The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  I remember another time when I must have blacked out. I came home—before I did, I popped a bunch of pills. Mary made roast beef and mashed potatoes and gravy. I was sitting at the supper table, and I must have blacked out. My head and face fell right down into those mashed potatoes and gravy. I was snorting mashed potatoes and gravy into my lungs. If my son, Andy, had not been there and grabbed my head out, I could have seen the obituary where “Beardsley suffocated on mashed potatoes and gravy”!

  By that point, late August to mid-September, I was taking a cocktail of Percocet, Valium, and Demerol—80 to 90 pills a day. It was getting so bad that my gut … I must have been burning a hole in it ’cause I’d have to take half a bottle of Maalox to coat my stomach since the pain was so bad. I started having incredible severe headaches from drugs. When I got the headaches, I took more pills. The pills made the headaches go away, but half an hour to an hour later, with the headaches pounding, I actually would take more pills. I knew I needed help. I knew I was sick. But I was too ashamed. I didn’t know who to turn to. I really believe I was within a day or two of going to sleep one night and never waking up again, ’cause those pills I was taking, they slow down your heart rate and breathing. One night I would have gone to sleep after a handful of pills and just never woke up again.

  Finally, on September 30 of 1996, I went in with three fake prescriptions to get filled up, to the pharmacy I’d gone to many, many times. I handed them to the gal and she said, “Oh, it’ll be about ten minutes, Dick.” I looked over at the pharmacist—his name was George—and I’m waiting for George to look up and say, “Hey, Dick, how’re you doin’?” ’cause he was a real avid fisherman and I’d seen him over in our community fishing. And all of a sudden, he just stopped counting his bills, and he just stood there looking down. I knew at that point it was over. And he finally walked around the back, and he came over, and he gently took me by the arm and marched me down an aisle nobody was, and he says, “Dick, the doctor and the police know what’s going on.” I said, “George, I need help.” Walked back into his office and called the doctor. The doctor said, “Dick, why don’t you come in this afternoon?” So George shook my hand and said, “Dick, good luck.”

  I knew I was in a lot of trouble, but it was also like a million pounds was taken off my shoulders. And I knew the only chance of getting better was to be 100 percent honest with people and take responsibility for what I did. I went right home, told Mary all about it. That afternoon went right in and met with the doctor. The doctor says, “Dick, you’re not a bad person at all, but you’re really, really sick. I will do whatever I can to help you, but there are two federal drug enforcement agents in the next room that need to talk to you.” He left. They walked in. These two federal drug enforcement agents come in. They got their federal badges on their hips. They got a stack of papers, a huge briefcase full, and they sat down and they go, “Dick, in the month of August alone, you wrote prescriptions for over 3,000 pills.” They go, “When we see something like that, the red flags go up, and we all think the guy must be dealing these things.” Man, when they said that, honest to goodness, I had never cried so hard in my life. I was blubbering so bad I was hyperventilating. I could hardly breathe. “You guys,” I said in there, “I swear to God, not one pill did I give away or sell to anybody. First off, I was too selfish. If I got ’em, I was takin’ ’em.”

  The federal agents interrogated me for over an hour. At the end of that hour, they said, “Dick, we’ve been doing this for twenty-plus years. We believe what you’re telling us. We have a lot more investigating to do, but we believe what you’re telling us. If you are telling the truth, we will do everything we can to keep you from going to prison. But do you realize that you can go to prison for a minimum of five years and receive a $10,000 fine?” And I am out of control because I never even seen a prison, let alone been inside or had to go to one. They listened to what I had to say. They said, “We will do what we can to keep you out of prison, but this will be your one and only pony ride. Should it ever happen again, we guarantee you’ll be thrown in jail.” And one of the officers took me to the hospital in Fargo, and for nine days, I was in the psychiatric ward.

