Magnificent Desolation (20 page)

A
FTER THE FUNERAL
, I returned to L.A., and initiated the divorce from Joan. We parted with no additional malice or rancor; we were both too mentally exhausted to fight over anything. Our marriage ended not so much with a loud blow-out as with a slow dwindling away of the energy required to maintain it. I moved into the Oakwood Apartments in Woodland Hills, a nearby section of Los Angeles, so I could stay in contact with our kids, and Joan and I remained friends over the years.

Meanwhile, my drinking was becoming more of a public issue. At one point, Perry Winston, a friend and fellow pilot, wrote a letter to me, frankly chiding me that as a national hero I needed to be more
responsible about my drinking. Ironically, Perry worked for a liquor company, and the numbers on his plane were 100 PW, which could have been 100 Perry Winston, or 100 Proof Whiskey. Perry’s letter irritated me.
Why is this guy on my case
, I pouted.
Doesn’t he recognize that I know what I’m doing?
But then even a worse thought occurred to me:
Maybe he is right.

Perry was one of the few people not in a recovery group ever to confront me about my drinking. Unfortunately, while landing his plane at Orange County, he hit some lights during his final approach and crashed. Perry did not survive, and I lost a true friend.

D
URING THE DIVORCE
process, I lived alone and tended to get extremely down on myself. My friend Jack Daniel’s, however, never failed to lift my spirits, albeit falsely. During this time, on my “up” days I was active, traveling, and working; I shared some of my latest homemade energy conservation inventions (along with a mock-up of Apollo) at the Inventors Expo II at the Los Angeles Convention Center, appeared at mental health and charity events, and even granted a few interviews. And I had the beginnings of an idea for a science-fiction story about space travel between star systems that I was calling “Encounter with Tiber.” In what became almost a regular pattern, though, when I felt the paralyzing gloom coming on, I’d begin to drink heavily. At first the alcohol soothed the depression, making it at least somewhat bearable. But the situation progressed into depressive-alcoholic binges in which I would withdraw like a hermit into my apartment.

When I ventured out into the real world, I traipsed from doctor to doctor, trying to find help, thinking that I was fighting depression and not accepting the fact that alcoholism could be just as much of an illness for which I needed help. The best thing one psychologist had to offer me was information about where I could go to purchase a good-looking hairpiece. He suggested that I seek out the services of the same guy who had prepared a hairpiece for one of the stars on the television show
Bonanza.
I thought,
Why am I listening to this sick guy?
I left his
office, went around the corner, and at the first liquor store I found, I bought a bottle of Scotch. I couldn’t even wait until I got home. I swilled several swigs before pulling out of the parking lot.

I returned to UCLA to see Dr. Flinn, whom I had been seeing off and on over the last couple of years. Dr. Flinn referred me to the Veterans Administration hospital, where I could be admitted for a few days to dry out. While I was hospitalized there, Dr. Flinn came to visit me and suggested that I attend some of their Alcoholics Anonymous recovery meetings, held downstairs for the patients at the hospital.

I went to a meeting—in body, but not in spirit. As I looked around the room, I couldn’t see myself with this group. There were master sergeants and airmen and others, but nobody with whom I could identify, or so I thought. I was convinced I had no future with these people. I felt that I was too smart for this program; surely their simplistic answers and open admission of alcoholism could not help someone like me.

Some people get mean, violent, loud, or rude when they drink. I did not respond to alcohol in that manner. I wasn’t pugnacious, but I was less inhibited and felt more upbeat when I drank. I was charming in a sloppy sort of way; in my estimation, I was enlightened. To other people, I was smashed. But rather than admit I was running out of options as my drinking habits intensified, I chose to find new friends in different bars. That’s where I met Beverly Van Ziles.

Beverly was an interior decorator, with the kind of personality who enjoyed taking care of others; she was willing to manage the details of my life, so I was glad to let her. I moved from Oakwood Apartments in the Valley, to Federal Avenue in L.A., to be closer to Beverly’s apartment on Barry Avenue, one street over.

By 1975 I was drinking more heavily and more frequently. I’d stop drinking for a few days, and sometimes went as long as two weeks without a drink, but then I’d become frustrated over my inability to persuade anyone to use my scientific knowledge or ideas, and the gloom set in like an incessant London fog. The worse I felt, the more I tried to relieve my frustration through a bottle of Scotch, withdrawing
into myself. I shut myself off from friends and family members, unplugging the telephone and often staying in my apartment for days at a time, the shades drawn, the doors and windows secured. Slumped in a chair, or in bed, a bottle in my hand, I stared aimlessly at the news channels on television.

When my food ran out and I got hungry enough, I would throw on some clothes, get in the car, and drive down to the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken to bring home several buckets of barbecued chicken, but not before stopping at the corner liquor store to restock my supply of the hard stuff. When I got back to my apartment, I retreated to my bedroom, feeling satisfied that I could hide away for another couple of weeks.

Beverly pleaded with me to stop drinking, to pour the booze down the drain, and to straighten up my apartment. When I ignored her, she did the dirty work for me, dumping the booze and cleaning the untidy mess in which I was wallowing. I appreciated her attempts to help me, but her words and actions only plunged me deeper into despair.

