Never Too Late (14 page)

I took a bunch of pills and tried to get a rope around my neck. I can’t even remember clearly exactly what I did. When the police came, I was unconscious, just moaning. They put me on oxygen and took me the hospital, and I ended up regaining consciousness and stabilizing.

It was a very weak, weak point in my life. There’s no question I needed some kind of extreme intervention at that moment. It just so happened that in order to avoid jail time for those battery charges, I had to agree to more intervention than I ever wanted. Specifically, the court ordered me to serve two years probation, invest ten thousand dollars in a college fund for Leah, and serve thirty days of anger management treatment in an inpatient rehab facility.

So just ten days after my fresh suicide attempt, I headed for rehab in Malibu, California. Pretty good timing, right? Ultimately, I didn’t get much out of rehab because I was so resistant. At the time, I was completely convinced that I did not have a problem. Because they were prescriptions, and because I did feel so insane and anxious when I wasn’t on anything, and because my rehab papers said I was only in there for anger management, it was easy for me to convince myself that I wasn’t really an addict at all. I always had what felt like pretty solid excuses to fall back on, and I didn’t have anywhere near the desire or motivation I needed to have to start fighting with the pills.

I did meet some great people in there. I made friends with an incredible fashion designer, a beautiful girl, and a wonderful person. And there was another girl, Molly, who I became amazing friends with. She was this beautiful California blond bombshell, very young and really fun. We did everything together in there, wearing each others clothes and hanging out all the time. There was one time, too, when one of the MTV producers came and saw me at rehab, and we went out and got our nails done and stuff. I even had a guy in there, which isn’t remotely allowed in rehab. He was very cute and we had an amazing little romance in there. We never had sex, but we definitely broke the rules.

Rehab was only supposed to last for thirty days, but I ended up staying for sixty. I wasn’t having fun, though. I had a social life and everything, I guess, but I also had some screaming matches with staff. I wasn’t getting much of anything I actually needed out of the experience, obviously, not that it was anybody else’s fault. And I was missing Leah so bad my heart was just aching. Her dad brought her out one time to visit, and that was a really good day. But the rest of the time I was just miserable and missing her and missing my family.

About two days before I left rehab I finally admitted I had a problem with pills. But I was already on my way out, so what were they going to do about it?

The day you leave rehab, they give you all your medication. Everything that’s yours goes home with you. Right before I walked out of there, I got my pills and took five Klonopin. Sounds like a lot, huh? The sad thing is that was nothing to me.

I barely even remember flying home, although I do remember getting in a fight with a girl at the airport. There was a drunk couple there who started messing with my bodyguard, asking ignorant questions, and then they started yelling at me and stuff. Nothing serious happened, but that’s pretty much what I remember of the trip home.

Which sums it up, basically. In my memory, that part of my life is just a dull haze punctuated by stupid shit.

When I got home, my mom was there, and she’d cleaned the house and put up a welcome home banner for me, which was really sweet. At this point, what everybody hoped was that I was on the road to recovery. That’s what rehab is supposed to symbolize, after all. It was supposed to be a fresh start or a new beginning or whatever.

Obviously, reality was a little bit different. The stress of coming back from rehab just had me feeling like I needed more pills than ever. My ex-fiancé and I were fighting as bad as before, or maybe even worse. And something was starting to happen where I would black out for three days straight. I mean, I would literally look around on Wednesday and realize I didn’t know how I got there from Monday. Any addicts out there will know what I’m talking about. There comes a point where you’re so messed up on pills, and so
used
to being messed up on pills, that you start losing big chunks of time. The freaky thing is that you’re still functioning and talking to people, but afterward you can’t remember a damn thing. It’s like something else has taken over your body while you’ve been asleep.

Like I said before, nobody came right out and confronted me on the pills or anything. But when a person changes as much as I had changed at that time, everybody around them notices. People were worried about me at the time, I know. My mom and brother tried to reach out to me and talk about it, but even if we were talking, they couldn’t reach me. Whenever anybody brought anything up, I’d shut it down. Part of the reason you don’t hear much about my family as I tell this story is that I was always putting distance between me and them, especially as my situation got worse. Maybe I didn’t want to face their questions. Maybe I just couldn’t focus on anyone. Who knows? I doubt it will ever make perfect sense. I don’t know how else to explain it other than that I was in a dark place.

My brother said to me later that he thought he had lost me at that point. Between the suicide attempt, the pills, and how detached I was from my life, he just thought I’d gone out of reach. After I got out of jail, we sat down and talked, and he looked me in the eye and said to me, “Amber, I’m not gonna lose my sister again.” There’s no question there were people around who loved me, and they weren’t giving up on me. I was just on my own. If you ever met somebody who didn’t give a shit, it was me. I didn’t care about anything that happened anymore.

L
ike any regular person out there, I’ve been diagnosed with my share of mental disorders over the years.

I’m just kidding. I know it’s not really normal to have to use your fingers to count how many disorders you’ve heard in doctors’ offices and counselors’ rooms. Bipolar disorder, clinical depression, anxiety, sociopathic tendencies . . .

You know, I have to call a time out on that last one. Most of the time, I’ve been able to see where people were coming from. The anxiety is just a fact. I don’t think you have to be a psychiatrist to see that much. Obviously depression is something I’ve struggled with since I was just a kid, so I have no argument there. Bipolar disorder? I don’t know about that one, but I can understand how somebody might look at my behavior from, say, back when I was on the show and come up with that diagnosis. Half the time it looked like I was either screaming at my ex-fiancé or lying in bed. Manic-depressive. I get it. Whatever. Maybe.

