by Dan Peres
“I’m only here twice a week for a few hours in the afternoon, Dan,” he said. Dr. Ron wore blue surgical scrubs. His bare chest was visible through the shirt’s deep V-neck. I’d never been to Stamford and told the driver, one of a network of men in black suits who ferried Condé Nast executives to airports and galas and country houses in black Town Cars, that I needed to see a kidney specialist in Connecticut. Why I felt the need to lie to him or even explain the trip in the first place was beyond me. These guys had seen it all—the affairs and torpedoed careers and god knows what else—and my trip to Stamford would have hardly raised an eyebrow. Still, I lied. I was born with one kidney, I explained, and wanted to make sure it was in “tip-top” shape. I came to learn that good lies always had a shade of truth to them.
When I told Dr. Ron that I had only one kidney, he closed his eyes, exhaled deeply through his nose, and slowly shook his head like a disappointed schoolteacher. “And you’ve been poisoning your body for how long?” he asked. “With one kidney, Dan. This is the power of addiction. You understand that this is an addiction?”
“I do.”
“And you understand, Dan, that you’re an addict?”
“Yes,” I told Dr. Ron. “I understand.”
I couldn’t begin to calculate the number of times I’d lied to doctors in order to get what I needed—what my body needed. Sure, whatever you say, I’d think to myself, Just give me the prescription already and leave me alone. But this time seemed different for some reason. Maybe this kooky guy was right. Maybe I was trying to help myself. I mean, I told my mother, for god’s sake. Maybe I was done and I didn’t want to die after all. Dr. Ron sat quietly and looked at me. His eyes were small but clear and I couldn’t find even the hint of stubble on his face.
But did I really want to stop? Or was I there only because I knew he could help ease the dreaded symptoms of withdrawal? I had been pretending to be a “patient” with dozens of doctors and had gotten very convincing. Was I conning Dr. Ron? Was I conning myself?
“I’m scared,” I told him as tears welled in my eyes. “I’m tired of feeling this way.”
Had the con taken on a life of its own?
“Addicts will do the craziest things,” he said. “You know that taking all of those pills might kill you, but you keep going anyway. Like last night, Dan. You kept going. And you overdosed.”
I always thought that overdosing meant dying. I didn’t know that you could OD and live, but according to Dr. Ron, that’s exactly what I’d been doing. All the vomiting and dizziness and gasping for air in the night were symptoms of opiate overdose, he explained. If that was the case, then I was overdosing at least once a week—maybe more.
Doctor Ron told me that the rapid detox had to be scheduled a couple of days in advance, but that he also offered an alternative treatment using buprenorphine injections. Apparently, the buprenorphine tricked the brain into thinking it was an opiate, which it’s not, and the body doesn’t go through such an aggressive physical detox. I would have to give myself three injections a day—morning, noon, and night—for three days, he explained.
“And I won’t go through withdrawal,” I asked.
“This treatment will make the physical symptoms of withdrawal much more tolerable,” he said. “You won’t feel sick. It’ll help with the sweating, cramps, and diarrhea.”
“I’m in,” I told him.
Dr. Ron gave me the first of these shots that afternoon in Stamford and sent me home with a vial of three days’ worth of buprenorphine, a handful of alcohol wipes, and eight syringes for the remaining injections. I was to check in with him the following day after the National Magazine Awards to let him know how I was feeling.
I felt an enormous sense of relief. This had been the shortcut I was looking for. I could skip the nightmare of detox and get on with my life. Maybe I was ready to get on with my life.
My Armani suit pants were around my knees when I glanced out the window and saw my boss. I actually heard him before I saw him. Patrick’s laugh was unmistakable—loud and noticeably higher in pitch than his speaking voice. Not exactly a cackle—less shrill—but easily the least refined feature of an otherwise effortlessly elegant man.
I knew there would be people. And I knew I would know many of them. But it wasn’t until I heard the laugh that it dawned on me for the first time that maybe this wasn’t a good idea. After all, I was sitting half naked in the back of an idling Town Car on Park Avenue in the middle of the day with the entire publishing industry gathering on the sidewalk just feet away and there was a loaded syringe gripped between my front teeth like a chewed-up Bic pen.
This was definitely a bad idea.
Either way, it was too late. I’d already started. I had no choice but to finish as quickly as I could. Getting caught with my pants down would not have been a good look. I cleaned my thigh with an alcohol wipe and hastily stabbed the needle through my flesh and into the muscle the way the doctor had taught me. I put the cap back on the syringe—being careful not to stick my fingers—and placed it in the inside breast pocket of my suit jacket along with the used wipe. My belt buckle jingled loudly as I haphazardly yanked my pants up with all the grace of a man who’s just been caught masturbating in his office cubicle.
I had driven up to the ASME awards with several Details editors at around 11:45 a.m. and was planning on giving myself the midday injection in the bathroom at the Waldorf. Lord knows I’d done worse things in there. It wasn’t until we were a few blocks away from the hotel that I figured I’d just let my team out of the car and take care of the injection right there, before going in, which in retrospect wasn’t the greatest idea.
I was still tucking in my shirt when I caught up to Patrick on the sidewalk.
