Babylon Confidential: A Memoir of Love, Sex, and Addiction (41 page)

I was back and this time asking for naltrexone. I’d also printed out pages of the clinical papers I found on the Internet, and I sat with him and discussed The Sinclair Method. He looked up the drug in his pharmaceutical reference book and finally, with trepidation, he gave me the piece of paper that represented my last hope of recovery, my hopeful stay of execution.

I had to go to a compound pharmacy (one that makes special drugs to order) to fill my prescription. Within fifteen minutes I had fifteen pills. I stopped by Trader Joe’s on the way home and bought a bottle of red wine and a steak. I was PMS-ing and David was out of town. It was the perfect time to schedule the first experiment.

I shook the plastic pill bottle at the traffic lights, like a witch doctor rattling bones for good luck. The wine sat next to me in the passenger seat. The way home involved driving right past the khaki-colored bus stop on Coldwater Canyon. I turned and looked at it as I drove past and was overcome with emotion. I had to pull over.

I couldn’t believe that the pills could work, that I didn’t need to abstain. It was too good to be true.

Nothing’s for free, babe.

The very idea seemed to go against everything I’d learned at AA and in rehab and at the detox center. The monster was rattling around in my head. I was shaking, tears streaming down my face. The bus stop, the ride to rehab with Holly and my mom, the back of the rapist’s van, the sight of my mom in a bloodstained shirt holding Patrick’s bandana in her hand, it was all the same place—the monster’s cave, its place of power—and I’d been trapped in it for so long that I didn’t know if I had the courage to leave.

Claudia, honey, this is just another dead end. Everything else you’ve tried has failed and you know you swore never to pop pills. Throw them out the window and go home. We’ll enjoy the wine together.

As soon as I got home I took the pill. It was 5:45 p.m. on February 22, 2009. I waited until 6:45 before having a glass of wine—I wanted to make sure the pill had time to work. I was nervous, but I’d gotten my courage back after the bus-stop incident. I was so hopeful!

After I drank the wine, I felt a little dizzy and found that I could only eat a little of the steak and spinach on my plate. I also felt a little stoned and not at all clear-headed.

Why are you doing this?

The monster was still posturing, but I noticed that her voice lacked power.
She
was anxious as well. I didn’t dignify her with an answer, and she knew why. She knew that, more than anything, I wanted to be normal.

Soon I was struck by a revelation:
It’s 7:15. I’ve only had one glass of red wine and don’t feel like having another. By now I should be well on my way to polishing off the bottle.

It was a week before I touched another drop—this time, three glasses of wine. I slept like crap and woke up tired and thirsty the next morning, but the monster was still silent. The binge that I was sure would overtake me like a tsunami had arrived as only a minor swell and quickly receded.

A month after that, I took my pill before having my first social drink, a glass of wine with people in my writing class. I was hyperaware of how strange it felt to be normal. It was as if I were standing outside my body watching myself laugh and socialize. I kept waiting for something bad to happen. Nothing did. A month earlier I’d have been on my third glass and working out how to sneak the unfinished bottle into my bag when no one was looking.

Another week passed, and I attended my first post-Sinclair dinner party with David. I found that my body was adjusting to the pill. I didn’t feel so dizzy anymore.

It had been a month since I’d seen the monster in the mirror, and though she was still running around in my mind, threatening and cajoling, I could sense she was getting desperate.

Then came the real test: a trip to Napa to visit my mom and stepfather. It’s feeding time in the lion enclosure and Claudia’s on the menu. I took two bottles of red to last the whole trip.

And then the carnage began. My mom questioned my latest attempt to fix my life. My stepfather once again posited his carefully thought-out theory that I was injecting hard drugs. I stayed cool like Fonzie. I drank my wine, a glass a day, and returned to L.A. without going on a single binge, having tamed the lions.

It seemed that while I was on The Sinclair Method nothing could trigger me to drink. I still have cravings when I have PMS or if I have a long, difficult day, but there seems to be a disconnect between the voice of the monster and the dangerous behavior it previously triggered.

I took on another big challenge—a trip to Italy with David. Tuscany, land of the luscious red. I resigned myself to drinking only at night. No repeat of the turmoil in Tahiti. I wanted to
remember
my time in Italy.

I was still thinking like an alcoholic. I obsessively counted my supply of naltrexone, ensuring I had enough, but I was anxious without cause. I took my pill as instructed and only drank too much on one occasion—four glasses with a gorgeous meal of pasta puttanesca—but even that didn’t lead to a binge.

