Running With Monsters: A Memoir (8 page)

I stayed there for the next three days and alternated between periods of chills and hot sweats. I didn’t sleep much, but the Valium helped a little. Mainly, I just let my body and mind adjust to this new state of existence. Toxins, bit by bit, left my system, and though I’d definitely felt better, I’d also felt a lot worse. And it wasn’t like I was confined to my bed. I was free to get up and go outside, but it was winter in the upper Midwest. That meant cold. The kind of cold somebody from Southern California never gets used to. It meant that when you did venture out, you did it in increments of five or ten minutes before you made a quick scuttle back inside where it was warm. It was on these journeys into the world that I started to meet the other patients who had already completed their detox periods. I could see that, at twenty-eight, I was one of the youngest clients. I thought to myself,
You have to know you have a problem before you start to do nothing about it
. And, yet, here I was, doing something about mine. I felt good about that.

Those three days passed as quickly as any other physically unpleasant event might run its course, and when they were over and I was sufficiently detoxed, I was moved to the rehab unit. I felt sure that the worst of my process was over and I was filled with a sort of cocky bravado that came from my belief that everybody on the staff knew exactly what to do and knew explicitly what worked for people like me. It was simple, really. The staff and the program were designed to instill the clients with confidence and a sense of security that I don’t think is available through programs you find these days. This second stage was also where I was supposed to learn strategies to stay off alcohol and drugs. Here, in a controlled environment, it would be easy, but back home it might be different. And difficult. It didn’t really matter because I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

The unit was set up military style. There were three of us to a room. Here I was, a young rocker, housed with middle-aged professional men. They immediately made me feel welcomed and they were a friendly crew. There was John, a high-powered Chicago attorney who had checked in after badly blowing one of his cases thanks to a long-term cocaine-and-booze habit. Moon was a back-slapping good-ol’-boy airline pilot whose binge drinking threatened to rob him of his livelihood. And, of course, there I was with my dreadlocks. John was the head of our unit and assigned us various homemaking tasks. I was shown my bed before we all went off, single-file, to the cafeteria for a lecture about addiction.

There, in the lunchroom, like a punch in the guts, it slammed me. Maybe it was because I had been in such a fog during my initial detox that I just didn’t notice it. Certainly, it hadn’t been mentioned in the Hazelden brochures and nobody had brought it up since I had arrived, but there on the wall were the sacred “twelve steps,” and one word in particular stood out—God. I thought to myself,
There is no fucking way …
All of a sudden the tone in my head shifted and I felt like I had walked myself straight into the nest of some creepy mind-control cult. I thought of Jonestown and how a domineering, crazed reverend convinced more than nine hundred of his followers to drink cyanide-spiked purple-drink in an act of mass suicide.
That’s what religion will get you,
I thought. It didn’t help when I turned my head and saw another poster with the Ten Commandments rewritten and translated into recovery-speak. I was an atheist. My mom was, at best, an agnostic. This was alien territory for me. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath. The lecture ended with a period of meditation, which, to me, was just another word for prayer. I meditated, all right. I meditated about how I had paid $14,000 up front to take part in the rituals of organized superstition. I was completely switched off. I had to get out.

Now, this is how the mind of an addict and alcoholic works: It jumps to hasty conclusions. At lunch, convinced that I was trapped in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of religious freaks, I found a phone and called for a car. I went back to the unit and started to pack. John saw me and asked me what I was doing.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“What are you talking about? You just got here,” he said with surprise.

“I’m leaving,” I repeated. “I don’t belong here with …
you people
.”

“Hey, man, everything’s cool,” John answered.

“No,” I shot back, “everything is
not
cool! This is some dogmatic bullshit right here!”

“Could you maybe be a little more specific?” John asked without guile.

“All that God stuff,” I said. “I can’t do it. I’m not religious.”

John started laughing. It wasn’t a mocking laugh. It wasn’t cruel. It was a big, friendly laugh. He was genuinely amused by my outburst. “Bob,
all
these programs are like that. Just don’t do the God stuff. I don’t. Neither does Moon.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“You can try the first step and just admit you don’t have any control over the drugs and the booze. I mean, is making something happen worth putting in at least a little effort?”

I guessed it was and I took the leap and took the first step. I admitted that I had no control over the pills, potions, and powders. God didn’t enter into the equation. It was just me and the bottle … and I could never stay away from it for long.

