Crash and Burn (16 page)

When I was finally ready, I told him so and he told me that he’d need a partner to have his back: Joe the Cop. I hired them both and they planned out exactly when, how, and where they would see me through detox. Joe is a really good guy, just a typical Irish cop from Queens, a real salt-of-the-earth type guy who reminded me of every friend I grew up with. Of course, that meant nothing to me when
I was retching and reeling from opiate withdrawal. At that point he was just a stick figure that wouldn’t get me drugs.

The first thing those guys did was bring two drug-sniffing dogs over to my house in Hoboken and down the shore in Red Bank and those mutts literally found anything that had ever had drugs even next to it. I was actually in awe of them, which numbed me to the fact that every single stash I had was being discovered and trashed before my eyes. I mean, seriously, these two dogs were finding rolled-up bills in bathrobes that I hadn’t worn in months, sniffing out the stench of crusted heroin that at that moment I wanted to snatch out of their mouths just for being so fucking good at their jobs. These fucking canines found my old stash spot in my Hoboken apartment, and even though it was empty and had been for a few weeks, they freaked out as if it were Scarface’s desk. That was the moment I truly realized that I’d been found out and that this latest round of bullshit was over. That was when I knew that I had to try; I had to put myself in the hands of these guys at least. I had to sweat this shit out and see if there was anything left of me.

This had been a long time coming.

————

I’d spent the previous half year hiding all of this the best I could, by hiring people, firing people, just padding my life from any kind of true vision. I rehired my old assistant Melissa (who is a very sweet, very hot former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader) because she was the only assistant who could deal with me without losing her mind. By early spring, she was my seventh PA in twelve months—lucky number seven. Here is how randomly I determined who should be working for and with me. Tim Sullivan, whom I’d met backstage at a Springsteen concert because he was connected to that camp, became my new road manager, starting with a fund-raiser I did at Caroline’s, just because I wanted him to. I paid Tim ten grand for taking care of those gigs, not because it was actually very much work at all, but
just because I wanted him to be on board “Team Artie.” I even made Teddy get Tim up to speed at a gig in Boca Raton before I officially fired Teddy. I really didn’t care much about etiquette, and my business management was beyond remedial.

I hadn’t forgotten the plan that Howard’s manager Don had laid out for me—less road time and fewer gigs for more money—that I’d agreed to start in the new year (meaning the year we were in, that was now nearly half gone). I did want to do that, but like everything else that was good for me I kept putting it off because I was overtaken with greed and drug lust. I decided I needed to put that plan on hold until the start of 2010, because I convinced myself that before I could change anything in my professional life and risk a potential decrease in my income I had to bank as much money as possible. I had two mortgages, I had spent a lot on my shore house, and I was spending even more on drugs and gambling. The deeper I got into my booze and drug problem the more I enjoyed gambling—on football, basketball, baseball, boxing, you name it. I also started playing blackjack a little too enthusiastically at every single casino that booked me—and there were a lot of them. The more I partied the more I lost and the less I cared.

Let me give you an example. During Super Bowl weekend in 2008, I played the Mandalay Bay in Vegas and was paid $110,000. I went on a real nice tear and had a great time. Between the booze, the drugs, the strippers/hookers, and all of the gambling I did, I netted $10,000. Actually, after paying my booker his commission on the $110,000, I lost money. Keep in mind my room was paid for, so in two days I spent $100,000 on “fun” and bad decisions.

I kept on like this, thinking everything was peachy, even when Dr. Drew called into the
Stern Show
and asked to have me on the next season of
Celebrity Rehab
. The producers of the show offered me $200,000 to do three weeks on the show and Howard said he’d be happy to give me the time off because he thought it was a great idea.

“Fuck that,” I said on the air. “I’m not going to some fucking televised bullshit rehab run by a quack.”

Dr. Drew was very civil about it and pointed out the obvious: “If a person wants drugs they’re going to get drugs. I don’t think my program will work for Artie right now because I can tell from his attitude that he doesn’t want it. If we try to push him it won’t work, but I can tell you this, Artie, if you don’t get into a rehab program soon and make some changes, things are going to end badly for you.”

