The Harder They Fall (12 page)

So then I had another book come out,
Joe Jones
, which was just a devastating flop. I couldn’t really work by then. My mind was getting sort of spongy. I always worked really hard. I sat down at the same time every
morning, which was 8 a.m. I would always wake up early. Pretty sick, I would go for a run, take a shower, have a lot of coffee, and have some speed. I might smoke a little bit of pot to just get going, and I wouldn’t drink till the afternoon. I would try to get my work done. It was like I was on an elevator and kept going down, one more floor, and trying to make it be okay. Then I would try to set limits. I would only drink beer and wine. Night Train, wino wine, or Mickey’s Stout Malt Liquor, the “green death.” So I’d say, “I’m only going to drink beer tonight,” but I’d drink six or seven 16 oz. Mickey’s or Ranier Ale, which is even stronger, get shit-faced, take a bunch of sleeping pills, and go to sleep.

I remember my one effort at sobriety. It was called going “on the wagon.” I was kind of aware that there were sober people out there. Communities with people not drinking, and some of them were very hip. There were a number of musicians that I loved, and writers, who had crashed and burned and were sober. I would hear stories about them and think, “I’m not that bad” or “I was still so young.” I was thirty. I was thirty-two when I quit on July 6, 1986. So I tried to go “on the wagon,” so I could have some control over my drinking, and this is what it looked like.

I decided I would go “on the wagon” and not have anything at all to drink. This was on a Monday. I would just take some Valium. I had a Nike box filled with Benzos [Benzedrine], opiates, and speed, so that all bases were covered. So, I would have a couple Valium and maybe go for a walk. Well, I had a couple Valium and realized it was ludicrous, and that the new rule on the first day of being “on the wagon” was that I would only have two beers at night, come rain or shine. So, I went and got two 16 oz. Ranier Ales and drank one very quickly, to get off. Then I took a Valium, and then I tried to sip the second one. (I had to take a Valium and a number of Halcyons just to get the night to end.) It was about 6:30 p.m. I woke up the next morning at 6 a.m. I got about twelve hours sleep because I had taken those Halcyons, which is a very potent sleeping pill. They were deadly, with lots of terrible side effects. I felt great ’cause I had slept for twelve hours. I loved this! I loved being “on the wagon.”

I thought, “Two beers and pills. That’s all.” People would call and say, “How you doing?” And I’d say, “Great, I’m ‘on the wagon.’” I’d always call
people in the morning when I was hungover and try to figure out how badly it had gone. I wouldn’t remember what had happened at the bar or in the car. I’d call and say, “How you doing, Gary?” And you’d say, “I think we need to take a little break from each other, and not talk for a while.” And I wouldn’t have any idea of what had happened. So I would get on the phone trying to piece together what happened.

I was living on a little tiny houseboat in Sausalito, on San Francisco Bay, and it was very beautiful. There were tons of drug dealers on the docks—lots of bohemians, hippie types, and we all drank together, but I preferred drinking alone. I’d go to North Beach, steal everyone’s cocaine. People would buy me drinks ’cause I was funny and sweet. Then I’d have sex with people in the bathroom. Everyone seemed to like that in a girl! People would give me their little bottles of cocaine, and I’d go into the bathroom and I’d do a couple of huge lines, like Sherman cigarettes. Then I’d put a little aside in a bit of toilet paper and put it in my pocket, so by the end of the night, I might have ten, twelve little packages of coke. I’d be able to go home and be by myself with it and a fifth of Bushmills, and come down slowly. That’s what I was doing when I
wasn’t
“on the wagon.”

When I
was
“on the wagon,” on day two, it was just two Ranier Ales and all the pills, and I fell asleep about 7 p.m. and I felt great. On the third night, I wanted to stay up longer, so I got a third Ranier Ale and had all the Valium and Halcyon and woke up and felt
pretty
great. Then on the fourth day, I thought, “This is just ridiculous,” so I got four Ranier Ales, took a bunch of Valium and Halcyon. On the fifth day, I thought, “This really works,” ’cause I wasn’t vomiting, I wasn’t sick. I didn’t have the yolk sack from
Bonfire of the Vanities
rolling in me. I was drinking so much less. So the fifth day, I went to the store and got into an alcoholic rage of “Who do they think they are trying to control me?” So, first I got my four Ranier Ales. I was so angry I was going to get a couple more. Then I got a fifth of Bushmills and went back to the room and got plowed. That was my week of being “on the wagon.”