John also suggested I try the fourth step and “take a searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself. I hated the language in which it was put, but I liked the idea. I didn’t need God to do that either, although the rigors of that particular step absolutely terrified me. I was twenty-eight, a full-grown man with a career and a name, but I feared the things I might find.

C
hange was around every corner when I finished my stay at Hazelden. “Bob, you’re going to want to stay in what’s called a sober house when you get back home or you won’t make it,” they told me, but I was hardheaded. “Fuck that,” I said. “I have my own house!”

I left Hazelden the same way I had come in—piled into a staff car driven by gnomish little Sonny. He was just as positive as he had been when he had picked me up upon my arrival. “Well, you look like a whole new person!” he said, chuckling. I wasn’t so sure about his assessment, but the ride to the airport lacked the dope-sick anxiety I had felt when we made the drive to the facility thirty days earlier. Now there was just a general nervousness. I stayed quiet while Sonny chattered and occupied myself with the scenery that flashed past the window of the car. My head was filled with questions. For the first time since I was a kid, I was sober. Could I keep it going? Could I be in the air for hours and not drink? What about when I got back to L.A.? What if I slipped into old habits? I didn’t have the answers to any of it, and this worry didn’t help matters, so I tried to shut it out. “Whatever happens, happens,” I told myself. When we reached the airport, Sonny walked me to the gate. He may have sensed my uncertainty because as I left to board my flight he clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder and said, “Take it easy, kid.” I nodded my agreement and got on the plane that would take me back home. In my seat, I settled back and shut my eyes. Sleep would be the best way to pass the miles. I slipped into Slumber Land before the plane taxied down the runway and I didn’t wake up until I felt the bump of the wheels when they touched down in Los Angeles. I grabbed my bag and deplaned, thrilled to be back home. Outside the terminal, I breathed in the smog-scented air and listened to the hum and bustle of heavy airport traffic. This was home—noisy, gritty Los Angeles—and I was glad to be back. I hailed a cab and told the driver, “Get me home as quick as you can!”

I could feel something was different even as the key slid into the lock on the front door. I knew something was up as soon as I stepped inside. The place was … empty. Marin had decided to split while I was away. That was a shock, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I didn’t really care. The house seemed bigger with all of her stuff gone. And there were other changes. One, in particular, that I had noticed before I left town. A lot of people I knew had jumped on the sobriety bandwagon and had ridden it to what they said was a better life. Now that I had stopped the booze and drugs for the moment, I hoped they were right. It did make staying sober easier, even though most of the time I felt scared and alone. At least I had company.

I had been introduced to the twelve steps at Hazelden and I continued to attend meetings once I was back in Los Angeles. This was a super-secret society that had its own customs, a big book that spelled out its mission, and, at its core, a set of actions that one had to follow to attain enlightenment and freedom from addiction. Of course, from the start I was schooled in the absolute importance of secrecy. This was not stuff for the outside world. It wasn’t fodder for gossip. Whoever dared to break the code of silence would be cast out and forever be condemned to wander the wasteland. Or at least that’s how it seemed.

I wasn’t completely sold on this organization or its program, but everywhere I looked I found friends of mine or old using buddies who were its devotees. A lot of them were in the music business. A couple were close friends. Under the influence of this system, I found that I was a lot closer to Anthony Kiedis than I ever had been when we did drugs together. But something inside didn’t feel right. This community had allowed me entry, but I just never felt truly a part of it. The meetings were full of people I couldn’t relate to, even my friends, like Anthony. They seemed to be buying into something wholeheartedly and I was much more guarded and suspicious about the whole idea.

Bob Timmins was a guy who specialized in getting help for entertainers, actors, and musicians. Celebrities. In Los Angeles, there was no shortage of those and a lot of them had drug problems. A former addict himself, Timmins had found a niche and he worked it well. When I arrived back home, I heard about a kind of group therapy meeting that was made up of mostly musicians and actors whom Timmins had put together. “You should go, Bob,” said Anthony Kiedis. “It might click with you.” It was at a recording studio I was well familiar with, and I got myself together and walked over. It was a Wednesday night. I found my way inside. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the group members as they sat in a circle on metal folding chairs and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee from flimsy white Styrofoam cups.
Oh … my … God. What the fuck am I doing here?
I wondered as I looked around. These were the heroes of my youth. These were guys from all my favorite bands growing up.

