It's So Easy: And Other Lies (45 page)

Susan and I decided to rent a house back down in L.A. and I took a leave of absence from Seattle University. Our first priority was to find a good school for Grace, who was about to start kindergarten. We found one we loved in Studio City and then worked backward from there to find a place to live with easy access to the school.

In Seattle, Susan and I had built up quite a nice circle of friends, a lot of whom had kids the same age as ours. Now back in L.A., we reconnected with one of the few couples we knew with a growing family—Richard and Laurie Stark. Back in 1993, I had hosted a shower for their first baby up at my house on Edwin Drive. (I’d had the place cleaned and made sure none of my knucklehead buddies stopped by during the baby shower.) I had met Richard in 1988, when he was peddling jewelry and leather he designed from the back of his Harley. In the interim, his little business had grown into a full-fledged company called Chrome Hearts, with hundreds of employees and stores all over the world. I’d been among his early customers and we’d become friends. Richard and Laurie now had three kids and were glad to have me and Susan back in L.A.

This period was really good for us. We were facing different challenges from the ones we were used to as a family, but Susan trusted my judgment and supported my every move. What more could a guy hope for?

Then I started to get sick a lot. At first, I chalked it up to Grace’s being in school—she must have been bringing home new kid colds all the time. Hard physical activity was still the key to my ability to meditate, and the endorphin spill into my system also helped stave off drug and alcohol cravings. I was getting sick so much by this point that it was hindering my ability to go to the gym. Not a good thing for a guy like me. And sometimes I skipped a workout or a morning meditation even when I wasn’t feeling sick. Hey, I was busy. After so many years of sobriety, I had convinced myself I would never use again, even if I let my routine slip. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, this attitude would come back to haunt me.

Eventually I got sick so often that I began to worry. I shuddered to think what might be wrong. Some strange immunity deficiency? Cancer? HIV? I asked my doctor to run some tests on me. The tests all came back negative, however, and he said he thought it was just a recurring sinus infection. Even after he mentioned that, it never dawned on me that my coke-damaged sinuses might not function very effectively as a filter against germs.

At least I had plenty of work to do through the end of 2003 and the first part of 2004. Velvet Revolver decided to record our album at NRG Studios, the same place where I had done basic tracks for the Neurotic Outsiders record. I’d had a great experience there before and so, all in good spirits, we began work on our debut record,
Contraband.

I don’t think any band can survive without at least one person who helps to fuse the personalities and defuse the inevitable problems. It’s just like any job in that regard, except in a band there is no formal boss. Just four or five outcasts who, in our case, had always used shitloads of drugs and alcohol to deal with life and its conflicts. So much drama started to swirl in and around the band that someone had to sort of take charge. It fell to me. This was, I believe, the first time any of us had entered a band partnership while married. Not that the wives posed any real problems, but there were twice as many opinions—and at times very, very strong ones. It was fine for now, just different.

We kicked off our first tour in May 2004, in St. Louis.
Contraband
entered the charts at number one upon its release in June.

Touring made it difficult to be rigorous about my workouts and meditation.

I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Then the same thing would happen the next day.

And I continued to get sick on tour, further limiting my time in the gym. I was tired and I was beat-up mentally—not from the shows themselves but from the constant background shit. We had a few weeks off in July after the U.S. leg before we were due in Europe. One night as I was trying to figure something out, Susan asked, “Why are you always the one who has to fix all the problems?”

The first week of August we flew to Denmark to begin a five-week leg through Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, and the UK, with some additional festival dates in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Holland. At first, I made sure to get in a workout and meditation every morning. Sometimes I’d hit the gym several times a day just to clear my mind. But then I started getting to it less and less frequently.

Just too busy,
I told myself.
And besides, you’re strong now.

If so many people can depend on me—my family, the band—I must be dependable, I must be strong. Hell, I’m even keeping Scott’s shit together—I’m the man!

By the time we finished that leg, I was lucky to manage ten seconds of meditation at some point during the day.

The same pattern accompanied subsequent legs. We had been out on tour—with breaks here and there—for thirteen months by the time we arrived in Germany in June 2005, for a second European leg. Workouts and meditations dwindled again. Then I stopped altogether. Meanwhile the band started to show cracks. Being around drugs and booze had proved manageable; handling band business amid increasingly rancorous interpersonal drama, however,
drove me fucking nuts.

I had a stash of Xanax pills for panic attacks. I had them in my backpack all the time for emergency use on flights. Though I had been able to really get a handle on my attacks in everyday life, I did still get uncomfortable when flying. It wasn’t the plane-could-go-down part of flying that freaked me out, it was the being-stuck-in-a-metal-tube-with-no-way-to-get-out part. For the most part, just knowing I had Xanax with me was sufficient to ward off any potential attack. I knew the drug worked quickly, so having that little bottle in my carry-on bag was enough to keep me panic-free on plane rides. Between 1994 and 2004, I had taken a quarter pill—you could cut them to avoid taking a full dose—on three occasions, always on an airplane. Except for those three occasions, I had always been able to go to my place, the calm safe house I knew from martial arts training.

One day in Essen, Germany, my shoulders and back were tense and my head was throbbing. I felt trapped. Trapped, like on a plane. As I sat in my hotel room, I reached into my backpack and took the Xanax bottle out of the side pocket of my bag.