When I was thirty-two, the elevator had gone down one more floor. I had finally reached a place where I couldn’t bear it. I screwed something up very badly. Right around the Fourth of July, I had to pick up a package
for a family that had a child that was mentally damaged. A beautiful child. They needed for me to be on the dock by 9 a.m. to pick up something that was being delivered that had something to do with their kid. And I slept right through it. Oh my God! It wasn’t a toy for the kid; it was something serious. I don’t know ’cause I never even got it.

Then on the Fourth of July, 1986, I was right off the docks of San Francisco Bay with my publisher, Bill Turnbull of North Point Press, who published my third book to really devastating reviews, which had really plummeted me down the chute. You know, my alcoholism was like the game Chutes and Ladders. I went up a little bit. I might get something written, got published somewhere and read widely. I’d think, “Oh this is the new me, really on top of things,” and I’d take three steps forward. Then I’d go further down the ladder than I’d ever been. Then I’d haul myself up again.

I had gone down a bad ladder when my third book came out. I was with my publisher and his wife, and we were on this little boat watching the fireworks across the bay. We had been drinking all day at a Fourth of July party and I had been smoking dope, the non-habit-forming marijuana, and I couldn’t stop thinking about climbing off of the side of the boat. I was in a good mood; that was what was so troubling. I was with two cherished friends, but I was very drunk, watching the fireworks. I could not get this tape loop to stop. I imagined myself climbing off the side, bobbing up and down in the water, and then going under. I couldn’t stand the thought of getting up again in the morning, ’cause I knew what it was going to be like. I knew I would be sick. Would I have taken someone to bed I didn’t know, or even worse, did know and shouldn’t be with? I would feel rocky and scared ’cause I wouldn’t know what happened.

Our dad died long ago, about seven years, and my younger brother was still feeling very fragile. That was the last thought I had. I wasn’t going to climb overboard because Steve couldn’t handle it.

Bill and Mary walked me home and put me to bed. I woke up in the morning sick as a dog. Vomiting. I called Bill and Mary, and they were really worried. Bill, who I was very close to, said, “Oh Annie, you were really, really in a state last night.” That was just the worst thing anyone had ever
said to me: “in a state.” Because that just suggested real madness—Joan Crawford sort of madness. He said it with such grief. I said, “I know, I just need to take it easy.” So I wasn’t going to drink that day, and my kidneys really ached. I was experiencing that more and more because I was drinking a lot of gin. But it didn’t mean I would stop drinking martinis, under the right circumstances, which was like … if it was evening, and I had a bottle of gin! I learned I could flush my kidneys with cranberry juice. I wouldn’t think, “Maybe we should just lay off the gin.” I would think, “I need a cranberry flush.”

Now I decided to just drink beer again. Beer and Bushmills. So, after like three beers, I was off and running again. I ended up in the city, buying cocaine at one of the bars in North Beach, getting totally wasted. Stopping off at the bars on Lombard Street to get even more of everything, getting home after two in the morning, in a blackout.

The next morning, I realized I had two blackouts the previous night, which I’d never had before. I hadn’t gotten hardly any sleep because of the cocaine. I was very scared, so I was just going to drink wine. I took a bunch of Valium, and then I drank a pint of Bushmills and didn’t feel drunk. Sometimes I couldn’t get drunk and sometimes just a little bit would cause me to black out, or after two glasses I’d be impaired. I’d have to take some drugs to get stabilized.

Anyway, my boyfriend brought over two bottles of really expensive pinot noir, and we went up into the loft and went to bed. We started drinking and I blacked out. The third time in a row. I woke up around midnight, and the man was gone. I don’t know what happened at all that night, not that it matters. I guess we finished a bottle ’cause there was one left, but I felt a despair come over me like a niacin flush. A full-body flush of terror. I felt like I would have a blackout every night now, and I was truly scared to death.

