didn’t make it to the part about the mix-up with the wine. I’d forgotten that this was the first time he’d heard about the hard-core sex scenes. He went bananas. Fuck, I should have seen that coming, I should have played it smarter. But I’d lost perspective; the world was crumbling around me. I retreated into the bathroom and locked the door, the bottle of beer still in the plastic shopping bag in my hand. I could hear the monster laughing.
She could talk all the trash she wanted, because I’d taken my pill. I was in a bad place, but once that beer was done it was done. It wasn’t going to lead to anything else, because I wasn’t back in the monster’s cave, just in the shadow-world transit lounge, just passing through.
It took me about a year to unlearn the behaviors associated with drinking. It takes that long to let go of the guilt and anger, to stop being so defensive. The Incident of the Belgian Beer & the Bathroom was a one-off, but it taught me an important lesson. The biological cure starts working straightaway, but the psychological cure takes longer. I mean, it’s all in
At Christmas in 2010 I was back in Napa, back on a dusty street in a Sergio Leone Western where Claudia lives or dies depending on her ability to avoid the hail of emotional bullets. The family stands opposite me, they’re all armed, and they have twitchy trigger fingers.
But I’m on it. I’m Clint Eastwood in
And then one of my brothers said something that made David feel he had to defend me, and then my sister- in-law weighed in, and the next thing I knew I was screaming and pointing a spatula accusingly. They knew not to mess with me. The kitchen emptied, but it was too late. I realized I was already hit. I saw my kryptonite sitting on the counter right beside me: someone’s half-finished glass of wine. I threw it down my gullet without a second thought. I realized what I’d done, rushed to my handbag, and quickly took my pill. It had some effect, but I could feel the monster stirring.
That slip-up instigated a whole week in which I didn’t take the pill correctly, an hour before drinking. I started popping them after I’d already started drinking, which didn’t make any sense. I knew better, but the monster was still there, whispering in the background. It turned out that it still could subtly pull some strings from the back seat. You haven’t met a Stephen King monster as resilient as mine. Just when you think it’s dead and buried, back it comes, clawing its way up out of the grave.
I drank nonstop for a week. I hid booze and started lying to family and friends. But I didn’t throw up or get alcohol poisoning, and I could feel myself teetering on the edge of the slippery slope. I had learned my lesson and had an important realization. The pill isn’t a weapon. It isn’t something that lets you crush your addiction. The Sinclair Method is an ally, a partner. You have to work with it. After the Christmas fuck-up I took all of January off from drinking and cleaned out my system. I didn’t drink at all. I recreated the same physical and emotional environment as the first time I took naltrexone.
I was back on track and have stayed that way since.
I haven’t made that mistake again, and I’m back to where I was in my twenties in terms of my consumption.
When I was married to Gary I’d go out and buy one bottle of wine on a Saturday night. That one bottle would last Gary (6?1? and 190 pounds) and me all night long. One-and-a-half glasses for me and three for him, that was our big party night. I never wanted more than that, never gave alcohol a second thought.
So the cure comes with a warning, like the lesson in a fairy tale—you get Prince Charming and the castle, you get what you desire the most, but you have to follow the rule: you have to take the pill every time, one hour before you drink. Then you don’t have the Stephen King experience. Then you can handle the monster like a pussycat, as long as you remember that it still has teeth and claws.
It’s been over three years since I first started on The Sinclair Method. I’ve been back to London to run my own fan convention, which unfortunately took place on the same weekend as the August 2011 London riots. Buildings burned down, cars were destroyed. The restaurant a block from my flat had its windows smashed in and its diners robbed by a mob of thugs. And while all that was going on I was thinking about Amy Winehouse. The coroner’s report has now confirmed what I (and maybe everyone) already suspected, that she died of alcohol poisoning. Her blood alcohol level had been 0.4 percent. Britain’s drunk-driving limit is 0.08 percent. She drank three bottles of vodka after a period of abstinence, and her brain and body overloaded. She passed into a coma. Her breathing stopped. When I heard that, it was impossible not to imagine myself in her situation. It could have been me—it so easily could have been me. I ran my convention successfully, took some guests out to dinner, had a few glasses of wine, and then flew home for my next job. No sweat.
And my career has been going from strength to strength. I had a guest spot on
There’s a happy ending to the story of my mother and me. She’s still the most important person in the world to me, the person I love the most, and I’m forever grateful that we survived the highs and lows. Our relationship has now mellowed into a happy continuum of love and communication.
And I’m single again. David is still very much in my life, we’re still very close friends, but they haven’t invented a pill that lets me keep a relationship together longer than three years. God doesn’t owe me a job or a lover. Being cured is no guarantee of happiness. I had to dig deep to realize that only I could make myself happy. I needed to stand on my own two feet and live my life. I think that you can’t really help others until you’re able to set your own house in order, and in many ways I think my journey, my battle with addiction, was about growing up, about maturing to the point where my sense of self-worth comes not from how I can meet my own needs, but rather from how I can help serve the needs of others.
That sense of purpose has given me the freedom to try again, to rebuild my life. I’ve just bought a new home, a gorgeous 1920s Spanish Revival house in the Hollywood Hills. I’ve poured all my life savings into it, and my mother and father have offered me their love, talents, and even money to help make it a place where I can have a new beginning. I’ve caused them so much pain, yet they keep coming back, giving their love and support in a way that only parents can. The house is a big step, but I’m not even slightly afraid. I know myself, I know the enemy, and I’ve learned that the best way to win a war is not to start one in the first place—to treat the symptoms, to address the first causes. And I’m going to redesign the house just the way I want, but this time without the monster on my back. This place will be a reflection of the new Claudia, a more integrated Claudia. This time I’m finally coming home.
I’ve been blessed to build a career doing something I love. Acting is a vocation. By 2013 it will be thirty years since my first television job, and I’m proud to have been gainfully employed in one of the world’s toughest, most competitive industries for most of that time.
I’m grateful to have inspired people with my portrayals of strong, intelligent women, but now my mission is to help those who have suffered from the same disease that nearly destroyed me. I want to save people the years I spent looking for a way to reclaim my life.
There’s a stigma attached to being an alcoholic, a popular perception that you’re weak or immoral. The simple fact is that it’s a physical addiction, a learned behavior that the brain cannot unlearn on its own. If you treat the addiction, the symptoms of the disease disappear.
