The Cocaine Chronicles (7 page)
T
he Las Palmas Behavioral Modification Center is located on the outskirts of Palm Desert, not far from its more famous counterpart, the Betty Ford Clinic, in the neighboring community of Rancho Mirage. Both cities are renowned for their spectacular eighteen-hole golf courses, plush landscapes, and million-dollar retirement homes. But water is not natural to this otherwise barren land, and without it everything but the indigenous snakes and lizards would shrivel up and die. In the summer months temperatures reach 110, often higher, and in the winter come the powerful winds that darken the sky with clouds of dust and debris. Life here stops where the water ends, and it’s that borderline, on the cusp of survival and devastation, that strikes me as exactly the right place for the alcoholic and addict who spends his days constantly navigating between the two.
From Los Angeles, depending on traffic, it’s a good two hours or more before you escape the congestion of the San Bernardino Freeway and turn onto the less traveled Highway 111. From here it’s a narrow two-lane blacktop that cuts through Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage and takes you still deeper into the desert. The land is flat and dry and the distant mountains are steep and rocky. A few miles past the city of Palm Desert, you turn off the highway and onto another stretch of blacktop that twists and bends and leads you, finally, to the Las Palmas Behavioral Modification Center.
It’s a sprawling, Santa Fe–style structure made of stucco and adobe and painted white. Outside the main doors is a rock garden with cacti and desert flowers and a small waterfall. At first glance it looks like it might be one of those trendy, out-of-the-way desert spas for people in the know, a quaint hideaway for L.A.’s hippest, but as you come closer, when you step through those front doors, you recognize it for what it is: a hospital for the mentally unstable and those wrestling with their own self-destruction by way of alcohol and drugs. The latter group comprise the majority of its patients, though many of us fit neatly into both categories. Directly after my release from St. Mary’s Hospital in North Hollywood, where I was treated for second-degree burns on both arms and a host of contusions from head to toe, I take up residence at the Las Palmas BMC.
I arrive in the late morning, accompanied by my best friend, Tim O’Neill, who’s taken it upon himself to drive me here. It is also at his urging that I choose this rehab over dozens of more local ones. According to Tim, it has a high success rate with its patients and an excellent reputation within the film community for its discreetness.
Unlike the Betty Ford Clinic, there are no photographers lurking behind the bushes, no
National Enquirer
, no news cameras.Even executive-level alcoholics and addicts can pass unnoticed through its doors and return clean and sober with no one the wiser for it. Why my friend thinks I need protecting, however, I have no idea. My place on the totem pole of movie making is just a notch above the caterer in the last of the rolling credits. And it’s not like my drinking or using is or has been any secret for quite some time now.
“This is the best thing for you,” he says, as we climb out of his car. He drives a Mercedes SUV, exactly like my ex-wife’s, only a different color. “Like it or not,” he adds, “this is your home for the next twenty-eight days. Don’t get any bright ideas and try to bolt.”
Given that it’s in the middle of the desert, I assure him that I won’t be going anywhere in the foreseeable future, particularly in my present condition. It’s been nearly two days since my last drink, and I’m beginning to feel really sick. I’m beginning to sweat. “Clean up your act,” he says, “and as soon as you’re out of here, I know I can get you some work. A lot of people still believe in you.” I know what kind of work he means, the kind I used to turn down. TV dramas. Cop shows. Sitcoms. Of course now I’d be grateful to get it. As for Tim’s mention of those who still believe in me, he’s talking about my meteoric rise to the higher echelons of screenwrit-ing, followed by my equally meteoric descent years later when the drugs and alcohol took ahold of me. Tim, on the other hand, is a screenwriter turned TV producer, and he’s at the top of his form by any measure. He slaps me lightly on the back. I can see the concern on his face.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “You’re not looking so good.”
“I’m all right,” I say.
“C’mon, let’s get you inside.”
