Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness (26 page)

“Ultimately, it’s not about defining yourself as ‘defective,’ Mary,” he said. That was reassuring, since I’d been defining myself as defective all along. “It’s not about surrendering—it’s about claiming. It’s about figuring out how to live your life. Which is ultimately the goal for everyone, isn’t it?”

After this first meeting
, I saw Dr. Pylko as often as I could and spent the rest of my time at home, trying to reconstruct the events that I’d been the center of. The faces of my kids tore at my heart.
Noah and Lucy were both very sweet—they would bring me food in bed and check on me. They were so little. I didn’t want them to feel like they needed to take care of me. I told them that I loved them very much and that it was my job to take care of them—I would be well soon, so they didn’t have to worry. How could I not have protected them from this ugliness?

One day, I found Noah’s letter on my desktop:

Every morning when I woke up, I hoped that it was over—then I’d realize how far I had yet to go. Some days, the mania was so intense that trying to relax felt like running a marathon and being told to stop and meditate right at the finish line. My heart raced, my head was spinning, yet lifting my eyes or even a pencil required full concentration. I was supposed to sleep as much as possible, and I wanted to. I really tried (I remembered when I used to like sleeping), but because my head was in overdrive, I couldn’t completely shut down. Thinking about the headlines, about frightening my children, about putting our lives in full reverse (when for months, even years, I’d been convinced that we’d finally made it through the worst of it) made me feel like a fool. I’d worked hard to better my life. Now I was just seen as a spoiled psycho.

And then I informed the health team of something that they didn’t want to hear and absolutely did not support: Velvet Revolver was going to South America to promote
Libertad
, and I wanted to go.

There are too many reasons to list why it was a bad choice and
why no one should’ve allowed me to make it. I went anyway. I shook all the way through Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, where VR was greeted by such a crowd of fans at the airport that we had a police motorcycle escort to the hotel. It was a spectacle; Christine described what the bikes were doing as “sling-shotting” from the front of our vans to the back, escorting us through intersections while stopping traffic. I had a sense of watching everyone and everything from very far away. If handcuffing myself to Scott was an option, I would have signed up and thrown out the key; if there was a BabyBjörn for adults that would have let me strap myself to him, I would have. The meds were starting to work, I knew I was coming down, but I feared that if he left I would fall apart again.

My doctors gave me a long list of rules to follow while in South America. I was to stay on the same time zone as L.A. I wasn’t allowed to go to the band’s shows. I couldn’t go out at night. I needed to take naps. I had to be consistent with my meds and avoid stress. I tried following doctors’ orders as much as possible, but staying on L.A. time was difficult—the band traveled throughout the continent, and South American fans are amazing. Passionate, involved, they stayed up late and often congregated in front of the hotel or greeted us in the lobbies. Paying attention to food, getting enough sleep—I kept losing track. Even naps were hard. I would tremble in bed and be afraid to close my eyes. Sometimes I needed Scott to crawl in bed and hold me.

I missed the majority of the shows. I’d watch the first song or two and then go backstage to Scott’s dressing room and rest. Lying in bed in beautiful hotels, I mouthed profanities at God for keeping me in lockdown when I should have been out and about seeing
the countries. Mainly, I waited for the meds to kick in, as though I was in a holding pattern circling the planet waiting for clearance to land. Five minutes at a time, it happened. I wasn’t back to myself for weeks (actually, I’m still not back to myself, thank God), but as confounded as I was, I began to look forward to going home and putting it all back together.

California’s Santa Ana winds
often begin in late September. They blow in from the ocean, with what at first feels like relief—but then, in some weird meteorological marriage with the winds off the Mojave Desert, they get hot. By the end of October, the Santa Anas have hijacked your serotonin. I struggle with this every year, much as people in the Northeast battle seasonal affective disorder and need to buy special lamps to get them through fall and winter. Even after Dr. Pylko stabilized me on my meds, I was still scared
of October. It’s not a coincidence that so many of Scott’s setbacks had begun in October, from the beginning of the month when the breeze starts to blow, then to his birthday, then to Noah’s, and then to the holidays. Not everything can be fixed with pumpkin pie.

Addiction can reach out and grab you when you least expect it. One minute you’re drug free, the next minute you’re a player in your own drug deal. It’s as though you simultaneously lose control of your body, your carefully reconstructed mind, and, in all likelihood, your car, which for some reason decides to drive through neighborhoods you wouldn’t cruise through during a bright sunny day, let alone after dark.

One night, Scott came home hours past the kids’ bedtime; rather than give him the third degree, I went to our room and started getting ready for bed. He followed me there, leaned up against the wall, and said, “I have to tell you something, but I don’t want you to freak out.” Uh-oh, too late, I thought.

Driving home from the studio, he’d passed a metro bus station and watched a drug deal go down, he told me. Watching that deal basically blew the cobwebs off the coffin of the voice we both hoped had died. He bought the coke, did it in the car, got high, then drove around in despair. He came home to ask me for help. He promised that it was just this once and asked me not to worry.

