Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict (10 page)

I’d never even done cocaine, and I knew next to nothing about it. All I’d done up to that point was drink and smoke cigarettes and pot. But before I even knew what I was doing I leaned forward and caught his hand as it was outside the window. The wind snapped both of our arms back. I cupped the bag of coke out of his hand before he could let it go flying down the highway and pulled it back into the car, into the backseat, into my pocket.

“I’ll take it,” was all I said.

On Emily’s birthday I
met up with her during my lunch break for a pill handoff and to give her a gift. It was a tiny, leather Smythson of Bond Street pouch on a key chain. The pouch, which was shaped liked an envelope and had a button snap, had the word
Pills
embossed in gold letters on it. She loved it. She’d been having a rough time lately: her boyfriend had been sleeping with another girl. “Are we being irresponsible?” she asked as she took several pills out of her bottle and loaded them into the Smythson envelope. “I mean, should we be worried?”

“I’m not worried,” I said. “I feel fine. I’m not addicted.”

“My problem is that it’s medicine,” she said. “I can always justify it. I mean, I’ve got pain. I can’t believe David is fucking that bitch.”

“I can’t believe you’re still fucking him,” I said. “You need to stop.”

“The thing about it is that pills make it so much easier, even if it means I can’t have an orgasm. They make me feel more in love with him. They coat loneliness with loveliness.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed, but I knew I was enabling her. I wanted her to stop putting herself in the bad situations that the pills brought her to, but she was still my one steady hookup at that point.

Until the following week when she received a letter from the FDA.

I was working from home, and she called me in a state of sheer panic.

“It says that Customs found a FedEx package at JFK with my name on it, full of a controlled substance,” she whispered. “It’s got my work address on it! What the fuck am I going to do?”

“What exactly does it say?” I asked.

“‘Please read the enclosed notice of Detention and Hearing carefully, since it explains why the package addressed to you violates U.S. law.’ I think I need to get a lawyer. There’s a number here that says I can call if I have any questions.”

“Don’t panic yet,” I said. “Call the number, find out what exactly this all means for you.”

“What if I get fired?” she said, near hysterics. “What if police show up here? I just got the corner office!”

“Just call,” I said and hung up. I wish I could say I was concerned for her—her future, her career—but I was pissed and panicked about where the hell we were going to get our pills now.

Emily didn’t call back until the end of the day.

“Sorry,” she said. “It took me a while to get up the courage. A woman answered and I said, ‘I just got a scary letter,’ and she said, ‘Did you order a prescription online?’ and I said yes. She said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ I asked if I had to make a court appearance, and she told me no, and to ignore the paperwork and just never do it again, because it means they have my name and they’ll be watching me.”

“Fuck,” I whispered. “What are we gonna do?”

I only had about thirty Norco left.

“Not order online,” she said. “One of us needs to start sleeping with a doctor.”

“Not it,” I called out, as if it was all just a game of tag, and hung up the phone. But her comment gave me an idea. I went onto Craigslist, under the M4M section, and searched “Doctor.” The Craigslist sex postings generally creeped me out, but they could be fun for a laugh or for free porn if I was alone and feeling uninspired, imagination-wise, since there were so many amateur pictures that came along with the posts. About fifteen posts came up. Most were from guys looking to play out doctor fantasies, but two were from supposed actual closeted doctors looking to hook up. I sat there staring at the computer for a long time, wondering how I could work out a trade for a prescription in exchange for something besides sex. Maybe I could start an email exchange until I discovered their identities. Hopefully, they would be married and I could blackmail them for pills. Or maybe I could even just threaten to expose their sex cruising to their hospital staff. Finally, thankfully, a little voice inside my head said,
You are acting craaaaazy
, and I quickly clicked off the page.

In the end the solution was much easier. I just posted a bulletin on my MySpace page, asking if anyone had any Vicodin they wanted to sell. By the next day I had three different offers.