“Pull yourself together, young man,” Patrick said as we walked into the Waldorf.
Every major magazine in the country was represented at the luncheon. Details shared a table with some other Condé Nast magazines that had been nominated. I was seated next to Mary Berner, the CEO of Fairchild Publications, a division of Condé. It was a sea of dark suits and day drinkers. I watched as the editors of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and Sports Illustrated graciously and eloquently accepted awards. My stomach was turning, but I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or my body detoxing.
“That’s you,” Mary Berner said about an hour into the presentation when they announced that Details had won the award for best design. “You better get up there.”
Stunned, I stood up and started to make my way to the front of the room. The presenter, who I think was the president of ASME, was still reading the description of Details when I got to the bottom of the stairs that led to the stage. This was my moment. I had arrived. “Accepting the award is David Peres, editor in chief of Details.”
Really? I thought. Did she just call me David?
Still, up I went, Dr. Ron’s spent syringe in my pocket, to accept the award. Si Newhouse was standing there at my table when I returned, a huge grin on his face and his hand outstretched. I’d never seen him in a suit before.
“Well done, Dan,” he said. “Look what you’ve done. Unbelievable.”
If he only knew.
With the help of Dr. Ron’s injections, I remained sober . . . for four days. I filled a prescription for several hundred Roxicodone early the following week.
Warnings and Consequences
I ignored the warnings.
There were a lot of warnings and I ignored them all. I was sure that they weren’t there for me. I was a seasoned user. The warnings were there to caution newcomers, weekend warriors, and occasional dabblers. Not me. So I ignored them.
The stickers—like colorful fortune-cookie fortunes—were stuck to the side of the prescription bottle. Do not drink alcoholic beverages when taking this medication. May cause nausea. Do not operate dangerous machinery. Important reminders, for sure, but I ignored them all.
CAUTION: MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS.
The cigarette burns in my sofa cushions sh
ould have been a sign. Or the ones on my sheets. Or the burns just below the knuckles between the index and middle fingers of my right hand.
I was nodding out and I was smoking way too much. Not an ideal combination.
But I had no idea this was happening. Maybe I’d been careless or distracted, I figured. Or maybe I was just too high to even care. I’d simply flip the sofa cushion and buy new sheets. Addict problem solving at its finest.
I’d never been a great sleeper. When we were growing up, my brother, Jeff, who was two and a half years older than I was, went to bed well before I did. I’d stay up late—sometimes until midnight—practicing magic tricks and watching Johnny Carson, also a magician, on the small television in my room. I’d pretend to be a guest on his show and wow him with my cunning sleight of hand and witty banter. My mom was a night owl, too, and would pop in my room or call down to me in the basement to tell me to go to bed.
“It’s time,” she’d say.
But it was never time. I couldn’t fall asleep. So I went on playing. Nights were perfect for me—forced solitude. No homework or dinner-table conversation or quick trips to the grocery store with my mom. Nights were for me.
I never grew out of it.
When I was living in Paris, I would often ride my bike along the quiet Left Bank streets well after midnight. It was as if I never got over the jet lag from the flight over. The lights on the Eiffel Tower went out at one a.m. I know this because I watched it happen many times, sitting on my blue Peugeot mountain bike in the Champs de Mars by the base of the iron landmark.
Nights were for daydreaming. Sometimes I was a famous magician. Other times a successful writer. I was always well known in these little fantasies—a sought-after celebrity seeking privacy and living along the Quai d’Orsay or in one of those great brownstones on 10th Street between Fifth and Sixth.
Nights were also for drugs. The best highs were the ones when everyone else was sleeping and there was no one around to ask me why I wasn’t.
Initially, the pills knocked me out. When they were first given to me after my back surgery and I was taking them as prescribed, they did what they were designed to do—dull the pain and help me get some rest. This didn’t last long. By the time I was into my first year as editor in chief of Details, with the pain long gone, I’d become convinced that they gave me energy—that I needed them to get through the day.
I’ll be fine once I get some Vicodin in me, I thought to myself on many mornings. This will wake me up.
Mornings were rough, and I often slept till 9:30 or 10:00 a.m., around the same time the Details staff was getting to the office. I might not have fallen asleep easily, but when I slept, I slept hard.
On September 11, 2001, I was still sleeping when my girlfriend, Caroline, called and woke me at ten that morning. She was crying.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Where are you?”
“I’m about to walk to the subway,” I said, lying. “I’ve been on a conference call for the last hour.”
Conference calls were my go-to excuse for still being home at that hour. There were lots of them. I’d occasionally mix it up and say I was at a breakfast meeting with a writer or was sitting in a coffee shop reading through articles for an upcoming issue, but conference calls were my default.
“You haven’t seen the news?” Caroline asked, exasperated. “Or heard the sirens?”
Despite living on 11th Street at the time and being just a few miles from Ground Zero, I hadn’t heard a thing. I’m surprised I even heard the phone ring when she called.
“Who could you be talking to right now?” she asked.
She had a point. The whole world knew what was going on. I was pretty sure she didn’t buy it.