But a sociopath? Come on.

Maybe the doctor who told me that thought I seemed unemotional. But maybe that had something to do with how many pills I was on at the time. I mean, how can you judge somebody’s emotional reactions when they’re on a prescribed cocktail of opiates, antidepressants, and anxiety medications? Of course I’m not going to be reacting to things like a normal person.

And, well, maybe I haven’t always reacted to things the same way other people have. It’s true I can remember a whole lot of times in my life when I didn’t show the emotions people expected me to show. Even just off the top of my head, I can think of plenty of times where something horrible, shocking, or violent happened in front of me, and the other people who were there turned to me afterward and couldn’t understand how calm I was. That’s just the way I am. I don’t always cry at funerals. I don’t always freak out when something scary happens in front of me. And when I’m in a relationship, my heart doesn’t always jump into it right away.

I can’t explain all of that. I’m not the psychiatrist. But what I can say is that just because I’m not crying doesn’t mean I’m not sad. Just because I’m not flipping out doesn’t mean I’m not scared. And if I’ve been a little distant in my relationships, well, the fact is I’m still pretty young, and most of my memories are taken up by the one great big love that blew me away when I was sixteen, the love that gave me my daughter.

When I wasn’t with Leah’s father, I went through men like a hurricane. I never felt any deep feelings for these guys, even when they were really great. It just never stirred the same place inside me as my relationship with Leah’s father. The stages of my life I went through with him were so intense: falling in love for the first time, having sex for the first time, moving in together, having a child, and dealing with all the weirdness of getting famous from an MTV reality show. He was part of everything that happened to me, just like I was part of everything that happened to him. We were completely together. It’s just impossible to think of those years without thinking of him. It’s even hard to think about who I am or what my life is without him, because he’s attached to all of those memories.

So honestly, I believe that’s the reason I didn’t get too emotional with those other guys. Not because I’m a damn sociopath.

Anyway, it’s not like nobody’s ever moved me since him. There was one guy who really made a mark on me after Leah’s father, and he stuck by me more than almost anyone else through the next lowest point of my life.

Yeah, the next lowest point. That’s right. Trust me, we haven’t hit the bottom yet.

To catch up on where we are now, this was the situation. I wasn’t with Leah’s father, and I didn’t have Leah. And whenever I couldn’t see her, my life was just parties, pills, and sex. I couldn’t go out enough. I was drinking with paparazzi, going out with friends, hitting up the bars, and acting crazy. I was beyond all thoughts of rehab. I was just filling my nights with all the crazy shit I could pack in.

One night, I dragged my friend Sallie out to this bar called Jimmy’s, and we were talking and drinking and having fun when these two dudes walked in with a girl.

One of these guys was fucking hot. He was just chiseled to the core. Like a country boy with the body of a Greek god, I swear to you, and these beautiful blue eyes! I noticed him as soon as he walked in. He and his group started playing pool behind us, and I just kept carrying on with him in the corner of my eye, just admiring this gorgeous man. At some point, after awhile, Sallie had said something really funny and I turned away from her and let out this stupid giggle— and at the same time I caught his eye. It was the funniest little moment. I don’t know how it worked.

But this beautiful guy walked up to me, pulled up a chair, and started talking. Right away there was this spark of chemistry between us like hardly anything I’d ever felt before. His name was Dan.

We ended up going home that night and making out, and everything about it was so unusual and awesome. We didn’t even have sex that night. We ended up waiting for two weeks, which was a little unusual for me at the time—not to pull another shocker on you or anything. But when we finally did, it was like magic. Our connection was so perfect and insane; we just let loose and went wild with each other like neither of us had ever done with anybody before that. I remember afterward, we were just looking at each other in complete surprise. That’s how good it was.

I don’t know how I got together with this guy at the time I did. Dan was so sweet and so genuine, he balanced me out as much as anybody could have at a time when I had gone so crazy. I really needed what he gave me. We ended up getting together and having a beautiful relationship. We were so happy. We never fought. We made love five times a day, whenever we could. It was insane. Perfect, really.

There was never any drama with him. I remember one time we went to dinner and then wound up at some bar, and I was out dancing with the DJ on the floor. That might have bothered another guy. Dan just stood on the side laughing, having a good time with me. There wasn’t any jealousy, just fun and affection and this kind of classic all-American romance, or something. That night we drove my Lincoln through the field between our apartments to get back to his place and spend the night together. We were so passionate, it was almost like nothing else I’ve ever had. It was hot. It was beautiful. It was just the perfect chemistry.

But if you can get a sense of what kind of guy he was from the way I describe him, a good country boy with a sweet personality, you can see the obvious problem. It definitely doesn’t take a rocket scientist. He was a good influence on me, but I was already beyond reach. There was just no stopping how wild I was at that point, and I was definitely too wild for him. I was taking everything so far at the time it would have tested anybody’s limits. I wasn’t partying like a normal person. I wasn’t having sex like a normal person. Everything I was doing was extreme by default.

I didn’t even mean to shock him as much as I did sometimes. There were things I did to hang out that I just thought were fun, but when I’d bring him along and see his reaction I’d actually see the gap in craziness there was between us. One night when Dan called me after work, I happened to be out with a bunch of guy friends at a strip club. You know, just the regular stuff you do when your boyfriend’s at work. Dan was so easygoing, it wasn’t the kind of thing that could freak him out or make him upset. So what did I do? I called him to come over and join us.