I looked at the bottle for a few minutes, then opened it and shook one of the pills out onto the palm of my hand. I swallowed a Xanax pill sitting in a hotel room because everything seemed to be coming down on my shoulders.

Fuck.

It wasn’t for a flight. It was for “stress.”

This is shady.

I was worried.

Then the pill kicked in.

Mmmm.

Everything is fine.

I had a solution to the chaos I felt encroaching on me.

The next day, I took two pills. My high tolerance for drugs came right back.

By the third day, I was figuring out how to get hold of more pills. Lots more pills. I called the promoters in the cities we would be visiting next and had them arrange prescriptions from local doctors. I told them I had panic attacks and needed this and that. I had a cocktail going real fast—Xanax and Soma, a muscle relaxer.

I had forgotten I was an addict.

Wait, was I an addict?

Nah.

Lie.

Dave Kushner suspected something was wrong with me.

“Duff, man, you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”

Lie.

My workouts actually picked up steam. I would go to the gym and fool myself into thinking it wasn’t so bad. I was still on track. After all, I was still working out. Lie.

Susan called me one afternoon.

“You sound funny,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re slurring your words. Are you sick?”

“Maybe a little stuffed up, but I’m fine. I’m just really, really tired.”

I’m fine.

I
am
fine.

It’s not like I’m drinking or doing coke. This shit was probably developed in a lab at fucking Harvard Med School.

Doctors gave it to me.

Lie.

I thought about my wife and kids all the time and felt guilty for letting them down. That just compounded things.

I’ll deal with this soon.

I’ve got what it takes.

I’ll go cold turkey as soon as I’m home.

Soon.

I arrived back in early July 2005, with a few weeks off before another American leg. Susan and the kids were in Seattle. It was warm—eighty-five degrees, which in Seattle feels like 100—and they were all playing in the backyard when I got home.

I was shivering.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to bed.”

I was too fucked up to play with the kids. Susan had never known me fucked up, so she didn’t recognize it.

Every bone ached, and when I went inside I threw up secretly in the downstairs bathroom.

I went upstairs to our bedroom and called Ed.

“Hey, man, I’m having some big problems.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m strung out. I’m fucking strung out.”

“Okay, do you want me to come get you? I can come right over,” said Ed.

“Yeah, I need to go to a support group or something.”

Ed said he knew a group.

“Ed, there’s one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Susan doesn’t know.”

Ed drove into the driveway less than an hour later. I was still shivering, freaking out. Together we attended a meeting of drug addicts. Afterward a friend of Ed’s came over to talk to us.

“What’s your buddy coming off of?” he asked.

I answered, even though the question was only indirectly posed to me.

“Xanax, Soma,” I said.

He asked me how much I was doing. I told him the story: started with a single pill and two weeks later I hit twenty-two pills a day.

“Oh, man, you can’t fucking cold-turkey that. You could have a seizure.”

I had no idea.

“You have to go see a doctor. You have to taper it down. You should go to rehab.”

I went home.

Still I didn’t tell Susan.

With my stash of pills I figured I would just taper down my intake on my own. I took a few pills.

In the middle of the night, I woke up, ran to the bathroom, and threw up.

I began to cry. I was so disappointed in myself.

Susan woke up, too, and came into the bathroom, where I was slumped next to the toilet.

“I’m strung out on prescription pills,” I said, bawling my eyes out.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Once I’d told Susan, the first thing I did the next morning was to call my Uncle John, who was both sober and a doctor.

It’s hard to imagine he wasn’t worried, but he calmly reassured me that I would be okay. He said he would call some doctor friends to find out what I needed to do. Soon he called me back and explained the basics of tapering down the cocktail of pills I was using. He offered to set up a meeting with one of the specialists he knew.

I declined.

I needed to get down to L.A. quickly. For one thing, I felt I should get back into the House of Champions. For another, Velvet Revolver had obligations to honor, including a string of Ozzfest dates.

I tried all sorts of Chinese herbs to help with the withdrawal. I was jonesing so bad I would take anything to feel better. I was also emaciated—down to 145 pounds. As my drug intake had risen, I had just ceased to eat.

I just wanted to get to the dojo.

Can I beat this?

Yes.

Benny the Jet, it turned out, had flown to Europe. He was out of town for a few weeks.

Another sensei, Majit, volunteered to help me.

“Don’t worry, man, we’re going to get you better,” he said.

Majit was straight-up martial arts. He didn’t understand drug addiction. But I knew that if I asked him not to let me leave the dojo all day, he wouldn’t let me leave. I needed pain.

Up to this point, I had never gone to see a doctor who specialized in addiction. I never delved that deep. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was white-knuckling it. I’d been on a high from martial arts for so long. Now, back in L.A., I went to see a specialist. Dave Kushner from VR went with me.

The doctor explained the process of tapering down and assembled a kit. He also prescribed an anti-seizure medication.

“I’d really like to see you go to rehab,” he said.

“I’m not going to rehab. I have to go on tour.”

“It’s not a good idea for you to have all of these,” he said, motioning to the drug supplies meant to be used to taper down my usage.

Dave stepped in and agreed to hold the supplies and taper me down himself. The whole thing would take a month.

The first week of August 2005, Velvet Revolver hit the road again for the final month of full-time touring. Dave doled out my taper-down drugs. Susan came out to see me at several stops along the way. It was a group effort and it worked.