Pills consumed my life. Getting them. Taking them. Running out of them. This was my routine. Anything else—everything else—didn’t matter. Family, friends, and work were barely on my radar—faded blips in the distance. My priority was drugs. Napping was a close second. Needless to say, this made scheduling appointments with me challenging. Some people at the magazine had taken to calling my assistant “the Rescheduler.”
I was living in a floor-through of the same brownstone on 11th Street that had been my first home in New York after returning from Paris. I’d wanted to be close to NYU, where I went to school, and this apartment was just steps from University Place. The brownstone, with purple wisteria climbing its brick front, was separated into four units. Mine was on the third floor. Adam Horovitz from the Beastie Boys had lived there before me (a short-term rental while he renovated his own house), and he was there to show me around when I first went to take a look. “It’s a great place,” he told me, “but most of the apartment doesn’t get much light.” Just what I was looking for.
Horovitz obviously wasn’t referring to the bedroom, which as fate would have it faced south onto 11th Street and was flooded with direct sunlight that made napping a challenge. Shades were already attached to the room’s two gigantic windows, but I installed drapes for good measure. Natural light was the enemy. I was shamed by the sun. With the shades drawn and the drapes closed, this room became my refuge during the day. When I wasn’t at the office, where I was spending only four or five hours on a good day, I was camped out on my bed. I ate there, watched TV there, talked to the office there, and napped there. When I wasn’t on the bed, I was straightening it. Every time I would climb off, I would take a minute to smooth out the comforter and prop up the pillows. Making the bed helped me forget that I had just been asleep in the middle of the day, like shaking an Etch A Sketch clean.
On the opposite end of the apartment was a sizable deck facing the backs of the buildings on 12th Street. It overlooked the outdoor seating for a little Mexican restaurant on University where Christmas lights dangled year-round from a wooden trellis surrounding about eight tables. I spent many nights sitting quietly at a small table on my deck, numbed by Vicodin, smoking Marlboro Mediums as the City That Never Sleeps slept around me.
I even napped at the office on occasion.
“I’m going to be reading some copy in here,” I’d tell the Rescheduler before closing my office door. “Please keep people away for about a half hour.”
And then I’d lie down on the sofa—shoes on—and crash.
Naps were one thing, but I didn’t realize I was actually nodding out until the job interview.
Some of the other editors and I had been talking about trying to hire Jason for some time. He was a rising star at New York magazine, as both a writer and an editor, and I’d been following his work there for the better part of a year. Our features editor had recently decamped to a competing magazine and we decided to go after Jason, who only a month earlier had been passed over for a bigger role at New York.
“I think we can get him,” Andrew said. “I met him for a drink last night and he’s definitely open to the possibility.”
The executive editor of Details, Andrew was a peerless networker and as shrewd and persuasive a schmoozer as there was. He, along with the team that we had assembled, made it possible for the magazine to get out every month. I may have been loaded on Vicodin half the time, but I was brimming with story ideas and was able to hand them off to Andrew and the rest of the team to execute, which they did brilliantly. Jason would have made a great addition to the magazine’s masthead, so the Rescheduler scheduled a time for us to meet.
“Please don’t cancel on him,” said Andrew. “I need you to close the deal.”
By the time I met Jason in 2003, I was taking pills in order to function. I couldn’t get out of bed without them. The highs weren’t as high as they’d once been, but without the pills, I was a mess and in a constant state of withdrawal. They were a part of my daily routine—as essential as food and water. More so, even.
I could barely keep my eyes open when Jason and I sat down to talk at the wooden conference table in my office. He congratulated me on winning the National Magazine Award on the bookshelf behind me. I held a copy of his résumé
as we spoke. I felt my eyes closing.
“Please forgive me,” I said. “I have a migraine coming on and need to close my eyes for a bit while we talk. Weird, I know, but it helps.”
The lies came quickly and often. Some were better than others.
“No problem,” he said.
“Have you seen our current issue?” I asked, eyes closed. “What do you think about the mix of features?”
“I think you guys have some good stuff in there,” I remember Jason saying from the other side of the table. “But I think you might benefit from more . . .”
I was out—like a drug-addled narcoleptic, sitting upright, résumé in hand. My head tipped forward and then quickly bounced back as if on a spring, jolting me awake. I opened my eyes and pretended to study the résumé. Jason was still talking.
“Go on,” I said as I got up from the table and asked my assistant to bring me a Diet Coke.
I drank at least five or six Diet Cokes a day. There was a mini-fridge full of them under her desk. They were my magic elixir, chugged from a large red Solo cup, like I was playing quarters at a fraternity party.
The conversation with Jason continued for another twenty-five minutes. I was awake for the rest of the interview, most of it spent wondering whether he saw me nod out. We offered him the job of features director the following day.
He declined.
Now I knew. I was nodding out. And while it should have scared me, it didn’t. It became just another in a series of confounding behaviors that I was sure could be covered up with a quality lie. Going forward, whenever I felt tired in the middle of the day, I blamed it on the fact that I had only one kidney and that my body was producing too many red blood cells.
“My blood is thicker than normal,” I explained. “It zaps me of my energy. I’m dealing with it. I’ve been going to tons of doctor appointments, which is why I haven’t been around so much lately.”
