasn’t my first time at an AA meeting. During one of my visits back to L.A. I’d gone to the Beverly Hills meetings because I heard there were cute guys there. And one of them came right up to me and said, “We don’t shake hands here at AA. We hug.”
Something about that sent a shiver up my spine. It was as if they were there as a comfort group, to sugarcoat something that was deadly serious to me. A hug wasn’t going to fix the monster. You can’t wrap a viper in a knit-wool sweater, give it a hug, and expect it not to bite you. The monster doesn’t fuck around; the monster is playing for keeps.
And I’d been to one other meeting with my brother in Lake Arrowhead. That was mainly a bunch of old- timers talking about the shittiest things they’d done to their loved ones when they were drunk.
I hated the idea of AA. I hated getting up there and making my confession to a room full of strangers. The very idea was demoralizing, but this time I was desperate and I was in London, so maybe it really would be anonymous. I’d stick with it this time. I’d reverse my childhood divorce from God and really surrender to Him.
When it was my turn I got up there and said, “Hi. My name is Claudia, and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for one day.”
After I’d spilled my guts, we had a break and everyone rushed out to smoke some more. I was alone again and there was no relief. I’d hated saying it, it depressed me to say it. I thought, wouldn’t it have been great to get up there and say, “Hi, I’m Claudia, and I used to be an alcoholic”?
I returned to my seat and, as I listened to them talk about God, I couldn’t help but think that if there was a God, he would want us cured, not eternally suffering. The people I saw get up and talk on the podium were all in pain, all still desperate. I saw myself in them and it occurred to me that this wasn’t a cure, this was disease management. I knew management; I’d been struggling with my disease for years, wrestling with the monster, and this was a support group to help continue the struggle. This was a way to kill some time so you don’t drink.
I left the meeting. There was nothing uplifting or joyful, and the smoking rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed to me that they were just replacing one bad habit with another.
A week later I was back at AA, this time at the Portobello Road center. I reasoned that I had to overcome my own disinclination to be there. What if the answer to my problems lay on the other side of my inherited Germanic pride? I’d do it for real. I’d get up there at the meeting and do my thing, and afterward I’d go and work all of the twelve steps. And I did. I even did the one where you’re supposed to make amends to everyone you’ve ever hurt in your life. I tried it for half a year, but it didn’t change the disease. It didn’t change my genetic disposition toward alcohol. Some of the reports I read said that AA doesn’t work for the gross majority of the people who try it. The numbers are difficult to track because of their policy of anonymity, but I read one report that said less than 5 percent of people who rely on AA to stay sober do so after the first year. The relapse rate for people in AA is huge.5
I came to the conclusion that if some people benefit from it then great, good for them, but this was not the way for me. I was tired of fighting, I didn’t need support or love or strangers sharing their pain with me. I didn’t need hugs and handshakes from withered-up smokers or sugar junkies with fat bellies. I needed a cure; I needed my life back.
I went home and started buying books. I read just about every book I could find on addicts and their struggles. I pored over the pages of other people’s stories trying to find a common link.
There were common stories of trauma, of death and divorce and rejection, but there was something that none of the material seemed to cover—the change that had taken place in my body and brain. I’d changed. Everyone who told their stories in those books had. We all went from partying to becoming unwitting addicts. Why can some people drink heavily but not become full-blown alcoholics? Why was it so easy for me to give up cocaine? I’d never liked blow, never craved it. But wine, wine was a friend. I liked wine and I loved champagne, and now I’d changed. We had a symbiotic relationship; I couldn’t live without them.
I gave up on AA but not on God. I’m not an atheist. I’ve always had a strong spiritual life; it’s one of the things that’s kept me hanging in there. I’ve always felt that God was watching out for me, and when I maintained my prayers I felt strong enough to go head to head with the monster. At the same time though, I discovered that God cannot cure this disease just as He cannot cure cancer or make you grow back a limb.
So I kept on praying, but if God was saying anything back, then I couldn’t hear him. I figured it was just like the telephone that wouldn’t ring; I just had to hang in there and have faith. Just hang in there a little longer.
After five years in the UK I sat down and re-evaluated my life. It was crunch time. I wasn’t booking anything in London, I wasn’t booking anything in L.A., but I was hemorrhaging money in both towns. I’d moved to the UK hoping for a fresh start but instead felt like a tightrope walker again, swaying back and forth on a thin line between two lives with the abyss always there below me. If nothing else, my time away from the United States had taught me where my true home was and that I could never really leave it. My fascination with history, with the old world, would always be a part of me, but I was bound up with Hollywood body and soul. I missed the sun, the people, and the wheels of the entertainment industry moving around me, even if I was not an active part of it.
And do you know what the ultimate deciding factor was? I came to the realization that if I couldn’t shake the monster in time, if it broke me and I ended up just like my friend Jeff Conaway, then I had to decide where I wanted to die. That was my final moment of clarity that got me on the plane back to L.A.
I rented out my London flat to a nice American couple and headed home. I was done with optimism. There was no spring in my step. The monster was riding me hard, weighing me down. I didn’t know what I had to do to get things back on track. Nothing in my life was stable. I was flailing around, searching for the right combination of choices that would allow me to get my life back. The memory of the old Claudia was strong. The good times were still vivid in my mind’s eye, but the means to recover them were elusive. I was like Tantalus in the underworld, the fruit he eternally hungered for hanging just beyond his reach.
15. BUS STOP
From my diary, November 1, 2008:
It’s 8 a.m., and I’m clearing the dishes from last night’s dinner party. My boyfriend David is in the shower. One of my friends brought a few bottles of what appeared to be very good red wine. I didn’t read the label or smell the wine, because I’ve only been sober for three months this time around, and I didn’t want to think about what I