That pissed me off so much that I went on a tirade about Dr. Drew, with him right there on the phone.

“How can you even call yourself a doctor?” I said. “You’re a show biz whore. I mean nothing to you; I’m an opportunity. You’re all about show business not about helping people. You are only talking to me because you’re a
show biz whore
.”

I was completely wrong of course. As I found out later, Dr. Drew is the furthest thing from that; he genuinely cares and he is a real counselor whose motives are true. He’s not in it for fame, he’s in it to help—fame has come his way because he’s really good at his job. I’d never learn this firsthand because I eliminated that possibility with my behavior on the air that day. Drew finished off the interview with Howard, but it was obvious that he’d put my file in his trash bin, if you catch my drift. Not too long afterward I learned that my suspicions were correct when Lisa G from Howard 100 News brought us a quote about me that Dr. Drew had given in an interview not too long afterward. Basically he said that he’d wanted to help me because it was clear that I desperately needed it, but that my feelings toward him were too strong and too aggressive for anything in his program to work for me. He said my attitude toward him was too vicious for us to ever make progress whether we were under the microscope of
Celebrity Rehab
or not. This of course sent me into an even more heated round of badmouthing, first Lisa G then Dr. Drew, until Howard just cut me off outright.

————

And that’s when I told Mike I was ready—as usual a little too late, but ready nonetheless. Better ready late than never ready, right? The plan was to lock me in down at my shore house during our next hiatus from the
Stern Show
, which was in April of that year. These two weren’t kidding: Mike wanted to get me off all opiates, and wasn’t hearing me when he realized that Subutex—the opiate inhibitor/replacement I’d been abusing—was as much a part of my diet as any of the obvious other drugs. I realized how serious he and Joe were about this when they handcuffed me to my bed in my bedroom down the shore.

“Yeah, I get it, dude, you don’t need to remind me that you were once both cops,” I said, my attitude still intact.

“Oh, we know you know that, Art,” Mike said. “I’m doing this because you lied to me about the Subutex. We are not allowing that to be some kind of bridge for you. We’re doing it all; we are getting you off everything. It’s time.”

“Hey, Mike,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Fuck you.”

The next four days were the ninth circle of hell. It rained nonstop, or at least it was raining every time I was conscious enough to focus my eyes beyond the window past my bed. It was raining like hell, gray everywhere, and I wanted to fucking die. No, I wanted to kill Mike and Joe, because they were to blame for this in my mind’s limited focus. Wave after wave of nausea, sweats, and crawling itch washed over me as whatever I cried out for went unanswered. After four days, my body had been so wracked with cramps and spasms that they took me out to get a massage, just to ease my sore muscles. I’ve never felt such relief at any other point in my life.

They brought me right back and threw me into my room again.
I got through the physical addiction just as my vacation from
Stern
ended—literally. It was hell, but Mike and Joe saw me through. They told me later that at the worst of my pains I promised them money, whores, whatever they wanted if they’d just get me some dope. The amount of dollars I was talking about was insane, but they knew I had it, so I need to thank them again for taking the high road. Or, as it were, the nonhigh road.

Each time I begged them to get me or let me get drugs I threw a bigger number at them, but they didn’t bite. The best image I can give you of what I felt like is Linda Blair tied to that bed in
The Exorcist
. If you’re bad enough into opiates the physical addiction becomes so deep that your muscles don’t function right without the drugs in your bloodstream. That’s where I was: in withdrawal I started spasming uncontrollably, my body jerking itself in so many opposite directions that I pulled muscles in my neck, my legs, and my back. I could not get comfortable in any way. I was hot and cold at the same time: I’d sweat in the shower and be freezing to death under a down comforter. I’m not kidding at all when I tell you that I would have punched my best friend in the face as hard as I could to get drugs and make it stop.

By day three I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and by day four I felt somewhat human. It took a full seven days, because of the extra opiates I’d been sneaking, for the predicted four-day Subutex withdrawal to be over, but once it was I was clean of everything for the first time in four years. That was really something to be proud of for me and it definitely had an effect on my mood. The color returned to my face and the confidence I got from beating my demons inspired me to start exercising a bit. I promised myself, honestly this time, that I’d stick with a nonopiate lifestyle as long as I could—and I did.

I went back to the
Stern Show
clean, and I kept that up for quite a while.

Before I knew it I’d dropped forty pounds in just over a month
and a half, because I’d gotten so heavy that it came right off. I started a no-carb diet, I started walking and jogging every day, just moving around for once, and I took long intense steam saunas to help clean out my system and drop more weight. Seeing those results made me incredibly happy. I felt in my heart that I’d turned a corner, and every time someone I knew told me that I “looked more alive,” I felt great. Believe me, that’s far from a compliment because the implication is that the last time they’d seen me I’d looked like the walking dead.

Around that time I was approached by some reality show producers who wanted to do a show on me, so I let them follow me around for a while. I ultimately turned it down on the advice of my manager, Dave Becky, because it was clear that these guys wanted a train wreck: the show’s working title was
Saving Artie
, and if that isn’t a recipe for relapse I don’t know what is. It was hard for me to say no because it’s hard for me to say no to anything because deep down I still think that all that I’ve achieved could disappear at any moment. I fought that instinct and said no to this and I’m glad I did, but it just goes to show you that show business is all about timing. If these guys had shown up six months earlier we’d have had a show in the can in three weeks without even trying.

Before I knew it I’d been clean a month, which was so unfamiliar to me after so many years of abuse that I felt like I’d climbed a mountain without even breaking a sweat. For once I didn’t feel like a loser, a pussy, or worse, a quitter, for being sober. I actually liked it and thought it was cool. I joined a gym in Hoboken and I started going every day to do what I could. I’m not going to kid you into thinking I jumped right into Tae Bo or the Insanity workout, because I was in such bad shape that moving around regularly at all was a lot for me. But it was progress, which was a new and very welcome concept in my life. For once I didn’t start making fun of something positive in my life.

My gym was right next to a tanning salon and one day as I was walking by I saw, literally, the most stunningly beautiful girl I’d ever
seen working at the counter. She was so gorgeous that I stopped in my tracks and did a completely obvious double take. I didn’t care if she saw it, I had to stare at her to make sure she was real, so for a few minutes I stood there silently outside the window, creepier than a pedophile at a school-yard fence during recess. I wanted to talk to her but I didn’t know how I could pull it off. This may come as a surprise, but I didn’t really know my way around a tanning salon, so I had to think of something because this girl was beautiful enough to make a guy like me enter one of those places blind.

I realized as I went through the door that I had no idea what kind of bullshit things anyone could even ask about tanning, just to start some kind of conversation. She was alone at the counter, so I had that going for me, and just before she noticed me coming, I saw, off to the side, an old-fashioned shaving chair.

“Hey, do you do shaves here?” I asked her. “I’m going to my buddy’s wedding next week and I’d like to get cleaned up.” Thank God I didn’t have to ask for a tan.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Can I get back to you? I’m just filling in for someone, and the manager isn’t here right now.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t even listening because I was too busy staring at her the way a starving man would look at a filet mignon through a restaurant window. “Yeah, that’s fine. If I give you my number, will you give me a call when you find out?” This was already a step in the right direction.

“Sure.”

I then made the lamest joke ever. I asked her what nationality she was.

“I’m Russian,” she said.

“You’re rushin’?” I said. “What’s your hurry?”

And she laughed.
Oh boy
, I thought,
I can’t believe this
. I was in great shape with this girl, because if she’d laugh at a joke like that it was a really good sign that the rest of my material was gonna kill.

I hung around a little while longer making small talk and cracked
her up a few more times until I felt confident enough about how we were relating to ask her if she’d like to go to a Yankee game some time. It turned out she was from Cherry Hill, which is in South Jersey down by Philly, but thankfully she wasn’t a Phillies fan. That would have been a deal breaker, but instead it earned her points because it was clear to me that this girl had good taste, since she was from down there but knew enough to be a Yankees fan. I was becoming more smitten by the minute. “Let’s go to a game, but how about we do something before that one night?” I asked.