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Aniston was sobbing—after a while, I was amazed she had any water left in her entire body. Even Matt LeBlanc was crying. But I felt nothing; I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking, or if I was just generally dead inside. (Buprenorphine, for the record, is a detox med,
We said our various goodbyes, agreeing to see each other soon in the way that people do when they know it’s not true, and then we headed out to my car.
Friends had been a safe place, a touchstone of calm for me; it had given me a reason to get out of bed every morning, and it had also given me a reason to take it just a little bit easier the night before. It was the time of our lives. It was like we got some new piece of amazing news every day.
With no ridiculously high paying, dream-come-true kind of job to go to, and no special someone in my life, things slipped fast—in fact, it was like falling off a cliff.
But, if dying was a consequence of getting to take the quantity of drugs I needed, then death was something I was going to have to accept. That’s how skewed my thinking had become—I was able to hold those two things in my mind at the same time: I don’t want to die, but if I have to in order to get sufficient drugs on board, then amen to oblivion. I can distinctively remember holding pills in my hand and thinking, This could kill me, and taking them anyway.
I was also so lonely that it hurt; I could feel the loneliness in my bones. On the outside, I looked like the luckiest man alive, so there were only a few people I could complain to without being told to shut up, and even then … nothing could fill the hole inside me.
Alcoholics hate two things: the way things are and change. I knew something had to change—I wasn’t suicidal, but I was dying—but I was too scared to do anything about it.
I wasn’t devastated by the lack of success—as I said, I knew a hit TV show couldn’t fill my soul. And in any case, something else was filling my soul.
I had missed the moment. Maybe she’d been expecting it, who knows. I’d been seconds away; seconds, and a lifetime. I often think if I’d asked, now we’d have two kids and a house with no view, who knows—I wouldn’t need the view, because I’d have her to look at; the kids, too. Instead, I’m some schmuck who’s alone in his house at fifty-three, looking down at an unquiet ocean.… So I didn’t ask. I was too scared, or broken, or bent.
It’s one of those things that maybe looks easy but is actually incredibly difficult—sort of like math, or having a real conversation with another human being.
“Discover, uncover, and discard”
Burton, however, saw things differently. He accused me of liking the drama of my addiction and asked how I could have so much fun while at Cirque Lodge yet be so troubled by almost everything that took place out there in the real world.
The worst thing I had to run away from was my alcoholism and addiction, so using drink and drugs to do so … well, you can see the logical impossibility.
Change is still scary, even when your life is on the line.
the universe was neutral, and beautiful, and continued with or without me.
was now a talk show host, and an award-winning addict. How the fuck did that happen?
When I had lunch with Earl, I asked for my money back, and I’m still waiting. He was talking about crazy things, like maybe becoming an actor. Something was off, and I was so freaked out by the whole thing—well, I went home and used. This was no one’s fault but my own, but two things were crucially lost forever: my innocence, and my trust in Earl H.
Accordingly, I’m completely embarrassed about my behavior on The Odd Couple. On top of the horrible depression, I showed up late all the time, and high, and ultimately lost all power on the show to a showrunner.
Part of the answer for me was my ten thousand hours of experience in AA and helping people get sober. That lights me up, loans me, in fact, a little bit of that golden light from my kitchen.
My love life, however, is a different story. I have made more mistakes in my love life than Elizabeth Taylor. I am a romantic, passionate person. I have longed for love; it’s a yearning in me that I cannot fully explain.
Did I mention that I had fallen madly in love with both of them?
We were each other’s best friend. But the intimacy was scaring me. I knew once again that if she got to know me any better she would see what I already believed about myself: As ever, I wasn’t enough. I didn’t matter.
Seven years later, after I had learned a whole lot about myself, I made real amends to Rome and to Laura, and they both accepted my apology. Believe it or not, the three of us are friends, now.
Out back, as I waited for something to come to me, anything that might make things better, instead I once again heard the sound of coyotes. No, it’s the sound of me, alone, fending off the demons for one more night. They’d won. And I knew I’d lost as I headed back up to my lonely bedroom to fend off those demons and negotiate sleep one more time.
Years ago, right after she quit seeing Justin Timberlake, I got set up on a date with Cameron Diaz.
We alcoholics feel like we will literally go insane if we don’t drink—not to mention the alcoholic will be even sicker, and look sicker, if he doesn’t drink the bottle.
So, I’m in Dallas—I am on methadone, a quart of vodka a day, cocaine, and Xanax. Every day I would show up to set, pass out in my chair, wake up to do a scene, stumble to set, then just basically scream into a camera for two minutes. Then it was back to my chair for further nap time.
Sobriety had now become the most important thing in my life. Because I learned that if you put anything in front of sobriety, you will lose that “anything” anyway if you drink.
I hadn’t been there for anyone for so long, my addiction being my best friend and my evil friend and my punisher and my lover, all in one. My big terrible thing.
I sensed an awakening, that I was here for more than this big terrible thing. That I could help people, love them, because of how far down the scale I had gone, I had a story to tell, a story that could really help people. And helping others had become the answer for me.
It’s kind of poetic. I was so full of shit it almost killed me.
All I wanted to do was smoke. Or talk about smoking. Or smoke while talking about smoking. Everyone just looked like a giant cigarette.
Panic set in. My bag was full. I was not high. There was nothing separating me from me. I felt like a little kid scared of monsters in the dark. But was I the monster?
The idea of being famous, the idea of being rich, the idea of being me—I can’t enjoy any of it unless I’m high. And I can’t think of love without wanting to be high.
The street pills were something like $75 per pill, so I was giving the guy $3,000 at a time, many times a week.
Addiction has ruined so much of my life it’s not funny. It’s ruined relationships. It’s ruined the day-to-day process of being me. I have a friend who doesn’t have any money, lives in a rent-controlled apartment. Never made it as an actor, has diabetes, is constantly worried about money, doesn’t work. And I would trade places with him in a second.
I’d trade being worried about money all the time to not have this disease, this addiction.
It’s going to kill me (I guess something has to).
“It’s like I have a gun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the metal.” I got it; I understand that. Even on good days, when I’m sober and I’m looking forward, it’s still with me all the time. There’s still a gun.
At one point, when I was taking fifty-five a day, I would wake up and somehow have to find those fifty-five pills. It was like a full-time job.
My dad has saved my life multiple times, too.
married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center—
The two years from 2001 to 2003 were two of the happiest of my life—I was helping people, sober, strong.
Addicts are not bad people. We’re just people who are trying to feel better, but we have this disease.
There are so many scars on my stomach that all I need to do is look down to know that I’ve been through a war, a self-inflicted war.
None of them had battled their entire lives with a brain that was built to kill them. I would give it all up to not have that. No one believes this, but it’s true.
I am me. And that should be enough, it always has been enough. I was the one who didn’t get that. And now I do.
What he said caused a very small window to open, and I crawled through it. And on the other side was a life without OxyContin.
I have not been interested in taking a drug since.
Kerry Gaynor had saved my life. I was a nonsmoker. It was another miracle. In fact, the miracles were flying around fast—duck or you might get hit with one. I don’t want to do drugs, and I am a nonsmoker.