This was a first. He’d never asked me for help after a relapse. It would’ve been nice if I could’ve responded in a patient, compassionate way—I knew about relapse, I knew that both of us were vulnerable to it, always. But I went ballistic. There had never been a “just once” before. All I could think about were the kids. “How could you do this to us?”

We had struggled so hard to put this behind us, we’d been given so much help, so many second chances. Noah and Lucy weren’t babies anymore, and even before their uncle Michael died, I spent endless sleepless nights wondering how I’d tell them of their father’s death.

In the following weeks, if he called to say he was leaving the studio and on his way home, I would check the clock and start the countdown. God forbid he needed to stop for gas. I didn’t want to be this nervous, minute-counting person. I didn’t want to be responsible for clocking him from point A to point B. But I just couldn’t help it. My ability to trust him evaporated.

Scott had a dream
from the time he was a little boy about making music and earning his living doing it. As rocky as the road was, he worked hard and made that dream true. He made a lot of money doing what he loves; for a while, I made a lot of money, too. Along with those resources and our very privileged life had come a team of people who arrived initially to help him, and help us. Scott had a payroll, and most of the people on it were more than happy to cast votes on our marriage. There were employees who used with Scott; there were employees who got drugs for him. Once again, I was back to the Trust No One place. The difference was, I was in treatment and on medicines that were working. I was determined that nobody was going to knock me over again. The simple truth is, a marriage doesn’t require a committee, a manager, a business manager, or a tour manager—it requires only the two adults who are in it. Maybe I should’ve been on his payroll as well. Maybe then my voice would’ve counted.

He promised this relapse was a one-time thing. I knew how difficult it was to make such a promise when you were deep in the middle; as I watched him struggle, it was clear to me that the one night drive-by wasn’t the end of it. He kept promising to drive directly home from the studio, but he was always late. Very late. I’d find him passed out in the pantry or outside on the deck. He rarely came to bed.

I couldn’t believe that we were living this life again. It was so much work covering up this disaster with the kids and everyone around us. There’s no end date for a relapse, but I was fairly certain that I couldn’t live through another round.

Scott finally fired one particular employee whose presence not only enabled Scott to continue using, but made it easy. In exchange for firing this fool, Scott wanted me to come to Chicago, where Velvet Revolver was playing. Management only cared that he was able to stand up and hold the mic; what he actually did while he was standing there didn’t affect them—they got paid regardless.

When I arrived at the hotel, I couldn’t get the door open. Scott had barricaded the door with furniture. He didn’t even remember that I was coming. He finally let me in, and I couldn’t believe what I walked into. The drapes were all closed and the room was littered with little bottles from the minibar. He swore there weren’t any drugs, but I couldn’t believe this level of paranoia came from booze alone. He was convinced that someone was out to get him. I made my best effort at attempting to calm him down. I tried holding him and kissing him, which worked to a small degree. Whenever he left the room, I would empty as many bottles as I could from the minibar into the sink. I did this until they were all gone. We both finally
fell asleep late in the afternoon, and when Scott woke up, he didn’t remember what happened. Or wouldn’t.

Like any good codependent, my time in Chicago was all about watching Scott like a hawk and trying to make sure he was happy. We went shopping and watched movies in our room. Everything looked fine and my presence was much appreciated by the band. I’m sometimes the only one who can get Scott to step on stage at showtime (not always, but my stats are above par). My drill sergeant routine is taxing and annoys the hell out of Scott, but everyone is happy when they see him walking on stage. Chicago ended up not being as bad as I’d anticipated. Okay, I said to myself, maybe I can do this. And then we got home.

I spent the month of October 2007 in a constant state of panic. Six months after Michael’s death, four months after my own breakdown, and I was working nonstop with the designer-jeans company Rock and Republic, creating what I thought would be Scott’s most memorable birthday. He was turning forty and I wanted it to be special—a roller rink transformed into Studio 54. The theme matched Rock and Republic’s new line, so it all had a kind of symmetry. I had a to-do list a mile long. Work
works
for me, I kept saying. Work
works
.

I turned my attention to Scott’s party, and he went back to his pre-Chicago self. I saw Dr. Pylko, and made appointments with Bernie for double sessions. Going back to her now, I no longer felt like the dependent “enmeshed” girl I’d been when we first met; it was a mature relationship. I needed her to help me with the obvious—sobriety under stress. It had been such a horrible year, with so much loss and fear for Scott and me, I wanted to end that chapter and begin a new one and reaffirm that beginning with him. But he wasn’t interested.

My frustration grew as the days passed, and I felt guilty not sharing my anxiety about Scott’s current situation with Rock and Republic. But I convinced myself that if I could get him onstage in Chicago, then I could damn sure get him to his own birthday party. I was beginning to release the denial that things would get better and felt a great deal of sadness knowing that our marriage was most likely at its real end. I would have to continue the cover-up until Scott’s party. October 27, 2007, would be my final day if things didn’t get better. We were too old to deal with this shit any longer.

The night of the party, everyone dressed the part, and the roller rink was transformed into a Studio 54 vibe. It was the first time the guys in Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver were all in the same room, and everybody seemed to actually be having fun. I put on a smile and made the rounds to make sure everyone was happy. Scott and I were followed by photographers, and we smiled for the cameras. Scott had been drinking and was making trips to the limo. I knew what he was doing.