  I was locked up. I was so sick. My head just spun. I was glad now for a chance to perhaps get better, but yet I knew it was only the beginning. My family and Mary’s family and our friends didn’t know any of this was going on. And it was a really hard deal. I got right out of the hospital after nine days, and into a treatment center. It was outpatient, four times a week, four hours a crack, in the evening. Intense. I was assigned to this group and counselor, and listened to somebody talk about addiction. Then we divided into our little groups. I remember sitting in a circle—I’d never been in a group like this and didn’t know what to do. They went around and introduced themselves. First our counselor says, “I am Sue. I’m an addict and an alcoholic.” Next, “And I am Joe. I’m an alcoholic.” They get to me and I say it. “I’m Dick. I guess I’m an addict.” People looked at me and didn’t say anything. Boy! That night, that first time, I just sat and listened. And I thought, “Boy, these people have some problems here.” But when I said that word “addict,” that was the first time I ever mentioned the word. It was never in my vocabulary. I said it, but I said it because I had to say it, not because I believed it. I did not believe it for a second. I thought to myself, “I might be overusing these things a little bit, but man, an addict? I’m not an addict. Heck, I got a family and a job, and don’t have track marks up and down my veins and live in a burned-out apartment building and haven’t taken a shower in months.” That to me was an addict.

  But I sat there and went to every meeting. Once a week was a one-hour one-on-one session with just the counselor. After the third time of that, she says halfway through, “You aren’t taking this seriously, are you?” I say, “Yeah, I’m taking it very seriously.” “Well,” she says, “you’re always smiling. You seem to be in a good mood. You’re just trying to pull the wool over our eyes.” I say, “Wait a minute. I always look on the positive side of things.” That’s just how I am ’cause months later my counselor, who saved my life, apologized for that because she found out I am like that. But I remember those one-to-one meetings with her. There was barely a session I wasn’t crying, ’cause she told me things I didn’t want to hear. At last, after going to them for three weeks and saying, “Hi, I’m Dick. I’m an addict,” one night they went around and I said, “Hi. Dick. I’m an addict” and it was as if the lightbulb went on. When I said it that night, I believed it. And from that moment on, I started getting better and contributing more to everything. And I remember having to do my First Step. Writing my First Step. And it was twenty pages long. And I sat there that night when I had to read it in front of the group. I was crying, and everybody else cried, my counselor too, ’cause I just laid it there on the line.

  So I got through that and remember when Mary got to do her First Step—where we were in a circle. I was looking at Mary, and my counselor was to her side and the group around us. And the counselor said, “This is Mary’s night, and you do not say a word.” Mary started out and I thought, “This is going to be a piece of cake. She’s hardly saying anything bad.” Then Mary started getting a little more, a little more, and I tried to defend myself. She just hopped on me! Pretty soon Mary got on a roll, just letting me have it with both barrels. Mary didn’t guess I was abusing the painkillers for many years. I think the last couple of months, she had an idea that something was going on, but I did a heck of a job of keeping it from her and most everyone else. I made sure when I talked that I knew what I was going to say ahead of time so not to slur my speech. When I walked, I made sure I put one foot in front of the other so as not to stumble. I was very careful how I acted so people would not catch on. It was hard work! Mary lost and my son, Andrew, lost all trust in me! It took about three years into my sobriety before I felt like I had earned it back with both of them! She does not really talk about it a whole lot.

  All in
all, it was very hard on Andy! When kids heard about it on TV or the radio, of course, because it was a drug offense, they thought I was dealing and using cocaine. He wouldn’t go to school for a few days. When he did, I think he tried to ignore what the kids were saying, and eventually when the whole news story was revealed, they pretty much quit bugging him.

  It was good for Mary to get it off her chest, and good for me to hear it. I’m tellin’ ya, I needed to hear it, ’cause you don’t realize what you put your families through. On our ride home that night, I felt we started to get back closer to each other again.

  But I remained on this methadone. While I was in the psychiatric hospital, one doctor had put me on methadone, had tried to convince me I was probably going to have to be on it for the rest of my life for the chronic pain, as my pain was giving me a lot of problems. My back feels good now! Once they took the hardware out of there that had caused an infection, the pain pretty much went away. Don’t get me wrong, it still acts up once in a while, but nothing that a little Advil can’t take care of. Hopefully it will stay that way! It does not bother me at all while running.

  Welcome to my nightmare

  Welcome to my breakdown

  I hope I didn’t scare you

  —“Welcome to My Nightmare”

  Alice Cooper

  (musician)

  * * *

  THE FORMAL INVITATION read “The Coming Out Party for Miss Alice Cooper,” a debutante ball, to be held at L.A.’s most prestigious and oldest hotel: The Ambassador. If memory serves me right, this was around 1971, when rock and roll was rocking and rolling.

  Shep Gordon, Alice’s much-talked-about young manager, and some of the PR innovators at Warner Bros. Records were putting together an event the music industry would not soon forget. Shep and I had become good friends, although he would not hire my PR firm to represent Alice. I remember him telling me that we could become great friends, but if we worked together, it would get in the way. I wanted both, but Shep prevailed. I never represented any of the artists he managed, and our friendship has lasted for more than thirty-five years.

  Great anticipation surrounded the party for Alice. The Ambassador had no idea what Shep and Warner Bros. had planned for the evening, thinking it was just another debutante affair. The huge ballroom contained many formally set tables, complete with large, exotic, white flower centerpieces and tuxedoed waiters—the whole deal.

  I knew the night was going to be way different when, as I was entering the reception area, I was approached by a “cigarette girl” offering “Cigars, cigarettes, Vaseline!” Closer inspection revealed “her” to be one of San Francisco’s notorious Cockettes, the fabulous performance drag queens. This was going to be fun.

  The open bar was crammed with partygoers intent on slamming down as much free booze as possible to ready themselves for the festivities. I ran into Shep and congratulated him for pulling off another media masterpiece, and he winked and directed me to a private men’s room located behind the ballroom stage. I knew people would be going there to get high, but I was totally unprepared for the young lovely who greeted me in front of a toilet stall. She directed me inside for a special treat. “Have you ever had an opium suppository?” she queried. I reached to unhitch my belt. “No, but I think I’m about to.”

  The festivities took on a surreal quality under the influence of the chemical potpourri I had ingested. The bar-mitzvah-style chicken dinner was followed by the evening’s entertainment: a mixed bag of musical wannabes. The closing act was a nude three-hundred-pound blues singer named TV Mama. Her husband and bandleader introduced her by proclaiming, “She may be TV Mama to you, but to me, she’s TV dinner.”

  This oversized beauty came to the front of the stage. Ignoring the hooting and hilarity, she leaned over, shook her enormous bare jugs, and proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” to Evelyn, the stunned wife of Mo Ostin, the head of Warner Bros. Music. I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if this was being filmed by Fellini.

  The evening culminated with a short set by Alice and his merry band of pranksters. I recall him as the most normal performer that night, which highlights how crazy things got.

  I became better acquainted with Alice in the ensuing years, thanks to my relationship with Shep. Although Alice drank, I considered him pretty straight. He and his lovely wife, Sheryl, were as nice as warm pie and never seemed as weird as you’d expect. I’d hear stories of his exploits on the golf course, his golf cart filled with Budweiser. I always thought of how peculiar an image that was: Alice, Budweiser, and golf!

  It was no surprise, really, when I learned that Alice got sober. You don’t continue a career as demanding as his, for as long as he has, if you are drinking to excess. What I enjoyed most about Alice’s story was the explanation about the relationship between alcohol and his Alice-self. Hope you enjoy it too.

  Well, Gary, you knew me back then. I was in a band with a bunch of guys that were on the road with a new and successful album. We were sort of pioneers out there. We lived on the road for five years, six years. We didn’t really live anywhere. People would say, “I want to send you a shirt. Where do I send it?” And I’d say, “You can’t. We don’t live anywhere.” We were basically gypsies, playing five nights a week, sold-out shows. You know, you’d get up in the morning and you’re going to get on a plane, so the first thing you do is pop a beer, have a cold beer. That’s a nice good-morning beer buzz.

  Nobody even thought about alcoholism. That wasn’t even a consideration. When I thought of alcoholism, I thought of Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend or Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses. Really out-of-control business guys. You never thought of rock-and-rollers having alcohol problems. They just drank. They just drank beer. It was never a problem.

