My Appetite For Destruction (34 page)

We returned to L.A. and went out to the Rainbow to celebrate my birthday. Jason Bonham, son of John Bonham, the legendary drummer for Led Zeppelin, was there with us. We had a great time. We returned to the apartment, where Debbie invited me in. She had large boxes spread all about the floor. She exploded as the realization hit me. “Happy birthday!” she yelled and gave me a hug. She had bought me the North drum set! I was so thrilled and my heart swelled; I thought she was so generous. We had sex, then slept away most of the next day.

The next evening Debbie and I were sitting in my apartment watching TV. Suddenly, she stood up and knocked everything off the coffee table. “Huh?” Then she walked over and started knocking my awards off the wall. She lifted the stereo and crashed it to the ground.

She was about to drop the TV when I stood up, grabbed it, and yelled, “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” It was ten thirty p.m., and the insanity raged off and on for another eight hours. She just kept acting like a complete psycho, incessantly screaming at me and calling me a loser. I tried to be calm, but really, I thought I had a heart attack that night caused by all the anxiety. All I could think was that she was doing this to set me up somehow. She’d never acted out of line before. It was freaking me out. My chest hurt and I couldn’t breathe; I just lay on the floor begging her to stop.

Finally, I had to do something. Around six thirty in the morning, I grabbed her and forced her out the door. “You’re going down,” she yelled. Two minutes later she calmly knocked on my door and announced that she had called the cops, claiming that I had beat her up. Immediately, I grabbed my shoes and my hippie bag, got in my truck, and hightailed it out of there. I never went back. I couldn’t understand what she felt she stood to gain from all this. I guess she wanted more from me than I was prepared to give, and sensing that, she reacted by lashing out at me.

I relocated to another condo in Studio City. A female friend named Lindsay was with me and helped me set up the new place. After we moved in, I was awakened by a knock at the door. I looked at the clock; it was six a.m. “Who the hell could that be?” I shuffled up to the door. “Who is it?”

“Adam” was the response. I assumed it was the maintenance guy from the building. I opened the door to find two police officers. “Are you Steven Adler?” one asked. Before I could answer the other officer said, “Yeah, that’s him.”

I could only say, “Hey, what’s going on? What’s up?”

The officer who knew me said, “Mr. Adler, you are under arrest for
IPV
, intimate partner violence. Your girlfriend said you beat her up.”

I looked back at Lindsay and yelled, “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Steven, I didn’t do a thing!” Lindsay said, and it was true. It was Debbie carrying out her threats to do me in.

I
was put in cuffs and brought to a jail in Santa Monica. Three hours later I was released on bail. I walked into a lawyer’s office across the street from the condo, not because I was referred to them, but because it was close. Big mistake. Always get a referral for legal counsel from someone you trust, and then check around, or ask the lawyer if you can chat with one of his satisfied clients. As I later learned, this attorney I hired was a complete asshole and thoroughly hated in the legal community.

That’s all I needed. It was only a month before I was to face the judge. I had a short trial that involved so much insane bullshit from Debbie that I just tuned it out. I seriously just blocked out the trial because it was all fabricated crap to begin with, and I didn’t tune back in until it was time to receive my sentence. I don’t believe the jury thought I was guilty, and it felt like I was gonna get off. But I overheard my lawyer mumble something to the judge. I could swear he fucking said, “I’m sure he’s done
something
wrong.” What the fuck? I was found guilty—I’m still not sure of what—and sentenced. But it was a relatively light sentence, three months and a fine.

First I was put in a police station in a small town in L.A. County called Laverne. Christian Slater had been sent there for some legal trouble just a few months before. It wasn’t that bad at all; I had a cell phone and cable TV and was assigned to washing police squad cars. I shared the cell with three other people and was locked up from eleven p.m. to six a.m. I’d be sleeping during that time anyway, so it really was a free ride. But back at the condo Lindsay was having a terrible time.