I brought Emily along for the first deal. It was from a club promoter who threw parties I’d been going to for years. We met at a Starbucks near Union Square.

“I just bought this bottle off a friend,” he explained to me. “But I need money. I want to keep some for myself, though. I have to go visit my family soon, and I would never be able to do that without these.”

It was a bottle of sixty. We divided it up between the three of us in the Starbucks, then left to smoke cigarettes. We handed off the money while walking west on 13th Street, in front of a stretch of gorgeous brownstones, and parted ways on Sixth Avenue.

“That was easy,” said Emily as she swallowed two, dry. “But how often can we keep this up? This is only going to last me about three days.”

“I’ll keep working on it,” I said. I didn’t tell her I had two other deals already set up.

Emily and I were
returning from an evening press screening of
Shopgirl
, both high, when my cell phone rang. It was my boss in LA, and I debated letting it go to voice mail for a second before answering. We were near the office anyway, so if it was an emergency I could get to it quickly.

I ducked into a doorway on 34th Street, motioning for Emily to wait for me. She was staring up at the Empire State Building, slowly exhaling smoke.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry to call so late for you.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I could hear it in his voice and racked my brain for something I might have forgotten to do, a deadline I might have missed.

“The magazine is folding,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Shit,” I said. “What happened?”

“It was a business decision on the company’s part. We’re going to put out one last issue,” he said. “I feel terrible for hiring you and then having this happen.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. And truthfully, I did feel fine. There was an uncomfortable thought trying to work its way into my mind about not having much money saved up, but the pills pushed that fact right back down. “What about all of you?” I asked. “How’s everyone taking it?” I asked.

“We’re all pretty upset,” he said. “But we don’t want to just slack off now, we want to go out strong, put out the best last issue we can.”

“Deal,” I said. He apologized some more, which was really sweet of him. I knew it wasn’t his fault. We agreed to talk more the next day and figure out an exit payment strategy.

I stepped out of the doorway and looked around for Emily. She was standing near the curb, still staring skyward.

“Claire Danes should, like, get an Oscar for that movie,” she said.

“I’m out of a job,” I said. “The magazine is folding.”

“Oh no!” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Try and get my job at
Jane
back?” I offered.

It took two months, but that’s what happened.

I was still in
contact with all my old friends from the magazine. When I told them I was out of a job, many of them recommended me to Brandon Holley, the new editor in chief.

I landed an interview with her, which I felt went well. She seemed grounded and down to earth. I had slowly tapered off taking as many pills as I had been, mainly out of fear of running out of money, so by the time we met I was pretty much sober. I hoarded what I had left for special occasions or stressful situations, one of which arose as I was leaving the new building
Jane
was located in. (It had recently been absorbed into Condé Nast and the offices had been moved to a much more corporate headquarters in midtown east.) I was feeling great about the interview and psyched about the possibility of working again with a group of people I adored. When I got out of the elevators on the ground floor, I was a little turned around and lost. It was already early evening and when I started down one hallway a large security guard appeared out of nowhere and told me that particular exit was closed.

“Sorry,” I said. “Can you tell me how to get out of here?”

“Follow me,” he said and we turned a corner. He pointed down another hallway and said, “Just follow that one.”

“Thanks,” I said and started walking away.

“Hey,” he yelled after me.

I turned around and he came right up to me, so close that I could smell the sharp, rancid scent of his aftershave.

“Do you mess around?” he asked, under his breath.

“What?” I asked, totally confused.

“Do you fool around?” he repeated, and stepped even closer.

“Oh, um, no, thanks,” I stammered, then ducked around him and practically ran down the hallway.

I know there are guys out there in the world who probably jerk
off to fantasies like that. Or more likely, would have taken the guy up on his offer. I’m not one of them. I just felt creeped out. That night I laughed about the incident to my friends. But I’d been feeling so excited about the idea of getting my professional life back, and something about the interaction was bringing up a dark feeling in the pit of my heart. I felt like I was six years old and I’d just wet my pants during class. I felt ashamed.

