Her father had been an addict, but there was scant awareness of it in the 1970s. Back then, everyone in Hollywood seemed to be an addict, but no one had language for it. Elvis had thought he was just doing what his doctors advised—if the doctor told him to take a drug to go to sleep and one to wake up, that’s what he did. His intentions were pure. So there might have been a genetic component to my mom’s addiction—either way, it just waited around all her life until right after my sisters were born. And then it showed up and burned everything down.