That was the Sunday I agreed to pick up the important parcel for those people’s child, and I had overslept. Midnight that Sunday, as it was becoming Monday, I opened the last bottle of pinot noir, took three or four Halcyons—sort of flirting with suicide I think—threw ’em down like peanuts, drank half the wine, lay down, and overslept, so I couldn’t get up
for my friends. And that was my bottom.

I woke up on July 7 and it was just over. I don’t know why it wasn’t over July 6 or five years before, or the morning after the Basque restaurant. I ran out of gas, and I knew I was going to die. Either deliberately overdose on all these pills I had or on bad methedrine. I knew I was going to die. I just couldn’t stand being alive, and the funny thing was that I was warm and truly loved. I didn’t have clinical depression. I could get going. I could pick myself up.

So I called a friend who had been clean and sober for about eight years. A really old, beloved friend of my family. He never tried to con me into not drinking, or joining a recovery group, but he was always there for me. So I called him and said, “I really think I’m done.” And he said, “Oh, great.”

Well, it wasn’t great! He started introducing me to a number of people who were clean and sober and sticking together, and who had helped him get sober or who he had helped get sober. They kind of took me under their wing and told me what they had done. And I just thought, “What a fucking joke. You have got to be kidding.” I was religious. I couldn’t believe that I was ever as bad as they were ’cause they would tell me their stories, and I also couldn’t believe that I was anything like them. It was very different to be me. I’m a writer, an artist. People love me. A lot of people I was starting to get to know, who were helping me get sober, had real jobs, and they ended up losing everything. I had nothing to lose, sort of like Bobbie McGee.

I didn’t have a cent—was $12,000 in debt. When I got sober, I rented a houseboat for $300 a month. I didn’t have a car. I asked myself, “Do you want the car or do you want to stop drinking?” I had so many blackouts over the years; I had one time where I drove the car up on the curb in a blackout. I had dents in my car. I won’t ever know if I killed anybody with my car. I know I hit a dog once and kept going. I was in some sort of white-light terror flip-out. It was dark and I hit something and I know it was a dog. I hit a deer once and wrecked my car.

And three years before I quit drinking, I said to myself, “You either have to quit drinking or you have to get rid of the car.” Well, that was a no-brainer. I got rid of the car! I took cabs to North Beach, and I stayed home.
I like to be alone when I drink. And people would just sort of take me places, for coffee or we’d go to the movies or we’d go shopping at Longs.

I had a friend who was the main person that supported my sobriety in the first couple of years. She was this junkie who was also an alcoholic. She got clean in Synanon. She and I were always broke. She was older than I was and
hilarious
. I loved her more than life itself. She had what I wanted. She was hilariously funny and had been sober for ten years. I knew that she was as bad as me and that I was as bad as her. So we’d take like $30 and go to Longs or Walgreens and we’d each get a basket and make $30 go so far. One of the first things we got was the
Graceland
album for about $10 and $20 worth of stuff that made us really, really happy. All the cleaning stuff we needed and a new lipstick, a pad and a really great pen. You could get a ton of stuff for $20. I started to have simple, dumb joys and just kept hanging out with all these sober people.

I didn’t have any contact with my North Beach friends, and a couple of them had gotten sober too. I had lots of people to mentor me, and little by little, I started to learn how to bear being a human. I started to have better self-esteem ’cause I was doing esteemable things. If you wanted to have loving feelings, you did loving things, and that I could get out of myself and help somebody else. That i-s-m of alcoholism—I, self, me—I, self, me—I, self, me. The solution was God and service. Caring for other people, and so I just started healing slowly. My friend Jack, who was this person who helped me, who I called in the very beginning, said, “You are just going to want to tip over the fifty-five-gallon drum of shame and mess and failure and disappointment and terrible episodes of self-loathing and all the awful things you’ve done. All the ways you’ve hurt people. And you’re just going to want to tip it over, but it’s not going to work that way. But if you don’t drink, every time you tell the truth, every time you reach out to help somebody who is also trying to get sober, every time you try to make things right with somebody you hurt or fucked with, you take out a tablespoon. Every time you sit quietly and do your prayers and meditation you take out another tablespoon. Every time you move towards the light and solution instead of the problem, which is this terrible alcoholic mind and this inability to stop drinking once I started. Every time you do something else, you
take out another tablespoon.” That’s proven to be true for me.