My brother Jamie was making life hell for her. Over the past few years, Jamie had become increasingly difficult. Maybe he felt he had my best interests in mind, but sometimes he would cross the line. I had no problem with Lindsay staying at the condo while I was incarcerated, but Jamie sure did. He would swing by every day and harass her. She was driving my Bronco around and Jamie called the cops reporting to them that she had stolen it. They pulled her over and handcuffed her, then discovered that she was living with me and that everything was okay. But Jamie was relentless in his attacks, forcing Lindsay to move in with a neighbor a few floors up.

On the weekends I was allowed visitors. You could go to a nearby park or the local library. Lindsay would bring me grub from Taco Bell or some other fast food I would be craving. Then I would bone her in the truck or we’d do it in some public bathroom. While I was back in the cell, I had a great idea. I called Lindsay and had her make a dental appointment for me (which was permitted) so I could get out for a while.

She picked me up at the jail and we went back to the condo. I scored some heroin and smoked it all afternoon. Soon it became night. I returned to the jail, but hours too late. It never takes anyone that long to go to the dentist. I was such a jackass.

Understandably, they wanted me to piss for them. But I was so high I couldn’t even pee. I couldn’t get a drop in the cup, and that was evidence enough for them that I was fucked up. They locked me up and the next morning a guard came and got me. I was put in the cell at the courthouse for eight hours. Then they placed me on the bus with all of the other inmates du jour and took us to the L.A. county jail. It was twenty-four hours later before I could lie down and sleep. Boy, I fucked up. This was the real deal, not the cushy arrangement I had before.

For some reason they asked me if I had ever seen a psychiatrist. I figured if I said yes they’d leave me alone, but if I said no I was in for hours of shrinkage. If anyone was ever preshrunk, it was me, so I said, “Oh yeah, all the time, ever since I was a kid.” It was kind of the truth. Whether it was nosy school guidance counselors or the resident quacks they had at rehab facilities, I was always getting analyzed whether I wanted to be or not.

Well, I ended up being placed with all the crazy people who had the luxury of receiving medication three times a day. All you did was sit around on the cement floor. If you were lucky you could sit on a bench. On each floor were three pods, each holding about thirty people. The walls were transparent Plexiglas. It was my first time in a real jail.

I would get letters from Debbie. She pretended as though nothing ever happened, like she had never fucked me over. My God, she was a complete and utter psycho.

Earlier, when I spotted her going into court, I pleaded with her, “Tell them I didn’t do what you said. What is wrong with you? You are ruining my life.” The only thing that kept me going was dreaming about how much I was going to party when I got out. I had to serve the entire ninety days. It seemed like forever, but it was nothing compared to the time some of the others had to do.

I was put to work in the kitchen. I served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was the absolute best thing, because oatmeal and chocolate-chip cookies equaled money. I had these baggy pants with big pockets that I would fill with the tasty delights. When medication time came, I would trade the cookies for the other patients’ meds. I got nearly everyone’s pills. In the ward they served nothing but downers. They didn’t want anybody getting all wired or hyper. So I was able to be sedated most of the time. Nothing was too powerful, but everything helped.

A
t last the day came when I was released back into the wild. I hadn’t been partying and I’d gained twenty pounds. Jamie picked me up with one of his girlfriends. We went straight to the Rainbow. I got pasta and did endless shots of Jägermeister. I got so sick, I puked my guts out. The Big Spit; it was great!

Now that I was back home I took every opportunity to go insane and party. Lindsay and I would score dope up to six times a day. Sometimes the coke would make me a little too anxious, so I took pills like Valium to keep the edge off. Smoking coke and heroin, and then shooting the two combined, became a favorite buzz. My relationship with Lindsay was based solely on partying. There was no real connection other than our insatiable appetite for substance abuse. We really went over the top, tweaking our brains out constantly. Within a week, I don’t think either one of us was in our right mind. I was in free fall, utterly insane. My little preemptive warning system had finally failed to go off, or I was too far gone to notice it.