As with any hospital, the amount of admitting paperwork is staggering, and the Las Palmas BMC is no exception. Had I been in better health, the process may not have seemed so overwhelming, but soon after Tim leaves I feel the shakes coming on. I’m a real trooper, however, and instead of asking the head counselor if we could postpone these admission procedures until I can at least hold a pen steady enough to sign my name, I push forward. I follow the man down a long, wide hallway to his office where I take a seat across from him at his desk. He’s around my age with thick glasses and a bushy mustache, and while I sit there, sweating, I wonder what he thinks of me. I wonder if to him I’m just another casualty in that long procession of drunks and addicts who pass through his life, few probably ever staying sober for any real length of time. It has to be frustrating, and I wonder if he cares anymore. I wonder if it even matters. He glances down at my arms, which are both wrapped in white gauze from the burns I suffered in the accident.
“What happened?”
“I burned myself.”
“How’d you do that?”
“It’s a long story,” I tell him.
Reaching into one of the drawers, he takes out some sort of form, or questionnaire, and lays it flat on his desk.
“I have to ask you some questions,” he says, “and I need for you to be completely truthful. How long has it been since your last drink?”
“About two days.”
“How much, on average, would you say you’ve been drinking?”
“About a quart a day.”
“Of hard liquor?”
“Vodka usually. Sometimes bourbon.”
The mere mention of liquor triggers my thirst. I want a drink, I want it now, and I want it badly. My hands are shaking, so I hide them in my lap.
“What about other drugs?”
“Like what?”
“Let’s start with heroin. Do you use it? Have you ever used it?”
“I’ve done it a few times,” I tell him. “But not in the last few years.”
“Intravenously?”
Needle users always look the worst, and it’s a bum rap because it’s the most cost-efficient and expeditious way to get it into your system, offering the biggest bang for your buck. But I leave that part out, not wanting him to get the wrong impression.
“Sometimes. Yes.”
“How old were you when you first started?”
“Heroin? I was fourteen. Drinking? I’d say ten or eleven.”
“What about cocaine?”
“I’ve used lots of it. Too much.”
“How much is that?”
“When I’m bingeing, I’d say three or four grams a day.”
“And how often do you binge?”
I shrug.
“I don’t really keep count,” I say. “Maybe a couple times a month.”
As we talk he is taking notes and checking off boxes on the form. He has on a sport coat and a red-and-white–striped tie that he likes to tug on now and again between questions. I’m starting to feel nauseated. I wipe sweat from my brow with the back of my hand.
“How long is this going to take?” I ask.
He smiles. “What’s the hurry?”
But he knows damn well.
“I need something to steady my nerves.”
“That’ll be up to the doctor,” he says. “Tell me, when was the last time you used cocaine?”
“On Christmas Eve.”
“Any methamphetamines?”
“Only when I can’t get coke.”
“But you use them?”
“Yes.”
At first, when he started asking these questions, he struck me as nonjudgmental. But as the process continues, and I admit to more abuse, he appears to grow irritated. He looks at me and takes a deep breath.
“Let’s try another approach,” he says, “and see if we can’t save us both a little time. What drugs, Mr. Lewis, haven’t you abused?”
I have to think about this for a while.
“Ecstasy,” I say. “I’ve never tried that but I’ve pretty much done everything else, from Percodan, OxyContin, and quaaludes to LSD. Marijuana, I don’t like, never have. To cut to the quick, my problems are with booze, coke, and speed. I’ve been using them all since I was a kid, but it didn’t really get out of control until around my late thirties.”
Again he smiles. That smug, knowing one. I’m quickly coming to dislike this guy.
“Or so you think,” he says. “Alcoholics and addicts almost always cross the line into addiction years before they’re ever aware of it. I’m betting you’re no different.” Then out of the blue he asks, “Do you have thoughts of suicide?”
I’m caught off guard.
“What?”
“Do you ever think about killing yourself?”
It’s my firm belief that anyone of any intelligence has at some dark point in life seriously weighed the pros and cons of checking out early. But I also know that if I’m honest, I’ll be treated as a threat to myself and they’ll throw me into the lock-down psych unit. Which means I won’t be going anywhere until the shrinks say I’m psychologically fit. That could be a whole lot longer than the typical twenty-eight days of rehab.