Finally, in early August, she threatened to break off our relationship, confiding to me that she felt defeated. I persuaded her to give me one more chance. Beverly brought me to her apartment so she could look after me, and that night I killed off one last bottle of Scotch. The next morning, August 7, 1975, I checked in—ironically—to Beverly Manor, a civilian hospital in Orange County where Dr. Flinn had made arrangements. The hospital had formerly been a nursing home, but was now well known as a premier alcoholism rehabilitation center. I stayed there for twenty-eight days under the care of the hospital’s medical director, Dr. Max Schneider.

As Cindy Simpson, the admissions receptionist, sought to fill out the paperwork, it was obvious that she didn’t recognize me. When she asked for my mother’s maiden name, I couldn’t resist. “Take a guess,” I said.

“I have no idea,” the woman replied.

“I’ll give you a hint,” I toyed with her. “Her maiden name begins with an
m
and ends with
n.
”

“I’m really sorry, sir; I honestly don’t know.”

“It’s
Moon!”
I said. “I’ve been there, you know.” The receptionist dutifully wrote the name into the space, no doubt wanting to complete the forms as hurriedly as possible. She probably never fully realized that my mother’s maiden name was Marion Moon.

I was assigned to a room with a roommate. We used only first names; the hospital attempted to maintain some level of anonymity among its clients. In the early 1970s, it was not as socially acceptable for celebrities to seek treatment for alcoholism, so the hospital tried to handle matters as discreetly as possible. In some ways I appreciated that, but there was something else in me that wanted people to know me, to recognize me as one of the first men to walk on the moon. Few did, or if they did, they didn’t let on, and it bugged me.

I had been treated for depression in several hospitals, but going to Beverly Manor was my first token admission that my problems stemmed from alcoholism as well. In truth, had it not been for Dr. Flinn and my girlfriend Beverly, I might not have acquiesced. I wasn’t convinced I needed to be there, but the doctors, nurses, and staff at the treatment center recognized immediately that my pride and strong ego worked against me as far as getting well was concerned.

I was especially miserable during the first few days—the detoxification period. Dr. Schneider informed us that to ease the discomfort of coming off alcohol, most of the new patients at Beverly Manor started out on some sort of drug—benzodiazodine, lithium, phenobarbitol, or something similar—taken in decreasing amounts over three to seven days. I sat with my arms folded across my chest, moody and sullen and a reluctant participant in the multitudinous meetings, group sessions, lectures about addiction, one-on-one counseling, and other cognitive therapy, designed to help a person recognize his or her feelings, and learn how to deal with them without alcohol and drugs. These sessions were not always comfortable; many of the patients—like me—had great difficulty admitting the damage that alcohol had done to their families, careers, or cognitive abilities. I was a resistant patient, avoiding any real confrontation with myself, for as long as I could. I especially
disliked the chores that the hospital expected me to do, as they did of all of the patients. My peers chided me, and eventually I did a better job of keeping my room neat and taking my turn in community tasks. But it was the loving, compassionate concern of the hospital’s staff that ultimately wore me down. They created an atmosphere in which I could safely admit my innermost vulnerabilities.

Finally, I was able to say the words and mean them: “Hi, I’m Buzz, and I’m an alcoholic.” At Beverly Manor I learned more about the dynamics of alcoholism, and was encouraged to begin a “twelve-step” type of recovery plan. The thrust of the program cut through all of the excuses for alcoholism and the predispositions toward alcoholism. The doctors, nurses, and staff were wonderfully supportive, and I felt that I was making progress again. My lead counselor was Barbara Phillips, a real drama queen with a great sense of humor and a contagious laugh; Barbara was a recovering alcoholic herself.

Linda Lederer, the occupational therapist who worked directly with me at Beverly Manor, was tremendously patient with me, and wonderfully encouraging, but she could also be firm when necessary. When I had several cases of my books sent in to the hospital and was signing them for my fellow patients, Linda balked. “Buzz, you can’t do that. We’re trying to maintain your anonymity here, not to promote your book!” Linda also recognized the issue of pride as a major part of my denial. She wanted me to drop the façade that everything was okay with me. “You don’t have to be anybody special here, Buzz. Just be you. That’s special enough.”

Linda directed group sessions on assertive communication, time management, therapeutic exercise, teambuilding sessions, and even crafts workshops. Beverly Manor offered crafts of all sorts, everything from knitting to macramé, ceramics, needlepoint, and leather work. The idea was to have a hobby, but the activities also fostered camaraderie. I chose to make a pair of leather moccasins, but I had trouble with the instructions. I could land a spacecraft on the moon, but I had difficulty deciding which loop of rawhide to stitch through various
parts of the leather. I eventually completed the moccasins and wore them for the remainder of my stay at the hospital.

On one of my better days, while still at Beverly Manor, I received word that I had a visitor. The actor Cliff Robertson had stopped by to talk with me about the script for the television movie based on my book,
Return to Earth.
The movie was being produced by Alan King, a man better known as a comedian, but who also had a desire to present dramatic works. He would be assisted by his partner, Rupert Hitzig, who had worked out the deal with me originally when I was still married to Joan and living at Hidden Hills.

Cliff Robertson was to play me in the movie, so he wanted to get to know me. I enjoyed talking with Cliff and discovered that he was an airplane enthusiast himself, and a pilot with more than 1,500 hours in the cockpit. He owned several vintage airplanes, including a British Spitfire and a German ME-108 trainer, and he flew them all. We quickly struck up a lasting friendship, and when I was released from Beverly Manor, he took me flying in one of his biplanes.