I sat down as the meeting started. The speakers began sharing the same generalized secret-society-speak I had hoped to get away from. It was the same spiel I heard at every other meeting I had attended. I just tuned it out. As I daydreamed and looked around at their iconic faces, their songs started playing in my head:
“Don’t stop belieeeeving!” Oh, God,
I thought,
now I’ll never get that song out of my head.

“I am Iron Man! Duh duh duh duh duh duh.” Okay,
I thought.
That one’s a little better.

“Rock of ages … Still rollin’ … Rock ’n’ rollin’!”
This was fun. I was glad to have found something productive to do during this charade. Then, just as I began to groove to my mental jukebox,
he
walked in. His presence was enough to zoom me back to attention. He was my idol. In my mind, he was the greatest musical genius of all time. My whole life, up to this point, down to the brand of cigarettes I smoked, was based on
him
. I was in the presence of slender white royalty. When I was a kid I would sing along to his albums. I had posters of him all over my bedroom walls and here he was, in this little recording studio, breathing the same air as me.

“I tried to kill myself a few weeks ago,” he stated with matter-of-fact English reserve. “This struggle with drugs had me at my wit’s end. I didn’t know what else to do but to swallow some pills, wash them down with some wine, and then walk into the sea off Malibu. Rather dramatic, I know.”

The room fell silent. Always the consummate showman, he laughed and said that this was all inspired by the 1954 musical version of the movie
A Star Is Born
.

He flashed his famous smile, which was both vulpine and warm. “I felt just like James Mason as Norman Maine, but the water was too cold.” He laughed. “And there was no Judy Garland waiting for me when I walked back to shore.” While the other members of the group laughed and nodded, I was torn. On the one hand, I thought,
If this guy, with all his success and talent, has that kind of struggle with addiction, there’s absolutely no hope for me
. On the other hand, I thought,
A Judy Garland movie? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s totally lame.
I stayed and politely listened to everybody’s stories, and I went back the next Wednesday night and the Wednesday after that, and it became a habit. It was entertaining, and now that I was staying clean, there wasn’t much else to do. I never shared during the meetings. I just listened. Timmins was a big proponent of the idea that celebrities needed to be protected. They couldn’t just mingle with ordinary civilians at open-to-all twelve-step meetings. He had created the equivalent of a club’s VIP area for recovering addicts and alcoholics. This clan was tight-lipped and stuck together. It was private and invitation-only. And these people needed these meetings. Although I couldn’t see the disease in myself, I could sure see it in them. It was obvious that drugs had taken their toll and these artists had all lost something big. It was clear to see in their shaky hands and nervous tics. The group members were older than I was, so I kind of assumed the role of the new recruit. I made friends with some of them and we’d meet for coffee and superficial talk outside of these meetings, but I could already feel the pull of my old way of life and it seemed inevitable to me that I’d go back to it soon. I was bored with sobriety. The twelve steps may have been ready for me, but I wasn’t ready for them. But I liked the exclusivity of the Timmins group.

It was a weakness of mine. I’d always had an attraction to groups and places that were difficult to get into. And if drugs and alcohol were readily available, all the better. Timmins’s meetings always reminded me of a drug-free 01 Gallery, or the Zero One, as everyone called it. In 1981, it was the toughest after-hours place in L.A.’s fashionable Melrose District to get past the doormen. For all its hip exclusivity, the price at the Zero One was right. Ten dollars was the cover, and for that, you could drink your fill and do whatever else you wanted. The doors opened at two
a.m.
and stayed that way until sunrise, weekends only. The catch was that you had to know a trusted regular to cross the threshold. Even then, that was no guarantee that you’d get in. But, if you did, it was all drinking, drugging, and fucking. I had only managed to gain entrance because I worked there. I was a jack-of-all-trades. I walked drinks to the patrons, cleaned up, and sold speed to a chosen few. The place was owned by a hip art dealer named John Pochna who opened the upstairs area of his gallery as a sort of anything-goes haunt for Hollywood celebrities who didn’t want to be bothered by civilian gawkers when they felt the need to get loose. The first time I walked through the doors and up the narrow staircase to the second floor, I felt like I had stepped into an update of what I imagined Andy Warhol’s Factory had been like: a space dominated by art, the latest music pumped through a first-class sound system, and lots of pretty women. The walls were decorated with works by Robert Williams, a master of chromelike gleam; punk rock godfather Tomata du Plenty; and other Los Angeles artists. This was a late-night crowd, full of punk rockers, ghostly-pale black-clad artists in pointy shoes and shades, and A-list celebrities. It felt special to work there. It was a hidden, cool world that the rank and file didn’t know existed. At the bar sat a burly, talkative guy.
Oh, my God,
I thought.
That’s John Belushi!
On the bar were huge, fluffy rails of cocaine, and some of the crowd snuffled it up like hogs at a trough.

