Drinking and Tweeting (9 page)

After countless tears, laughs, and memories, you learn that your friends will always be there for you. Unless your ex’s new wife takes them to Cabo.

brandi’s babble

There are two kinds of friends to avoid at all costs: wannabes and former child stars.

CHAPTER FIVE

Drugs and Other Drugs

S
hortly after giving birth to my youngest, sitting on the floor of the Woodland Hills Target’s diaper aisle and crying was fast becoming a part of my daily routine. Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure this was indicative of a serious problem.

After Jake was born, I would find any reason to get out of the house and spend hours wandering around somewhere aimlessly. With a newborn and a four-year-old at home, I felt I was losing my mind, and I was in desperate need of some support. While some people go to church for spiritual guidance, I sought the comfort of my favorite superstore. Like clockwork every afternoon, I would announce to the nanny that we were out
of diapers or hand wash or toilet paper or whatever most quickly came to mind. (Not that she understood anything that I was saying, since she only spoke Spanish. I suppose I was trying to convince myself.) Without bothering to put on makeup, brush my teeth, or even get out of my pajamas, I would grab the car keys and hightail it to the driveway. As soon as my Range Rover hit the Target parking lot, I would start to cry, feeling some inexplicable sense of relief. Target became my little sanctuary where I would roam up and down the aisles with my Starbucks, looking at picture frames, flipping through magazines, and trying on costume jewelry. But as soon as I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the hundreds of mirrors in Target, I would burst into tears. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore: a thirty-four-year-old Valley housewife with two kids, puffy eyes, leftover baby weight, and a nest of blond hair. Some days, I didn’t even need the mirror to burst into tears. I would turn down the diaper aisle and guilt would wash over me, then the fear and the waterworks would come until I could calm down and get back to shopping. So it went for most afternoons for the better part of a month. The staff quickly got used to seeing the crazy crying lady loitering in the aisles and, after
a few days, stopped asking if everything was okay (but I usually bought something so I didn’t feel completely weird coming back the next day). I was like an unofficial door greeter, except instead of welcoming customers to the store, I scared the shit out of them.

It didn’t take a PhD (or even a GED) to figure out that I had developed a pretty wicked case of the baby blues, but it took me a while to recognize it in myself. If I were standing on the outside, I’m sure I would easily have recognized it, but during those few weeks I was in a cloud and fairly incapable of rational thought. I mean, hello, I was spending most of my afternoons in a Target—a lot of times I didn’t even bother pushing a cart.

“What did you do today?” Eddie would ask on the days he actually came home from work at a reasonable hour.

“I went to Target again and cried,” I would respond nonchalantly. At the time, this sounded to me like a totally normal response. It was, in fact, what I did that day. I could tell that Eddie was concerned about my mental health, so I told him it was normal. I think we can all agree it was not fucking normal. #CuckooForCocoaPuffs.

While my depression was considerable, it never
reached a psychotic state where I wanted to cause any physical harm to my children or myself. I thought this was just a normal hormonal roller coaster that would eventually pass after my body settled back down.

After weeks of my feeling totally desperate, crying for no reason, and with a purse filled with Target credit-card receipts, Eddie finally suggested I see someone about getting a prescription to help with the transition. I knew he was concerned, and I am grateful to him for that, but I needed to come that realization on my own.

Then, I snapped.

I
could hear my baby screaming down the hall while I was trying to get Mason dressed for the day. Frustration was mounting in my voice as I tried to manage my giggly four-year-old, who was grasping for a nearby toy. He was having a little bit of a tough time adjusting to having a new baby in the house and just trying to understand the change. We all were; newborns are an adjustment (even though the first two months is when they spend most of the day sleeping and you can tote them around just about anywhere!).

When I turned to grab Mason’s shirt off the dresser, he tried wandering away, as toddlers tend to do. That’s when I lost it. I grabbed the waist of his pants, yanked him around to face me, and screamed, “Come. Fucking. On!”