“No,” I lie.
“Never?”
A wave of nausea passes over me.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I say. “Where’s your bathroom?”
Inside of an hour I’m in the throes of full-fledged withdrawal and the formalities of the check-in procedures are temporarily placed on hold. I’m escorted directly to the staff doctor where it’s determined that I’m in the first stages of delirium tremens. The nurse gives me a healthy dose of Valium, and because my blood pressure has rocketed off the charts, I’m also administered an additional shot of Clonidine, a powerful antihypertensive, to further reduce the possibility of stroke.
The combined effect of these drugs knock me out, and when I wake, when the drugs have worn off, I start to panic. My heart beats fast, and I’m still sweating. I’m still shaking and sick to my stomach. The room is dark, and for a minute or so I’m completely disoriented, not knowing where I am or what’s happening to me. I sit up. I look around. The door is slightly ajar and a wedge of light falls across another bed in the room. Someone’s in it, curled up in the fetal position, and I can hear his labored breathing. He’s shivering under the sheet, like you do when you have a bad fever, and every now and then he moans. I lie back in bed and stare at the ceiling, knowing full well now where I am. I think of my daughter. I think of my ex-wife, and I ask myself, what’s wrong with me? How come I can’t straighten up? What have I done to my family? What have I done to myself?
I’ve hit a real bottom.
I’ve hit a brand-new record low.
It’s around this time that a nurse slips into the room pushing a cart. She turns on the light on the nightstand between our two beds and gently places her hand on the shoulder of the curled-up figure.
“Eddie,” she says, “how you doing?”
“Not so great.”
“It’s time for your medication,” she says.
He has to sit up now, and when he does I see that he’s just a kid, probably no older than my daughter, and he’s drenched in sweat.
“What happened to you?” she asks me.
“I burned myself.”
“How’d you do that?”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
I swallow the pills with the water and she takes the cups from me and leaves. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes later, just before I go under, I hear Eddie in the next bed. “This is fucked up,” he says under his breath. “I ain’t never doing that shit again.” Then it sweeps over me, whatever it is in the pills she gave me, and I’m down for the count again.
For both of us it goes on like this for the better part of two days, our sweating and shaking, passing in and out of consciousness. It’s a rebellion of the body crying out for the drug it’s been trained to need. The heart pounds. The head throbs. You can’t hold down food, and every nerve ending is on fire. Except to use the toilet, neither of us has the strength to get out of bed, let alone leave the room. The detox process is exhausting, and when the tempest finally subsides, and I believe I can speak truthfully for Eddie as well, we’re overcome with relief and gratitude.
After that we sleep.
And it’s a wonderful, deep sleep.
When I finally wake up, I look over at Eddie in the next bed and find him staring at me. It’s night, and the light on the stand between us is turned on. I feel immensely better, though the term
better
, in this case, is relative; even slight improvement, given where I started out, is a major breakthrough. I tell myself that this is it.
That I will change.
There will be no more drinking. No powders. No pills. No potions. From this day on I will make my first earnest, and hopefully last, attempt to put it all behind me, finally and forever.
Eddie asks the running question of the week. “What happened to your arms?”
“I burned them.”
“How’d you do that?”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
“I got time,” he says.
He’s propped up on one elbow and I notice his arm, the left one. It’s black and blue at the bend from sticking it with needles. Though I already know the answer, I turn Eddie’s question back on him.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Heroin,” he says, but he pronounces it “hair-ron,” as they do in the ghetto. I also detect a trace of pride in his voice, one typical of the heroin addict, especially the younger ones. It’s the mother of drugs, and in the hierarchy of addiction there’s a certain romance, a certain prestige factor, in being strung out on smack. A few years ago his attitude wouldn’t have bothered me, but now I see myself in this kid, on the fast track to destruction, and that mind-set troubles me.
He nods at me. “What’re you kicking, man?”
“Booze and coke.”
“I like coke, too.”
Again he’s a little too enthusiastic with volunteering this information.
“I’m starving,” he says. “Want to get something to eat? The cafeteria’s closed but the lounge stays open all night.”