you’re naked and start scrambling around for clothes? I was so far gone I couldn’t make the slightest effort to cover up my addiction. I was on display for the whole world as it passed by.
I was a slave to the monster. She was running the show now. I was strapped into the back seat, right between my mom and Holly on the drive to rehab. I’d been there the whole time. I wasn’t driving that car; the monster was behind the wheel. It had let me enjoy my delusions while it gathered more power, preparing for the final siege. I’d lost. Sitting there in that bus shelter, I declared defeat.
When I was a teenager I won a drama scholarship to the Laguna Playhouse that I never used. They had awarded it to me for playing the Marilyn Monroe character in a scene from
In the movie Marilyn’s character tries to travel to Hollywood, where she hopes she’ll be discovered. Instead, she gets kidnapped by a cowboy who becomes obsessed with her after she sings “That Old Black Magic” at a rodeo.
I really had escaped to Hollywood and been discovered, but my kidnapper had still managed a successful abduction. The song came to me as I sat there, at my own bus stop, my monster mocking me. That old black magic had me in its spell, and it was a spell that I couldn’t break on my own. I needed help to do that, and I knew that if I didn’t get it right away I’d keep marching on to the monster’s tune until it finally killed me.
Somehow I made it home, locked myself in my room, and called Holly. It took me five attempts to navigate the directory on my iPhone and reach her—hand-eye coordination was a distant memory.
“Holly, I can’t let David see me like this. Can you take me to a detox center?”
I was shaking so badly that I thought my teeth were going to crack into little pieces.
Holly arrived calm and in control, my guardian angel. She joked with me as she helped me get dressed; I couldn’t even put my pants on. She then started calling detox centers, trying to find a place that would take SAG insurance while I lay on the bed and prayed that my heart, which was beating as hard as if I’d just run a marathon, wouldn’t suddenly stop.
She found a place in Tarzana, bundled me into the car, and drove me down the highway, straight to hell.
The lady checking me in was on a go-slow—I guess she’d just had a big lunch. I stood there going through a horrible detox, Holly helping me stand upright, while she yammered on and on about policies and procedures and gave me form after form to sign.
“What if I have a seizure? That’s why I’m here. I’m terrified I’m going to have a seizure. Can you give me something?”
“No. We have to complete your paperwork.”
My eyesight was fading and I was worried I was signing my life away. Was I giving them legal power to hold me? Or relieving them of liability if they killed me out of incompetence?
That fucking monster sure picks her moments.
That voice in my head became a new kind of inner compass. I decided that when it told me to do something I would do the opposite. It wanted me to go, so I would stay and detox and work out the next step when I was in a rational state of mind.
The monster was displeased with my attempted rebellion and sent me a sign to remind me who was in charge. I fell to my knees and nearly choked on the amount of vomit I produced.
They took me into a holding area, and Holly had to leave. I sat in a plastic chair for over an hour waiting for someone to come and search my bags. There was only one other person in the room, a large man who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in adding to my misery.
I got up to get a sweater out of my bag, which was in the next room. He stepped in front of me and told me in a scary, whispered tone that I had better sit back down.
“We have rules here. You can’t get things from your bags while they’re being searched.”
When you’re going through a detox, your temperature goes from hot to cold and back again. One minute you might as well be standing on top of Mount Everest, the next in the earth’s molten core.
“I’m freezing. I’ve got to have my sweater. You can get it for me if you like.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t break the rules for you. People like you make life difficult for everyone here. We have rules here. You have to follow them.”
It was insane. Even in my fucked-up state I could see that this guy was messing with me.
He kept me there for thirty minutes while I shook so hard that I nearly bit through my tongue. Next, a lady came for me and led me to a depressing shared bedroom. She was covered with tattoos and had crazy purple hair, a refugee from the Jim Rose Circus. She was clearly an ex-junkie, her teeth rotted through from crystal meth. She took my cell phone away and left me alone.
That was it. No therapy, no one talking to me, no doctor visiting me, nothing.
I noticed that there was a woman curled into a ball on the single bed across from mine. I sat and watched her for a long time, wondering if she was dead or alive. She finally sat up, a tiny, dark-haired woman who spoke in a language I didn’t recognize. She kept rifling through a rumpled plastic bag on her bed with some old withered fruit in it, choosing one and holding it out to me. I’d politely refuse, and she’d nod sagely and go back to the bag, searching for a more suitable offering.
I finally took an apple just to stop the lunacy. I felt like I was trapped in a David Lynch movie.
I was still shaking, so I found a nurse and tried to explain to her what the person who admitted me didn’t care to hear—that I was scared of having a seizure, that I wasn’t a pill popper but did need medical help.
“Med time is four o’clock. Come back in an hour.”
“What if I’m dead in an hour?”
She shrugged and looked at me as if I were a stupid child.
“Med time is four o’clock.”
I went back and lay on my bed and waited, resting my head on my little suitcase for fear someone would steal it. I heard the fruit lady rustling around in her bag again.
I lasted thirty-six hours before I checked myself out. Suddenly the staff who had been so unhelpful couldn’t have been more fucking charming. The center was getting two grand a night for keeping me there, and they wanted to milk at least another two nights out of my stay. Well, fuck them.
The pills they’d given me had helped, though. I even managed to sleep for a whole hour. Holly picked me up and was amazed that I looked like my old self again. Somewhere in the ether a team of overworked angels was keeping me alive.
Lying on the bed in the detox center I’d had a moment of clarity, one thought that helped me pull myself together: I felt a blinding hatred for my disease. There was no more on-again, off-again with the monster. I fucking hated her. I felt the way I did when I was a teenager in that rapist’s van, 110 pounds and unable to fight the bastard off.
I’d taken something else from the detox center—a colorful little flyer for Vivitrol.
“One month of Vivitrol—FREE! Vivitrol—the shot that’ll help you stay sober.”
I called the number on that flyer a dozen times and left messages with various people and answering machines trying to make an appointment to get the shot. No one ever called me back. I left my cell phone number, home phone number, and email address. I’d finally decided to try medication, and now the fuckers wouldn’t give me any.
The shot was $1,000 a month, and although my savings were running out I was willing to pay anything if it would help. The shot was supposed to inhibit cravings. I wanted that shot, and getting that shot suddenly became very important to me. I started researching Vivitrol and found it was an opiate blocker. It blocked all good feelings —everything from sexual feelings to enjoyment of food; emotions, including love; work-out highs; everything. Suddenly I was relieved that no one had returned my calls.
I kept on searching for a medical answer and in the spring of 2008 decided to go on Antabuse. My SAG insurance wouldn’t cover it, but I figured it was worth the $350 if it worked. I did my research first and found myself in the same predicament as with Vivitrol. You think the list of side effects you hear rattled off on TV commercials for prostate drugs is bad? Here’s the small print on Antabuse:
