Coreyography: A Memoir (27 page)

“The first thing we need to do is get you into rehab,” he says. “We need to prove that you’re taking this seriously and seeking treatment before the court demands it of you.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I tell him. “Just as long as it’s not a long-term thing.”

“You really need to be somewhere for something like six to nine months.”

“I can’t do that. I can kick this myself in three weeks.”

“You’ll have to go to AA.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine. But three weeks is the most I can do.”

Bob sets me up at Exodus, a private rehabilitation center in Marina Del Ray, but it’s like rehab for rock stars. Dave Navarro and Joseph Williams, the lead singer of Toto, are my two roommates. Down the hall is a girl I recognize from the cover of a Jane’s Addiction album; Perry Farrell is her boyfriend. I end up sending my cousin Michael out to score for me, but there’s nowhere in rehab where I can cook up the heroin in order to crush it. So, when Perry comes for a visit, he and Dave convince me to try it their way. Together, they proceed to shoot me up.

At the arraignment, I plead not guilty to two felony counts of possession with intent to sell; each carries a maximum penalty of up to four years in prison.

*   *   *

Funny thing about
being an addict: when you finally get sober, when you feel clean and strong and something that seems awfully close to normal, you immediately begin contemplating the idea of partying again. Because you’re fine now, right? You just needed to get all that craziness out of your system. Now you can party
responsibly
. It’s the disease talking, but he sounds a lot like yourself.

My next project, which will film while I’m out on bail, is the exceedingly violent, action-adventure film
Edge of Honor
. We’ll be shooting in Washington state, and I’ll be reteamed with Meredith Salenger, but there’s no way anyone will insure me without a protective clause in my contract. I’ll be required to submit to regular drug tests; fail one, and the whole production will be shut down. It’s a lot of pressure, but I’m not being drug tested
yet
—shooting is still several weeks away—so I decide I’ll just smoke some weed, because this being-totally-sober thing, I know, is not going to work out for me. At the time, someone I’d met in rehab was trying to convince me to commit to long-term rehab instead of doing the movie.

“No, no, I’m fine,” I tell him. “I’m just smoking weed and drinking. I’ll be fine.”

“So, you’re just changing seats on the
Titanic
?” It’s a mantra that gets thrown around in rehabilitation circles all the time, a warning against the dangers of switching or substituting addictions, but I’d never heard it before. “Huh?” I ask, no doubt with plenty of attitude.

“You can fool yourself if you want, but the ship’s goin’ down either way.”

“Listen,” I said. “I know myself. I got this. I’m cool.”

By the time I make it to Washington, I’m in full relapse, driving several hours to downtown Seattle to score crack rocks. I narrowly avoid another arrest (the cops pull up just as I’m approaching a possible dealer). Then, for some inexplicable reason, my mother decides to send my younger siblings on a plane, alone, to visit Vanessa and me. By now, my mother’s had another child with a different man; Brittnie is about three, Devin and Eden are ten and nine.

Vanessa and I are a wreck, fighting constantly, so I escape back downtown. A bum approaches me, asks me to rent him a hotel room; amazingly, I do. In exchange, he shoots me up. And this is the saddest moment of my life: I was three hours late getting to the airport, and now I’m driving my siblings around while I’m high on heroin. It occurs to me that I’m doing the same shit my mother used to do to me, I’m doing the same things I hated her for. And I hated myself, but I couldn’t stop.

Back in L.A., I do a few talk shows, try to convince everyone that I’m clean and sober, but then I’m right back downtown. I have almost no money, not enough for the two balloons of heroin and the crack rock I so desperately need, so I stiff a dealer. I drive off before he can see that I slipped him a five-dollar bill instead of a twenty. In the rearview mirror, I can see his friends gathering, emerging from back alleys and dark street corners, when suddenly the back window explodes. I look behind me—there’s a brick sitting in the middle of my backseat.

I’m at Vanessa’s apartment building, buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, but she’s not letting me in. I don’t know if she’s out or if she’s hiding from me, but I’m sitting in a car with a shattered rear window when the cops roll up and ask me what I’m doing.

“I’m here to see my wife.”

There’s some concern that I’ve actually stolen the car in which I’m sitting, which of course I haven’t. I do have three outstanding traffic warrants, however. I’m arrested again, and the cops find three balloons of heroin in my shoe.

*   *   *

I’m back at
Exodus for another thirty days, but this time I want to get sober. I’m starting to see that maybe AA can work. People are checking in as addicts and walking out as fully realized people, no longer shadows of their former selves. I feel faint glimmers of my spirituality coming back, remember what my life was like when I believed in God and all He could do. I’m praying on a regular basis. They call this the “pink cloud,” the sense of euphoria that comes with newfound sobriety. I’m starting to think, maybe I can do this.

My counselors want me to check in at Cri-Help, a no-frills, nonprofit rehab facility in North Hollywood, immediately after my thirty days at Exodus are up. Cri-Help is like a military boot camp with mountains of rules, including no communication with the outside world for the first month. I’m terrified, but I decide to go. My hope is that by doing so, the judge will drop all the charges.

Vanessa takes me to check in. It’s dark and dingy and not air-conditioned. There’s no swimming pool or Jacuzzi. It’s nothing at all like what I’m used to. It’s like prison. But I say good-bye to my wife. I resolve to attend every group therapy session and every meeting. By now I’ve even got my first sponsor, who also happens to have been one of my costars on
Gremlins
—it’s a strange convergence of my two lives, that of movie star and down-and-out drug addict.

The first few days at Cri-Help pass uneventfully, but then I experience a hiccup: Vanessa has been leaving me tokens and gifts, like love notes or a pair of her panties, stashed secretly beneath empty crates kept out back by the trash. This is in complete violation of the rules, and we’ve been caught. As punishment, I’m being kicked out of rehab, and the only way to get myself back in is to attend thirty AA meetings in the next thirty days; if I can do that, Marlene, the head counselor at Cri-Help, will be willing to back me in court when asking the judge for a second chance.

I take this in stride, go to the meetings, get the vouchers signed, until the thirty-day probationary period is up. That’s when I decide I need just one more night of partying before they let me back in. Just one more chance to have some fun before I get locked down for good.

I’m in a seedy section of Hollywood, idling outside some apartment building trying to score and, apparently, blocking a driveway, when the cops show up. I give them some song and dance about how I’m just “dropping off my maid,” but they run my plates. I’m arrested
again,
this time for additional outstanding traffic warrants and driving with a suspended license.

Three days later, on December 10, 1990, I appear in court and plead no contest to all three felony charges. I’m fined five thousand dollars, given four years probation, and ordered back to live-in rehab. I go back to Cri-Help, knowing that it’s my last chance.

CHAPTER 18

After nine months of treatment and little to no interaction with people in the actual, outside world, I earned my completion certificate from Cri-Help. I was sober. I was happy. I was ready to get back to work.

I was also in debt—for legal fees and rehab expenses (I’d borrowed nearly $30,000 from Richard Donner alone)—to the tune of $180,000. My reputation as a rising star in Hollywood had been eviscerated. My name, once associated with a slew of number-one hits, was a punch line. I had just turned twenty-years old and I was starting all over. Again.

*   *   *

By the fall
of 1991, there hadn’t been many instances of downtrodden or drug-addled celebrities successfully reinvigorating their careers. This was a full five years before Robert Downey, Jr. became mired in the fallout from the first of his high-profile arrests—for speeding down Sunset Boulevard while in possession of heroin, cocaine, and a .357 Magnum and, one month later, for wandering into a neighbor’s home and falling asleep in one of the beds; more than ten years before he would make what many consider to be the most successful comeback in Hollywood history. Drew Barrymore, once a fan-favorite and critical darling, was also still struggling—it would be another four years before she started landing the roles that ultimately salvaged her career; nine years before her production company’s reboot of
Charlie’s Angels
re-established her as a genuine, bankable star.

Without any kind of roadmap to follow, my agent and I go back and forth on how best to move my career forward. And within days of my release from Cri-Help, he brings me offers for two different films:
Round Trip to Heaven,
starring my old video game–playing costar Zach Galligan, and something called
Happy Campers,
in which I’ll play a summer camp waterskiing instructor. Both are silly, schlocky scripts, but my agent convinces me to take them. “They’ll forgive the fact that you’re doing B-movies if you can show up on time, do good work, and prove that you’re a professional,” he tells me. “That’s what Hollywood needs to see from you right now.”

I don’t understand the potential long-term effects of doing low-budget, straight-to-video movies. So, instead of playing the long game, of waiting for a quality project I can really sink my teeth into, I choose roles based entirely on my dire financial situation. Together,
Round Trip to Heaven
and
Happy Campers
will earn me $200,000. That’s not such a bad deal for someone with a mountain of debt.

Despite being a campy T&A comedy, filming on
Round Trip to Heaven
goes smoothly; people in the business seem genuinely happy to have me back. Soon, there’s even chatter about reprising my role as the voice of Donatello in the upcoming
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
movie.

The original
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
was brought to me in the fall of 1989, when I was already pretty deep into my heroin haze. It was an independent production, a tie-in to the comic-book series and the successful Saturday-morning cartoon, but to me it looked cheap and cheesy. Still, it was quick work, necessitating only a couple of days in the studio, for which I was paid scale (the minimum amount allowed for members of the Screen Actors Guild).
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
went on to gross more than $130 million at the box office, making it the highest grossing independent film of its time.

Coming back to work on the second sequel (
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
was filmed when I was in rehab) felt a little like redemption.

*   *   *

It was late
fall, 1991, and we were shooting
Happy Campers,
a raucous comedy about a lakeside summer camp, at Bass Lake, a laid-back tourist hot spot not far from the south entrance of Yosemite National Park. While the other young actors spent their downtime drinking and partying—in a setting that reminded me an awful lot of filming
Friday the 13th
—I retreated to my cabin or sought support at daily AA meetings. My costar Jack Nance was also a recovering addict; together, we kept each other focused and on track.

I was leaving one of these meetings when Kris Krengel, one of the film’s producers and an assistant director, pulled me aside. She had just finished shooting a film called
My Own Private Idaho
and she was worried about River Phoenix.

“I wouldn’t normally say anything, but I know you were a heroin addict,” she said, before taking a long, dramatic, deep breath. “And that’s what he’s been doing.”

I couldn’t believe it. It was true that I had only known River long ago, back when we were just children, but even then he was so dedicated, so driven, so devoted to his craft. More recently, he had been making a name for himself as a budding activist and philanthropist. He might have seemed out of sorts at the Oscars, but heroin didn’t seem like something River would be about.

“Trust me,” she said. “I know what I’m talking about.”

Kris encouraged me to call him. She knew I was dedicated to my sobriety, and she thought my experiences with addiction might somehow be of help.

The phone rang and rang and rang, until finally River picked up. He sounded like he’d been asleep, though it was probably four in the afternoon. He sounded out of it, and I could tell, right then, that what Kris had said was true. I told River that I had heard some things, that I was concerned about him, and that when I was back in L.A. we should meet up and talk things through. He seemed amenable. We made loose plans, said good-bye, and hung up.

River and I played phone tag for a while after that, but never did get together, and I never saw him again. Less than two years later, on October 31, 1993, he would die, in a convulsing, overdose-induced fit, outside the Viper Room, a nightclub owned by his pal Johnny Depp. He was just twenty-three-years old.

*   *   *

As production dragged
on, I used the weekends to escape to L.A. and work on repairing my relationship with Vanessa. I was renting a new home in Venice, though I still couldn’t get her to move in with me; even with my newfound sobriety, our relationship was still very much on the rocks. It was when I arrived back from one of these weekend trips that I discovered the film’s producers had cut a last-minute deal. The movie I’d signed on for,
Happy Campers,
would now be called
Meatballs 4
.