I mentioned that I realized I was addicted to opiates (or did I ever really realize it?) just when I’d left Jeff Greenberg’s office to head toward the other side of the Paramount lot to work in the more corporate environment of the network television talent department. I missed Jeff’s office and found myself grossly under challenged working in an all business milieu. Jeff’s office in the Marx Bros. Building was homey and happy. Being on the corporate side was a different world . My boss, The VP of Casting for network television was a nice woman and easy to work for, there simply wasn’t enough for me to do. I knew I’d made a mistake in leaving Jeff’s and as my sadness kicked in, my opiate use increased. And it didn’t increase because I wanted to get higher—my tolerance increased so rapidly that I was needing to take pills every day just to get through the day. Then triple the pills every day, just to keep from getting sick. If I’d had a crystal ball and had known the swiftness with which I’d get addicted, I never would have accepted the first prescription after the root canal. But opiates work on their own timetable. I took the pills and what a falling off was there.
Something else happened when I went back on opiates: I ended up doing coke and alcohol again, which I hadn’t done it seven years. The craving and need for pain pills was so intolerable, I needed some high, any high and that’s when I turned back to coke and drink. I got home from work one night and, after dinner with Julia, I announced I was leaving to visit my friend, Mona. Mona lived in a glass house at the top of Mulholland that overlooked the entire city. She had a doctor who’d write her prescriptions for Vicodin or Oxycontin or morphine, and I thought maybe we could get him on the phone saying it was an emergency. I said good-bye to Julia who was in bed by this time watching the news and told her I’d be home soon. If she found my running out of the house at ten PM odd, she didn’t say anything. She had learned not to contradict or question me. I could be an arrogant bitch and was definitely the alpha in the relationship. This is nothing I’m proud of today and something I’d live to regret. What Julia didn’t know was that I’d gotten hooked on opiates. I hid them well and they had no smell. I ran to my car in the garage, pulled out of the driveway and I made a left onto Ventura Boulevard then up Laurel Canyon to Mulholland, a street set down like a rattlesnake along the crest of the hill separating the valley from the “other side of the hill.”
I got to Mona’s within ten minutes; she’d been expecting me.
“Call Dr. Diamond” I said before so much as a “hello” as I was in excruciating pain from withdrawal.
“Okay silly I told you I would.Sit down first.”
I really didn’t want to sit but did. Mona picked up the phone and dialed the doctor’s number but got his exchange. Suddenly sounding pained she said, “Yes hi this is Mona Knight. It’s an emergency I really need to speak to Dr. Diamond. What kind of emergency? I’m in terrible pain I think I tore something in my back.” We waited an hour but he never called. Instead Mona had coke in the house and once I found out about the coke I asked to do some casually tossing way seven sober years off coke and alcohol because the pleasure center in my brain had been ignited by the opiates. We sat in her living room with a view straight to Palos Verdes and Mona chopped up the coke and laid it out in lines on a mirror. I did some and then I did more and more and more. I was running on pure animal cravings now. Craving for any drug that would put me in an altered state. Nonetheless, I was most interested in getting opiates to calm down the terrible jonesing I was having.
“Try Dr. Diamond again,” I said to Mona. “How long since I called him last?” She asked.
“I don’t know but a long time.”
“Hello this is Mona again for Dr. Diamond, can you please have him call me? It’s important.”
Now Dr. Diamond was a psychiatrist not a pain doctor so I never really understood how he could prescribe the opiates. But this was a different time, and I didn’t care if he were a veterinarian as long as he could write a prescription. We resumed doing the coke then Mona disappeared and returned with a mostly eaten bag of potato chips. It had a few crumbs left on the bottom.
“Here you want what’s left of this?” She said proffering the crinkled potato chip bag to me, followed by “Just call me Perle Mesta.” Mona could always make me laugh no matter how badly I felt. We proceeded to do more coke and play guitars. And do more coke and try to watch tv. The whole time on the edge of our seats waiting for the Dr. Diamond call which didn’t seem to be coming.
“Should we . . . “
“Yes,” Mona said, I’ll go call Dr. Diamond.
