Babylon Confidential

by Christian, Claudia

  3. GO TO CHURCH AND PRAY—HARD!

  I’d decided to get back together with God when I was in England but he didn’t seem to be returning my calls. That was understandable. I’d called things off a long time ago, and now here I was suddenly wanting to patch things up. I needed to go to church and make an official effort; then maybe he would take five minutes to come down off the cloud and sort my life out.

  I had a very bad Easter in 2008, and I’d heard about a healing ceremony in this Catholic church in the valley. The priest was famous for bestowing blessings on the sick, and there had even been some reported miracles.

  When I arrived there were lots of people on crutches and in wheelchairs. My goddaughter came with me and we sat through Mass. Part of the service was in Spanish, part in English.

  When it was my turn to stand before the priest he asked me, “Do you need to be healed from something?”

  And I just burst into tears.

  “Yes. I do. I’m sick.”

  So he put oil on my forehead and on my chest, and all the while I was weeping, praying for a miracle.

  And I did feel something go through my body. I felt some sort of healing, and after that any time I felt like a drink I’d throw myself on my knees and pray for help. I’d pray for strength, pray to get through the day, pray not to have cravings, pray not to think about it. And when the craving passed, I’d give thanks for one more day of sobriety.

  It was two months before I fell off the wagon again, and man, did I feel guilty. I haven’t felt guilt when I cheated on people or when I stole things as a kid. I always justified everything, but now I felt that I was cheating on God. At the same time, I was reminded just how powerless I was against my disease. If God couldn’t help me battle the monster, then what hope was there? Then I got angry at God. Why had He done this to me? Why did He piss in my gene pool? How come my brother Vince got off scot-free?

  I put a line through number 3. That was okay, I still had two more options on the list.

  4. TRY ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE.

  I went to Siddha Yoga retreats, got acupuncture for addiction, went to a fasting clinic, and even tried a meditation “doctor” who claimed to have cured members of the Grateful Dead.

  All failures. I was down to my last shot.

  5. GET HYPNOTIZED.

  I found an ad on the Internet while searching for “the best hypnotist in L.A.” I called the number to make an appointment.

  “Claudia, I’ve worked miracles with every kind of addict. I can help you. Come on over ASAP!”

  The hypnotist’s apartment building was crumbling and looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since the ’70s, but it was the fucking Taj Mahal compared to his apartment, which stank of old cigarettes, cat urine, and boiled cabbage.

  “Watch the medal as it swings. See how it catches the light?”

  He tried to hypnotize me into a state of past-life regression so that I could try to pinpoint when my alcoholism began. Now, I’m a big history buff, so if you want to charge me $450 to send me back to Renaissance Florence where I get to have some life-changing experience or at the very least a romping good time, then great. But this guy had a clumsy manner, the tape recorder kept jamming, and the chair I was sitting in had broken springs.

  I told him I wasn’t impressed. He told me that I was a difficult case and needed a series of treatments at $120 a pop.

  Fuck. That was it, then. It was all a load of very expensive horseshit, and I was at my wits’ end. I’d tried everything. Except the hard-core stuff. The stuff with the list of side effects as long as my arm. And I wasn’t ready for that, not yet.

  I thought it would be a good idea for David and me to move in together. It would make it harder for me to binge, and he would be a healthy distraction. A relationship was one way of keeping busy. Surprise, surprise! It turned out to be a very bad idea. By then my compulsion was far beyond my control. I’d have to fabricate arguments, sneak out for binges, come up with all sorts of schemes to get what I could not do without.

  And, of course, David finally realized I had a problem. And by then it wasn’t so much a problem as it was my entire life. Being an alcoholic was now normal. The problem was the lengths to which I’d have to go to appear normal by the standards of the outside world.

  I was scared to commit to David, and he was coming on strong, talking about marriage and the future. I felt hopeless, that there was no future for me, that my struggle with the monster was a full-time career and relationship bundled into one. And David sensed this. He was jealous of the monster, of the hold she had over me.