I dipped back into Clover that night before starting to work on my story pitch ideas for Brandon.

Everett had been nothing
but supportive since I’d lost my job. Every trace of his arrogance was gone and most nights we slept face-to-face, with Ollie on top of one or both of our heads. He loved Ollie as much as I did, which made me trust him even more. We hadn’t slept a single night apart in months, and my bedroom was filled with his clothes and $5,000 samples from his company’s clothing line. I was going on different job interviews while waiting to hear back from Brandon, and for the first time in my life, thanks to Everett, I looked the part of a real magazine editor. I knew I had great experience, but I’d never really cared about clothes. Everett taught me how to dress. He threw out most of my closet and replaced it with a small fortune in shirts, pants, shoes, jeans, and coats from his work.

The one thing bothering me about our relationship was that we’d been together long enough that condoms had totally gone by the wayside. I get tested for HIV religiously, but he still hadn’t been tested since we’d met. But he was healthy, we were monogamous, and most of the time I was too high on pills to really care if either of us was wearing anything. I had a hard enough time finishing as it was because of all the pills I was on, and the last thing I wanted to deal with was another barrier between us. But I trusted Everett. For the first time in forever I felt protected, taken care of.

On Valentine’s Day we met at Moto, our favorite Brooklyn restaurant, directly underneath the elevated JMZ subway line. They had a prix fixe Valentine’s Day dinner that I’d made a reservation for. I was in a particularly good mood because I’d just scored a huge
bottle of hydrocodone from a MySpace friend. Everett and I exchanged gifts over the table. He bought me a T-shirt from Opening Ceremony. I bought him a Smythson of Bond Street foldout photo case with room for two small pictures inside. I didn’t have any good photos of us to use, so I’d drawn pictures of each of us inside on small pieces of paper.

The first course was a single, cooked quail heart pierced by a spear on a plate. I should have taken that as a warning.

We polished off a bottle of wine, ordered more, and by the end of dinner had decided to find our own place and move in together.

I was ecstatic. I’d never officially lived with a boyfriend before. It was a new step toward adulthood, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I found a new job. With his urging, I even agreed to stay in Brooklyn and give up my Manhattan apartment.

We spent all the next day emailing each other listings of apartments in Williamsburg, and found a large one-bedroom with room for a home office right next to McCarren Park. I called the Realtor and made an appointment for us to look at it together the next day.

Everett called around six.

“I’ve got to go out to dinner with the boss and some clients,” he said. “We’re going to be out late, you probably shouldn’t wait up.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’re on for 9:00
A.M.
with the Realtor though, so don’t get too drunk!”

“I won’t,” he laughed. “And don’t you take too many pills! I love you.”

“Love you too,” I answered.

I watched TV for a while and started to get sleepy, but I was horny with excitement about the next day. Since I wasn’t going to get laid that night, I decided to take care of things myself. I’d taken two pills earlier and was having a hard time getting my body to work properly on its own, so I flipped open my laptop to look at some porn. Everything I could find was too clean-cut, too muscled and hairless for my taste, so I went to the Craigslist postings for some real-people shots. I clicked on anything that said it had a picture attached. That’s when I saw Everett.

The flash of the camera he was holding out toward a mirror obscured his face, but his tattoo and the bracelet he always wore were clearly shown. He was standing up, his jeans and underwear pulled down to his thighs, his cock out and shirt lifted with his other hand.

I stared and stared, not wanting to believe.

I read the post.

“5'11', 145. Bottom but love it all, mild to wild. Need to travel during day. Meatpacking District, Chelsea or West Village is best.”

I felt a scream rising up inside me. My entire body was trembling and I couldn’t breathe. All of those neighborhoods were within easy travel distance of his office. I realized a low moan was escaping from my mouth. I tried to stand but quickly had to sit back down because the room was spinning.