We still had no luck with Dr. Diamond. If you put any drug in me I will crave and use till the wheels fall off. This was happening with the coke now. I wanted more and more.
We were close to out of coke so we had another gram delivered. It was as though I’d never stopped doing coke seven years ago. Addiction is a disease that progresses in the absence of use, so my craving for coke had reached the same level it would have had I been doing coke the last seven years—my tolerance went up accordingly. Mona was way more patient and relaxed in the way she did drugs. Hell, everyone was way more relaxed in the way they did drugs. I tried to focus on the tv but I couldn’t.
“Mona . . . “
“Okay,” she said grabbing the phone, “This is Mona calling again for Dr. Diamond, it’s an emergency.”
Dr. Diamond didn’t seem to be too concerned with her emergencies, I imagine she’d put him through quite a few.
Mona and I had been doing drugs together since we were kids in high school. But her use, though adequate, never took her to the dark places mine did. I had car accidents, passed out at people’s houses. I’d fall off my chair at restaurants.
I paced. I sat. I drank water. I pet the animals. I lay down and tried to watch tv. I checked my watch for the next Dr. Diamond call. All and all I was a twisted wreck.
And the next day was the Casting Society Awards. It was one AM by now and I’d calculated that if I got home by two or three AM at the latest I could get enough sleep to be presentable enough to sit at the Paramount table for the awards ceremony.
By two AM I left. There was no return call from Dr. Diamond. I was just praying I could sleep with all that coke in me and not wake up Julia. I entered our townhouse, with its exposed brick wall and fireplace and felt grateful to be home, but I realized I’d never go to sleep without something to take: a pill, a drink, something. That’s when I noticed the bottle of Bailey’s Irish Creme in the kitchen. It must have been a gift I wouldn’t use. I poured myself a tumbler full, and as with coke, I hadn’t had a drink in seven years. I gulped it down. I thought the creme would cut the smell of the alcohol and was sure no one could tell I’d been drinking the next day. I thought I’d smell like a milkshake. I got upstairs and snuck into bed beside Julia and Saffy when suddenly I heard Julia say,
“Have you been drinking??” You could smell the booze. Now we were both worried about how I was going to get to the Casting Society awards. Julia only knew me as a sober member of AA. yet she didn’t judge me on this night or any other. She never gave me a hard time. She only worried about me. I think I got an hour’s sleep when it was time to get up to go into work where the executives would travel together to the awards. I had one problem: I was still drunk. I reeked of booze and had cocaine caked nostrils which I kept going to the bathroom to wash off. But I could never get the coke completely off, like Duncan’s blood on Lady Macbeth’s hand, remnants of the white powder remained. Everyone in the car knew I was high. When we got to the Beverly Hilton where the awards were taking place, everyone in my field would know I was high.
Jeff and Sheila sat at our table, as did some other casting directors working for Paramount. I ran into my favorite agent, Jonathan Howard, who must have seen me stagger toward him yelling “Heeeeyyyyyy Jon-thin.” Now these are just the people I remember seeing. There were plenty of agents and casting directors who saw me that I wasn’t aware of. I was humiliated the next day but continued my alcohol and coke run for some time. I don’t know how I didn’t get fired. Or confronted even. Everyone in the casting department was very kind to me or else they didn’t notice what was going on which would have been next to impossible.
I remember sitting in my office one day, my nostril’s caked with coke when in walks an actor named Frank Converse. He had done Shakespeare with my sister, Jackie and her husband, Ted in Stratford Connecticut and Frank (who was also in the acting company) was actually the person who had taught me to ride a bicycle when I was a little girl.
“Cara, I’m Frank Converse, I knew your father.” He’d forgotten about Shakespeare at Stratford that summer with Jackie and Ted. “You taught me how to ride a bike.” I said but I kept my head down and wouldn’t make eye contact with him. Here was someone I’d remembered with such affection and I couldn’t even be friendly or look up for fear of being discovered. He must have thought I was just rude, which agonized me.
Two weeks later I was offered the Carsey/Werner Job. Within one month of taking the job I checked myself into the hospital to detox.
I love and hate this story. Thank you Cara
Another wonderful read!