  So, since we were fighting at home, and I was in the middle of a binge, and I couldn’t stand the sight of David and wanted to break up, we went on a trip to Tahiti.

  Now you might be thinking, “Why the fuck would she do something so monumentally stupid?” Because my therapist told me to.

  “You should go to Tahiti. It would be good for you to work on your relationship in a neutral environment.”

  From the moment we stepped on the plane the trip was a disaster. While David slept I sneaked to the back of the plane to buy little bottles of vodka from the flight attendant. My friends told me that Tahiti was heaven on earth. All I remember is rushing about like a crazy woman, drinking anything I could get my hands on. Rum, beer, vodka, gin. I launched an assault on the minibar and gutted it of tiny bottles in under twenty minutes. I’d buy bottles of liquor from the hotel shop and go through the whole charade of having them gift wrapped, only to tear them open in my room and guzzle their contents while I cried uncontrollably. I was a fucking mess. I’d have drunk mouthwash if I’d had any on hand. Tahiti wasn’t heaven for me. It was definitely hell on earth.

  At one point I changed hotel rooms to get away from David, and then I sneaked back into his room when he was out and drank his entire minibar.

  I’m sure David must have had a moment when he went to get a sip of vodka and realized that I’d cleaned him out and filled up all the bottles with water to cover my tracks.

  I lasted half a week and then fled. I have no idea how I managed to travel from the island of Mo‘orea, where we’d been staying, to Papeete on nearby Tahiti, then get onto a bus and then an airplane, but somehow I made it. They say a drunk can always find his way home. Well, I found my way home from 4,000 miles away in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

  I put my suitcase on my bed and opened it. It was filled with sand and ripped clothing and empty little bottles. Then I realized that I’d left my iPhone on with the data roaming the whole time I was in the South Pacific.

  Altered flight charges: $5,000. Cell phone stupidity: $2,000. Memories of Tahiti: priceless.

  Before David could get home I went to my mom’s place in Napa and went through the worst detox in my life. I was dehydrated and shitting blood and my eyelids were so swollen that I tried using Preparation H on them to reduce the swelling. I’d pass out, then wake up a few hours later and search the house for booze. My poor mom ended up taking me to the hospital. It took me nearly ten days to recover.

  Needless to say, the Tahiti trip put some strain on my relationship. David now knew that I was a crazy wino and told me that if he smelled alcohol on my breath again he’d leave me. I was grateful for the second chance and swore I’d go dry. I’d lost twenty-five pounds during the detox, and I looked great, which lent weight to my promise of sobriety.

  I was sober for three months before I slipped. I started out on small binges with minor detox flare-ups that I thought I could keep hidden. Those flare-ups quickly spread into a raging fire that consumed me, burning me from the inside out.

  The binges ran day and night and didn’t stop until I passed out. When I woke up I’d shake and vomit until I was empty and then lie on the bathroom floor, half-conscious, hallucinating all kinds of scary shit.

  When I could walk I’d start on chamomile tea and water, then move on to milk thistle and warm milk, anything to calm the thoughts of guilt and self-hate and suicide and help get my body int
o a state where it could sleep and heal.

  Sleep deprivation was a big issue. I raided health food stores for natural sleeping aids because over-the-counter pills made the detoxes even worse. They made the hallucinations more intense and wired me up instead of calming me down. At night I’d take a hot bath and lie down and sweat out the toxins, terrified of what was to come. First the shakes would start, then the hot and cold flashes, and then more shaking. The room would fill with crazy thunder crashes, and I’d hear the voices of the ghosts and ghouls who visited me in my nightmares. Then I’d get hungry, but the nausea would overtake me so that I couldn’t eat, not even a cracker. I’d go to the kitchen and force down a banana or some milk and pray I wouldn’t puke it up. I knew my body needed sustenance when I’d been living on nothing but beer for five days. I’d go back to bed and just lie there, my mind amped up, filled with horrible thoughts that denied me the sleep I so badly wanted. I’d convinced myself that the monster was in the room, that if I fell asleep she would smother me. The CIA tortures people with sleep deprivation, and here I was doing it to myself.