I idolized Belushi, though I can’t really say I hung out with him. Belushi didn’t really hang out with anybody. He drank and did his drugs and when he talked, he didn’t talk to you so much as he talked at you. “You” being the audience of millions he constantly saw himself before. This little gig of mine was a great way to meet people. It wasn’t long before I earned the reputation as “that kid who knows everybody.” I liked my new title and it led to some interesting situations. I was good at making introductions. A well-known record-business A & R guy named Mark Williams approached me one night in regard to one of the Zero One’s regulars, David Lee Roth. I knew him because he was always at the club.

“Uh, hey, Bob,” he said. “I have this couple here from England and they really want to meet David. Do you think you could hook that up?”

“Well, yeah, I think I can. But David likes to be prepped before he meets new people. What can you tell me about them?”

“They play in a band called New Order. You remember Joy Division, right? This is kind of an outgrowth of that.”

“Never heard of New Order. Joy Division was so great, I don’t think I’d want to hear anything that followed it.”

“They’re awesome, Bob. They really want to meet David. They’re right over there,” he said, and pointed to a pasty, nondescript English boy and his dewy girlfriend who stood off to the side. “That’s Stephen Morris and her name’s Gillian Gilbert.”

“Let me go find David,” I said. Mark gave the thumbs-up sign to his English friends and I saw the chick bounce on the balls of her feet and clutch her hands to her chest like an overexcited schoolgirl. I searched every corner in the joint and couldn’t find David. Someone said, “I think he’s in the bathroom,” and jerked a finger toward a closed door. “The bathroom” wasn’t technically a bathroom, although it did have a sink. It was more of a storage room that housed some cleaning supplies and a mop and bucket.
What the fuck is he doing in there?
I wondered. I knocked. “David? Are you in there?”

“Just a minute, man!” a familiar voice boomed from behind the door before it creaked open an inch. David peered out, looking every inch the rock-and-roll god that he was, if slightly bug-eyed at the moment. “Hey, Bob. Come in, come in,” he said, his face cracking into a huge grin. I slid through the door and there was David with the Disco King, a guitarist who had set the dance-music template with his chart-topping band. David Lee Roth might have been the rock star in the Zero One, but the Disco King was the real badass musician in the place. There was a big bag of coke in the room and David and the Disco King were in good spirits. Each wore a sheen of sweat that was, no doubt, the effect of the night’s ration of white powder. “Hey, man. There’s a couple of English people who want to meet you. They’re from that band New Order.”

“New Order? I love those guys!” said David effusively.

“They’re good,” said the Disco King.

“Well, I never heard of them. Let me go get them.”

I left the confines of the storage room and went and found Gillian and Stephen where I had left them. They were giddy at the prospect of meeting a flamboyant American rock star. They didn’t really make them like David in England, at least not anymore. Of course, they didn’t really make anyone like David here in America either. “Okay, it’s cool. Follow me,” I said.

“Is he nice?” Gillian asked.

“Oh, he’s great. He’s David Lee Roth. You’ll love him.”

I shepherded them into the little room. “Bob, shut that door,” said David, and I slammed it hard since it didn’t fit in the jamb all that well. With five of us crammed in the tight space, there was barely room to turn around. Introductions were made and the small talk started. Everybody loved everybody else. Then David pulled out the magic bag of coke. “Who’s in?” he asked. We all were and spent the next hour dipping into it and babbling about anything and everything. The thing with coke-spurred conversations is that even if they’re mundane and essentially hollow, they seem, at the time, incredibly deep and profound. Who knows? Maybe it was, but I have my doubts. Other than the Brits’ thrill at getting an audience with David Lee Roth, what made up that night’s summit topics were likely forgotten the next day. Little meetings like ours, no matter how pleasant and engaging, can’t last forever. Despite the fun we all were having, after an hour or so in the tight grip of that little room, with the temperature rising from everybody’s coke-elevated body heat, it was time to move on and grab a cold drink.