I returned from Italy triumphant, a Roman emperor having vanquished the barbarians.

By the time I’d used The Sinclair Method for six months the dizzy feeling was completely gone. I cut out drinking during the week altogether, only imbibing on weekends, and then only on special occasions—a few glasses at a dinner party or on a getaway with David. My desire to consume alcohol steadily declined, taking my abnormal behavior with it. I didn’t feel dizzy at all or experience any side effects. My life was back to how I remembered it before the monster came along. Drinking, I could honestly take it or leave it.

But fear is the hardest of human emotions to conquer. I was still reluctant to declare total victory; I didn’t want to be like George W. Bush and hang out the “Mission Accomplished” banner before I’d really won the war.

It wasn’t that long ago that, when I wasn’t thinking about what to drink or where to get it, I’d kill time calculating how many days I’d wasted recovering from binges (165) in the hope that the sheer number would deter me from wasting any more.

But my confidence slowly grew. The bottles of wine in my cabinet were only used at dinner parties. The cooking wine that I used to guzzle desperately could rest easy in my pantry beside the Marsala and Cognac—they’d only ever be used as intended, to make sauces for my recipes.

My brain was changing, and as it did I was reclaiming my life.

It took another year, watching the monster slowly wither and retreat from sight, until I made the call, the official announcement. I’d battled the monster for close to a decade, and now I’d finally won. Print the headline: “Armistice Announced—the Enemy Has Signed the Treaty—Peace at Last!”

It was the spring of 2010, I’d been on The Sinclair Method for a few months, and I was getting a manicure-pedicure at this Korean beautician’s place when my phone rang. It was Adam Rifkin, my director friend from the good old days.

“Claudia, I’m working on something right now for Showtime. It’s a TV version of my movie
Look
, do you want to be in it?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“It’s a really funny character. Her name’s Stella. I wrote her specifically for you. I’d love for you to be in it.”

I was so grateful, so happy! By “funny” he meant that she was a paranoid, alcoholic cokehead and, according to the production notes, a fortysomething MILF.

“Claudia, you still there?”

I was so stunned, I’d forgotten to talk.

“I’m still here.”

“It’s really low budget, so there’s not much money in it . . .”

“But I’m gonna be back on TV?”

“Yeah, you’ll be on Showtime.”

And there it was. My career was back. I felt the world change around me, the final piece fall into place. I knew it was real. It felt just like when I got my first role on
Dallas
all those years before. The drought had been broken.

Then another job came, voice work on a computer game, and after that another. I worked on a sci-fi short film written by an Aussie named Morgan Buchanan, who became my regular writing partner (and co-author of this book). We started writing a series of future-Rome sci-fi novels.

I had my life back. People wanted me to be in their lives. Hollywood wanted to make use of my talents. It was a rebirth in every way.

In May 2011 David and I were back in French Polynesia. Mo‘orea was beautiful as I stared at its green and gray volcanic mountains from my over-the-water bungalow. I was the happiest I’d been in over a decade, an alcoholic who had found a cure.

David stood by me through the tail end of my struggle, and although he was incredibly supportive our social life had taken on a dismal atmosphere of early dinners and subdued conversation. Now we enjoyed cooking together, dinner parties, wine, and laughter. We survived the monster together and emerged from that ordeal as stronger, closer friends.

My life had come full circle. I had worked hard, taken risks, and believed in myself at the start of my career in Hollywood. I’d experienced meteoric highs and cataclysmic lows. I’d gone from a smart, attractive woman in her early thirties with a six-figure income, a mansion, and a successful career to someone consumed by addiction, an unrecognizable creature, sneaking out, drinking spirits from a paper bag in a bus shelter. I’d gone from someone who was in love with life to a woman who was humiliated, wracked with suicidal thoughts. And now I’d been given the ultimate blessing, the ultimate miracle—a fresh start. Not the false start I used to have when I’d recover from a binge. This was real; I could feel it in my bones.

The Tahitian water is a bright, azure blue, creating an atmosphere of invigorating peace. I’m halfway through my glass of champagne. When I finish it, I’ll get a massage and later go snorkeling with David in the lagoon teeming with tropical fish. I’ve had my pill, and the monster slumbers in the back of my brain, as if it had never been. I actually see Tahiti this time, the color, the slow pace of life, the beauty. A white seaplane flies overhead carrying passengers back to the main island of Tahiti. I’ll be on that plane soon enough, heading back to star in a new film. My friends were right, this is paradise, but so is every aspect of my life now. I’m free from hell; I can finally enjoy heaven.