  After a sleepless night I’d get up and hide from the California sunshine like a hungover vampire. This was the same light that I had missed so much in London, the sun that I’d longed for. Now it hurt my yellow eyes and revealed too much of my puffy face. It stole away the shadows and left no doubt in my mind that I was losing. I was turning into the very monster I’d been fighting against.

  I decided I had to get out of the house. I told David I was going for a walk. My reflexes were so bad, I knew I couldn’t get out of the way of a car if I had to. My eyesight was shot from dehydration. I was afraid to leave the house, but I had no choice. I couldn’t drink at home, because I was terrified of David catching me and leaving.

  That was how I ended up sitting in a khaki-colored bus stop on Coldwater Canyon Avenue watching the world pass me by.

  I felt dirty, ugly, and utterly alone. I had thought I’d reached the lowest point in my life when I clung to the toilet bowl at my mom’s house, my secret finally revealed. But I was wrong. Sitting at the bus stop drinking a hastily mixed screwdriver—this was rock bottom. You know when you have those dreams in which you realize you’re naked and start scrambling around for clothes? I was so far gone I couldn’t make the slightest effort to cover up my addiction. I was on display for the whole world as it passed by.

  I was a slave to the monster. She was running the show now. I was strapped into the back seat, right between my mom and Holly on the drive to rehab. I’d been there the whole time. I wasn’t driving that car; the monster was behind the wheel. It had let me enjoy my delusions while it gathered more power, preparing for the final siege. I’d lost. Sitting there in that bus shelter, I declared defeat.

  Game over. I give up. I’ve got nothing left to fight back with.

  When I was a teenager I won a drama scholarship to the Laguna Playhouse that I never used. They had awarded it to me for playing the Marilyn Monroe character in a scene from Bus Stop.

  In the movie Marilyn’s character tries to travel to Hollywood, where she hopes she’ll be discovered. Instead, she gets kidnapped by a cowboy who becomes obsessed with her after she sings “That Old Black Magic” at a rodeo.

  I really had escaped to Hollywood and been discovered, but my kidnapper had still managed a successful abduction. The song came to me as I sat there, at my own bus stop, my monster mocking me. That old black magic had me in its spell, and it was a spell that I couldn’t break on my own. I needed help to do that, and I knew that if I didn’t get it right away I’d keep marching on to the monster’s tune until it finally killed me.

  Somehow I made it home, locked myself in my room, and called Holly. It took me five attempts to navigate the directory on my iPhone and reach her—hand-eye coordination was a distant memory.

  “Holly, I can’t let David see me like this. Can you take me to a detox center?”

  I was shaking so badly that I thought my teeth were going to crack into little pieces.

  Holly arrived calm and in control, my guardian angel. She joked with me as she helped me get dressed; I couldn’t even put my pants on. She then started calling detox centers, trying to find a place that would take SAG insurance while I lay on the bed and prayed that my heart, which was beating as hard as if I’d just run a marathon, wouldn’t suddenly stop.

  She found a place in Tarzana, bundled me into the car, and drove me down the highway, straight to hell.

  The lady checking me in was on a go-slow—I guess she’d just had a big lunch. I stood there going through a horrible detox, Holly helping me stand upright, while she yammered on and on about policies and procedures and gave me form after form to sign.

  “What if I have a seizure? That’s why I’m here. I’m terrified I’m going to have a seizure. Can you give me something?”

  “No. We have to complete your paperwork.”

  My eyesight was fading and I was worried I was signing my life away. Was I giving them legal power to hold me? Or relieving them of liability if they killed me out of incompetence?

  They’re out to get you, especially this bitch. Get out of here. Go and stay with Holly or Trish until you’re better. You’ll be okay.

  That fucking monster sure picks her moments.

  That voice in my head became a new kind of inner compass. I decided that when it told me to do something I would do the opposite. It wanted me to go, so I would stay and detox and work out the next step when I was in a rational state of mind.