When the party ended, we walked out to the limo together, and I braced myself for the tenderness that I knew was not coming. We sat in silence on the drive home. I finally worked up the nerve to speak and asked him if he liked his party. His reply was my final blow. “Why are you so fake?”

I cried the entire way home and then I cried some more. First because of the hurt and the weight of my own expectations, in spite of what I’d known during the whole time I’d worked on the party. Scott and I we were definitely, finally, lost to each other.

When we got home, my sadness turned to anger. So much so that I punched myself in the face for being so stupid. I hadn’t punched
myself, or anyone else, in a long time. It wasn’t a habit I was interested in reacquiring.

Capping off the year
from hell, in November 2007—the night before Thanksgiving, in fact—Scott was arrested for DUI. In a sick coincidence, we’d arranged to have our family picture taken for our Christmas card on Thanksgiving Day. I’d thought it would be funny if we did fake mug shots. Scott never made the cover of that card—his mug shot was the real deal. We did the best we could for the kids over the holidays, and with Michael’s kids as well, but we knew we were at the end.

We officially separated for the last time at the end of November; since then, we have been negotiating both a legal divorce (which in fact may be final by the time this book is published) and the new emotional, day-to-day terms of a relationship that has bound us together for so many years. Taking a family apart, then figuring out how everyone fits back together after a divorce, is like unwinding a ball of twine. There’s no way through it but to do it.

Sentencing for Scott’s Thanksgiving Eve DUI wouldn’t be held until spring of 2008; until then, he would be preparing to go on the international leg of the VR tour to support
Libertad
. But when the headlines broke again, the bookings began to fall apart. The government of Japan issued an official pronouncement, which in the simplest translation said, “You guys can’t come here anymore.” The dates for Australia were postponed by the band for “personal reasons.” Tensions rose backstage, among the various managements and the guys themselves.

In March, Scott actually said onstage—in Glasgow, Scotland—
that fans were witnessing the last Velvet Revolver tour. However difficult the tour had been to that point, his announcement caught the other guys completely off guard.

On April 28, 2008, he was sentenced to 192 hours in county jail for the November DUI. He had to complete an eighteen-month alcohol program and pay a two-thousand-dollar fine. Once again, he was on probation for four years. He actually checked into jail on May 12, but was released later that same day.

Duff said something that echoed my own feelings, although for an entirely different set of reasons, and with a heavier price for us to pay. “He’s a really good guy and funny. I know that guy is in there somewhere—he just got lost again. We tried to pull Scott back, but we couldn’t. When he’s into that other side, it’s not cool, it’s not friendly. You try to help, but then after a while you realize you can’t.”

My suspicion—and, I admit it, my hope—that STP wasn’t quite finished actually came to be fact just as VR was dissolving. Christine and I were working with Rock and Republic, putting together a beach-party event in Santa Monica for their fifth anniversary. They wanted a band—thankfully, every band I went to was already booked. I’d like to say that it was impulse that led me to call Dean DeLeo, but that would be a fib—I’d been plotting. I called him and explained what we were looking for; he said he was interested, but wanted to talk to Scott first. Ultimately, the guys didn’t play the beach-party date, but they did start the reunion conversation. They played a few dates through the summer of 2008, made it official, and as I write, they’re on tour again and working on a new album.

Throughout much of that year
, Scott worked on a solo album; in fall of 2008,
Happy in Galoshes
came out. It was inevitable that there would be songs about the end of our marriage and the loss of his brother. I prepared myself for the sadness that would come with those lyrics. But what I wasn’t prepared for were the interviews he gave, in particular one on
The Howard Stern Show
, when he said I’d been unfaithful and that I’d left him for another man. My cell phone rang, the house phone rang—Howard Stern has a big audience. Evidently with the presidential election safely resolved, it was time for the Scott and Mary show to make noise again. Inexplicably, he said I’d left him for Joe the Plumber—“not
the
Joe the Plumber, just some guy”—while he was in rehab. “I don’t want to know anything about it…it’ll eventually come out,” he said. “It definitely drove me crazy—my biggest addiction was my wife…I’ll always love her…whenever she needed help, I was there at home to detox her. Whenever I needed help, it was all, ‘He can’t be around her.’” He went on to say that the breakup inspired a lot of the songs on
Happy
.

Scott had asked if I’d take the kids to a show here in Los Angeles. They love watching him perform, and I’ve always tried to take them whenever possible, both to STP and VR. On this occasion, we were late (as I often am). I grabbed their little headphones and we ran for the stage. We made it just as the show began.

Scott sometimes uses a teleprompter when he performs new songs, and I set the kids up right next to it. I didn’t know the lyrics of the new material (which was a first—I’d always known all his other
songs by heart). As the words began to roll on the teleprompter, my heart sank. He had written, and he sang, about what a sham he believed the entire length of our marriage to have been. It was one of the saddest moments in my life. I stood in front of a crowd of thousands and tried to hold back my tears.