Seeing the total fear in his eyes was all the motivation I needed to make a change. My poor little four-year-old was terrified of his mommy, the one person who should always make him feel safe. His eyes filled up with tears and my heart sank. I grabbed his little body and pulled him into my chest. “Mommy’s sorry,” I told him. “Mommy made a mistake. I’m sorry. I won’t yell at you like that again. I promise.” I felt absolutely horrible, and it’s a moment I will never forget. It was scarring for me, and I realized that I never wanted to react that way again toward my children, as long as I lived.

That was the final straw. Something was really wrong with me, and I needed to go talk to someone.

That’s when I finally told Eddie, “I’m not happy. I screamed at Mason for no reason. I think I need help now.” He encouraged me to set up an appointment with my gynecologist that week. At the time, the world had just witnessed in the media the Brooke Shields–Tom Cruise war of words on postpartum depression, and the
disorder had a negative connotation. The public seemed fiercely divided on the topic, but it seemed silly to me that anyone would ever believe a man over a woman in that situation. How many times had Tom Cruise gone into labor? How many times had he had to wake up in the middle of the night to breast-feed? How often did he have crazy female hormones pumping through his body? To this day, if any man wants to sit on his high horse and judge women who choose to vocalize their struggles, I say, “Go fuck yourself.”

A man can never understand what it’s like to go through childbirth. It is both the most rewarding and most terrifying experience you can imagine. For the rest of my life, I will cherish the moments I brought each of my sons into the world, but I also know I never want to go through that experience again. So, when it comes down to Brooke versus Tom, I’m going to side with the woman every single time.

Brooke’s candor about her postpartum depression also served as a huge wake-up call to mothers that they were not alone. Before then, people weren’t vocal about the baby blues, so women suffered behind closed doors.
Today, women are open about struggling after having a baby. Guess what? When you bring a newborn home from the hospital, it’s not all cupcakes and rainbows. The first couple months are hard—actually, they sort of blow. And I had help! I envy those moms and dads who can do it on their own; I know I wouldn’t have been able to make it without a support staff. I was never ashamed of it, because I knew it was a hormonal imbalance, and it didn’t make me a bad mother. I would be a bad mom if I didn’t get myself better. I think that if something is wrong and a pill can fix it, take the fucking pill. Life is way too short to spend your days miserable and taking your family for granted. (I’m still hoping for a pill that can turn me into a lesbian. The women in my life are amazing and fantastic partners, but when it comes to anything south of the border, I’m a strictly dickly kind of chick.)

“L
isten, I’m going to Target and walking around aimlessly for hours, just to get out of the house,” I told the doctor when I went to see her later that same week.
“I’m crying for absolutely no reason all the time. And worst of all, I’m yelling at my toddler for no apparent reason. I need help.”

Immediately, my doctor recognized the signs and suggested I begin taking ten milligrams of Lexapro once a day, preferably in the morning. Within two weeks, I started noticing a tremendous change in my personality. I felt calm, balanced, and happy—three things I hadn’t felt since before I went into labor. And probably not all at the same time since before I had Mason! It changed my life. I definitely noticed a lower sex drive, but that was okay for the time being. It was so high to begin with that I was fine with a temporary reprieve. Postpartum depression doesn’t last forever. Once the baby starts smiling, laughing, and developing a personality of his or her own, it gets easier. My doctor and I decided on a program that would wean me off the medication within six months by lowering the doses systematically. By Jake’s first birthday, I was off my happy pill and back to what I thought was my “normal” life.

That would soon change.

Roughly a year later, news broke of Eddie’s affair with LeAnn—and it was just everywhere. I finally saw
the video with my own eyes once I got back from Parrot Cay. I knew then that I was in for an emotional roller-coaster ride. Within about twenty-four hours, I determined that for me to have even the slightest chance of coming through this in one piece, I was going to need some help ASAP. I picked up the phone and called my doctor.

“Are you trembling?” she asked.

“I’m not okay,” I said.

Sensing the sadness in my voice, she immediately sent a Lexapro prescription to my local CVS pharmacy.