W
hen you’re as tweaked out as I was, it’s never a good idea to prep your own fix. One night, I messed up the dosage, then messed up my face. I was speedballing, injecting myself with heroin and coke. But in my shattered state, I must have injected myself with a horribly excessive amount. As soon as it hit my bloodstream, I collapsed on the floor of my bathroom. My body started going into convulsions, and what was worse was my head began slamming uncontrollably and repeatedly against the white tile floor.

It was the most horrifying experience of my life. Try as I might, even with all my strength, I could not stop my face from smashing down on the floor again and again. My lip split, my teeth cracked, and blood began to flow from everywhere. Still, I couldn’t stop. On the floor, a thick bath towel lay inches away from my head. If I had just been able to get it between me and the tiles, I may have been able to lessen the damage, but my body was so out of control, I couldn’t will myself to grab it.

Mercifully, the convulsions eventually ceased. I don’t know how long I lay there with teeth shards and bits of my face littering the bloodied floor. The next thing I recalled were the sounds of soft voices in quiet conversation, a brief moment of consciousness when I realized I was in a hospital room, and then more blackness. This seemed to go on for an eternity.

Finally, after several days, I was strong enough to sit up in bed and discuss my options with my mom and a plastic surgeon. There would be several reconstructive procedures, working in tandem with an oral surgeon. I was fortunate; the damage was reversible. The only thing that wasn’t reversible was me, because this was all I could think about throughout the conversation: “Now, if I could just score some dope.”

I think my mom saw the hunger in my eyes that day, just the way Steven Tyler had me pegged years before. As I pretended to pay attention to the surgeon’s strategy for putting me back together, she knew the truth was no one could ever put me back together. She knew I was hopeless. I was way beyond broken, and it was permanent. My need to escape that sad fact through drugs was so powerful that the only way out of addiction would be death itself.

W
hen I got back home, my fellow train-wreck-in-waiting, Lindsay, was still prowling around the house. She hadn’t weathered my absence well and was even more strung out than before. When she wasn’t high she cried a lot and seemed extremely fragile emotionally. It didn’t take long before she bugged the shit out of me.

One evening I just couldn’t take it any longer and made the mistake of suggesting we part ways for a while. “Maybe you should go to your mom’s house,” I told her. She didn’t respond, only quietly retreated to the bathroom. I heard water running in the bathtub, then I must have dozed off.

When I woke up the next morning, I called out for her but there was no response. I looked around the condo, but she wasn’t there. I called the front desk and the building security to see if they had seen her leave, but they hadn’t.

I was consumed with an odd, uneasy feeling. Where the fuck did she go? I walked into my bedroom and froze in the doorway. I hadn’t noticed this at first, but there in front of me I saw sheets tied to the bedpost. The sheets were draped out the fifth-story window, fluttering in the wind. This was all I fucking needed. I walked over to the window, filled with fear. “Oh God, no.”

I looked out, and there she was, her body motionless, sprawled out hideously in the bushes below. She must have tried to hang herself, but the sheets didn’t hold. She was naked and I could see that her body was covered with multiple cuts, some of which I later learned were previously self-inflicted. Her head hung at an unnatural angle, her left arm twisted behind it. I ran to the phone and dialed 911.

As fate would have it, my mom just happened to be coming by that morning to check up on me. When she arrived, she saw teams of cops racing into the building. She told me that she never thought twice about whose condo the cops were rushing toward. She stayed with me through all the questioning. Fortunately, the cops found only a little pot and my bong in the apartment, which they basically ignored.

Lindsay survived, miraculously suffering only a broken collarbone. We got her into the hospital and made sure she had the best treatment possible. After she got out, I never heard from her again. I never really thought about whether this was good or bad. If I wasn’t that into a chick and she decided to move on, then that was good for both of us. Besides, when you’re doing coke and heroin, you really don’t have the ability to give a fuck about anyone else. Loved ones can be sick, injured, in the hospital, in jail, and you don’t go to see them, you don’t even give enough of a fuck to call them. It’s not that you’re selfish; it’s just that the thought never occurs to you. The drugs demand all your attention every waking moment, and then you nod out and wet yourself.