  The monster was displeased with my attempted rebellion and sent me a sign to remind me who was in charge. I fell to my knees and nearly choked on the amount of vomit I produced.

  They took me into a holding area, and Holly had to leave. I sat in a plastic chair for over an hour waiting for someone to come and search my bags. There was only one other person in the room, a large man who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in adding to my misery.

  I got up to get a sweater out of my bag, which was in the next room. He stepped in front of me and told me in a scary, whispered tone that I had better sit back down.

  “We have rules here. You can’t get things from your bags while they’re being searched.”

  When you’re going through a detox, your temperature goes from hot to cold and back again. One minute you might as well be standing on top of Mount Everest, the next in the earth’s molten core.

  “I’m freezing. I’ve got to have my sweater. You can get it for me if you like.”

  “I can’t do that. I can’t break the rules for you. People like you make life difficult for everyone here. We have rules here. You have to follow them.”

  It was insane. Even in my fucked-up state I could see that this guy was messing with me.

  He kept me there for thirty minutes while I shook so hard that I nearly bit through my tongue. Next, a lady came for me and led me to a depressing shared bedroom. She was covered with tattoos and had crazy purple hair, a refugee from the Jim Rose Circus. She was clearly an ex-junkie, her teeth rotted through from crystal meth. She took my cell phone away and left me alone.

  That was it. No therapy, no one talking to me, no doctor visiting me, nothing.

  I noticed that there was a woman curled into a ball on the single bed across from mine. I sat and watched her for a long time, wondering if she was dead or alive. She finally sat up, a tiny, dark-haired woman who spoke in a language I didn’t recognize. She kept rifling through a rumpled plastic bag on her bed with some old withered fruit in it, choosing one and holding it out to me. I’d politely refuse, and she’d nod sagely and go back to the bag, searching for a more suitable offering.

  I finally took an apple just to stop the lunacy. I felt like I was trapped in a David Lynch movie.

  I was still shaking, so I found a nurse and tried to explain to her what the person who admitted me didn’t care to hear—that I was scared of having a seizure, that I wasn’t a pill popper but did need medical help.

  “Med time is four
o’clock. Come back in an hour.”

  “What if I’m dead in an hour?”

  She shrugged and looked at me as if I were a stupid child.

  “Med time is four o’clock.”

  I went back and lay on my bed and waited, resting my head on my little suitcase for fear someone would steal it. I heard the fruit lady rustling around in her bag again.

  I lasted thirty-six hours before I checked myself out. Suddenly the staff who had been so unhelpful couldn’t have been more fucking charming. The center was getting two grand a night for keeping me there, and they wanted to milk at least another two nights out of my stay. Well, fuck them.

  The pills they’d given me had helped, though. I even managed to sleep for a whole hour. Holly picked me up and was amazed that I looked like my old self again. Somewhere in the ether a team of overworked angels was keeping me alive.

  Lying on the bed in the detox center I’d had a moment of clarity, one thought that helped me pull myself together: I felt a blinding hatred for my disease. There was no more on-again, off-again with the monster. I fucking hated her. I felt the way I did when I was a teenager in that rapist’s van, 110 pounds and unable to fight the bastard off.

  I’d taken something else from the detox center—a colorful little flyer for Vivitrol.

  “One month of Vivitrol—FREE! Vivitrol—the shot that’ll help you stay sober.”

  I called the number on that flyer a dozen times and left messages with various people and answering machines trying to make an appointment to get the shot. No one ever called me back. I left my cell phone number, home phone number, and email address. I’d finally decided to try medication, and now the fuckers wouldn’t give me any.

  The shot was $1,000 a month, and although my savings were running out I was willing to pay anything if it would help. The shot was supposed to inhibit cravings. I wanted that shot, and getting that shot suddenly became very important to me. I started researching Vivitrol and found it was an opiate blocker. It blocked all good feelings—everything from sexual feelings to enjoyment of food; emotions, including love; work-out highs; everything. Suddenly I was relieved that no one had returned my calls.