  But it wasn’t medicine then. It didn’t become medicine until later on. Right then it was just fun. We would go through two, three six-packs each during the day. We always thought we were lightweights ’cause everyone else was doing heroin and cocaine and acid and Quaaludes and everything, and we drank beer. We were kind of the lightweights. It was always funny to me that groups like Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath—and groups like that—were beer drinkers, and then you would find out that James Taylor and The Monkees and The Mamas and the Papas were junkies. It was just the opposite of what it should have been.

  The beer never raised any flags because I never missed a show. I never slurred my words. I never missed a step. I was the most totally functioning alcoholic on this planet. Maybe more functional than Dean Martin! It became part of my image. Having a beer in my hand was always part of Alice’s image. The Budweiser. We made it into a joke.

  Later on I would say, “Oh yeah, I like hard liquor, but I don’t drink that until after ten o’clock at night.” And then it was, “Well, nine o’clock at night.” And then it was, “Well, eight o’clock is okay.” Pretty soon I was drinking two or three Seagram’s VOs with Coca-Cola before I’d get out of bed in the morning. And that’s when it became medicine. It took about four or five years to get to that point. It was a very slow creep. It wasn’t like all of a sudden there I was drinking that much. I wasn’t aware it was happening, and nobody else was. Again, I didn’t miss shows. I never missed an interview. I was totally functional.

  That’s what fooled Shep and fooled me and fooled everybody. If I would have gotten horrible hangovers and been unable to do shows, we would have said, “Uh oh, there’s a problem with alcohol here.” But since I was too professional, even when I was feeling bad, to let alcohol stop me, we just kept ignoring the fact that I was drinking so much. I think if Shep would have realized how much of a problem it was, he would have taken me off the road. But none of us did. None of us understood that. We said, “Hey listen, we’re not into the heavy stuff. Alice is just drinking and having fun and doing his shows.”

  But when it became medicine … It got to the point during the Nightmare Tour I would look at my stage clothes, and I would look at the bottle, and I would realize that I
would have to drink at least a half a bottle of that whiskey to put those clothes on and get on stage. I would start to cry because I realized that putting my Superman costume on was killing me. My inner self was telling me that every time I go on stage, it’s killing me. And I would think, “Yeah, but there’s an audience out there, so I’m gonna go do it.”

  The funny thing was that when I finally did get to a hospital, the psychiatrist sitting there said, “Okay, tell me about the whole thing. How much does Alice drink?” I sat there and thought about it and I said, “You know what? I never drank on stage. The show would be two hours long, and Alice would never drink.” So he said, “Let me get this straight: You’re blaming Alice for the problem, yet Alice doesn’t drink.” And I went, “Yeah, you’re right.” So it really wasn’t the Frankenstein monster. It was the Dr. Frankenstein that was the drinker. The other twenty-two hours during the day, I was messing up. When I was on stage, I was fine. But I couldn’t stay on stage twenty-two hours a day. So it was really funny, the juxtaposition: that when I was on stage working, I didn’t drink, but all the other time was when I drank.

  It got to a point that when I got up in the morning, I’d sneak out of bed ’cause Sheryl was there. I’d have two or three drinks, go into the bathroom and throw up blood, and then get back into bed, have a couple of beers, and I’d be okay. I felt that having a couple of beers was going to make things better. That next drink would make it better. Which was just the opposite. You know, I had pancreatitis, gastritis, I had zero potassium in my system, I was wiped out. And I was dying of it. The doctor finally said, “A month, two months of this and you’ll be dead.” And that’s when I was in the hospital and had to take care of it. I went to the hospital on my own, but this was the crazy thing: Shep and Sheryl took me to the hospital the first time after the Nightmare Tour and checked me in. I could barely sign my name; I had tremors so bad. Sort of like the first three days, and it’s a New York law, they can keep you for observation for seventy-two hours. Well, after seventy-two hours, I was really kind of okay. I got my sea legs back and was feeling all right. I spent about three months in the hospital. When I came out, I didn’t have a drink for a year.