Besides the love I have for my boys, I credit Lexapro for getting me through my divorce. People have criticized me for being open about my use of antidepressant and antianxiety drugs, wondering why I would admit to something like that. My response? Fuck you. There is nothing wrong with treating a neurochemical imbalance. In fact, I think it’s negligent to ignore problems and hope that with enough sleep and a healthy diet they’ll just go away. Bullshit. I’m hoping that my sharing my story will help another struggling mom out there—plus I never intend to give up Del Taco.

Pills aren’t the answer to everyone’s problems, and
prescription-drug dependencies are both real and scary. (I’ve seen enough
Intervention
to know this.) However, I found that Lexapro can offer me the stability I need to play soccer with my boys without breaking down in tears. It has been the crutch I sometimes need to be a good parent and to get through my days while actually enjoying them! This is simply my truth.

I don’t know about other cities, but in Los Angeles about 90 percent of all women are either taking or have taken some kind of happy pill—and I know with certainty every single Valley housewife has a standing prescription. They don’t call it the Valley Vitamin for nothing. A lot of my friends are on Lexapro—either because they’re struggling with their role as a new mother and all the hormonal changes that come with it, or because they’re simply getting older, and getting old sucks for everyone, especially for former models.

People act as if it were this dirty little secret. No one wants to talk about it, because it’s like admitting some kind of failure. Men and women are far more comfortable talking openly about smoking pot or snorting cocaine than they are about needing the assistance of a legal antidepressant. It’s like, “Hey, I’m just partying.
I don’t need drugs to get through the day. I am in control of my days. I just do a bump or toke a bowl now and again because, unlike you, I’m totally normal.” #Hypocrites.

I’ve talked openly about it both in interviews and on my Twitter feed. People shouldn’t feel as if it were this terrible thing to recognize a problem, recognize that they’re mistreating themselves and the people around them, and want to get help. As soon as I mention to people that I’m on Lexapro, they immediately launch into their own story about Zoloft or Prozac. I think people want to be honest about it, much as with postpartum depression, but still can’t shake the stigma surrounding it. Hell, if I were afraid of what people might think, I’d never leave my house—or wear a bikini.

I’m also not afraid to admit that I occasionally rely on Xanax to help me with my anxiety. While most users of Lexapro require it daily, people require Xanax only during extremely stressfully situations. After the Lexapro, it was the very next prescription called in to my local pharmacy.

Xanax helps keep me calm when I feel a panic attack coming on—those usually occur during short flights on
small airplanes (those of you who saw the second season of
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
will get that reference) or on the morning you find out your ex-husband has married the woman he had an affair with, and your children walked her down the fucking aisle. #XanaxRules. While my now-small dosage of Lexapro grants me the sense of normalcy I need to get through the day, the Xanax mellows me out completely (and makes me a little silly). Like I said, it’s not by any means a habit, and I’m definitely not operating any heavy machinery while under its influence, but it gets the job done when needed.

T
he one habit I did need to sideline was my drinking. After my divorce—even with the help of Lexapro—I fell into a bit of a tailspin (and an eventual DUI arrest). My life had become the textbook Cougar Diet: sauvignon blanc, Lexapro, and weekly magazines. Plus, the Lexapro (an antidepressant) coupled with the alcohol (a depressant) made for an extremely dangerous combination.

Ironically, I rarely drank when Eddie and I were
together. We’d have an occasional glass of wine with dinner and definitely loosen up at parties or events, but I wasn’t a big drinker. That quickly changed after we separated. White wine became my constant shoulder to lean on. Coupled with the Lexapro, it was the only way I could get myself through my days and get to sleep at night. I realize how dangerous that was, but my life was unraveling at the seams.

So, you’ve all heard the story: I slashed the tires of my husband’s two Harley-Davidsons. Not only is it true, I would do it again in a heartbeat. After two glasses of wine and a particularly bad evening, I had worked myself up enough to grab the largest knife out of the kitchen block and head straight to the garage. I slashed four tires in all—two wheels on two bikes. I’m not necessarily proud of my actions, but in that moment it felt really, really good. I was hurting so badly and made a knee-jerk decision to ruin something I knew he loved.