Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness (17 page)

After you’ve finished eating like a tranquilized horse, you stabilize yourself for the well-wishes and hugs that accompany the good-byes, after which your sad family and friends watch and wave as you shuffle your way back down the hall. Generally, your posse can only handle this until you’re halfway to your room, at which point they turn and run, stopping only for the hand sanitizer near the exit, in hopes of wiping away the last hour. I know my family and friends did this with me, and I did it with Scott. Once safely outside, everybody sits weeping in their cars. Or maybe they hold it together until they get home, and fall apart there.

I’ve gone back and asked everyone who came to see me what was running through their minds during all those visits, and every answer is the same: There was no way this happened to Mary. She’s not an addict. The only explanation is that she’s so attached to Scott that she would even follow him to rehab. I did my best to keep my bad behavior a secret and it worked. I thought I was pretty crafty at the time, but in retrospect, I’m baffled. How is it that I spent nearly a year on a never-ending heroin-and-whatever-else-you’ve-got run without setting off a single red flag? How could they deny the damage I’d done to my arms? One day, I was model pretty; the next, I resembled the undead. Didn’t anybody notice?

As the medicated fog of detox lifts, it’s replaced by guilt. Parents
have dreams for their children—this is not one of them. You’ve killed that dream, and they’re sent home (or brought back in for family group sessions) to grieve it. Both my parents kept saying they’d failed me; my dad in particular, with his own history of addiction and hard recovery, always felt like this was something he’d done to me, something that he could’ve seen and somehow prevented. The saddest words I ever heard him say were, “I should’ve saved you.” But I knew I’d done this to myself, and I’d done it to my family as well—how could I carry that shame? Many times, this guilt leads to relapse.

Me and my dad in 1978. The decor looks like we’re on the set of
Roseanne.

My parents’ remarriage, the one that was supposed to lock it in. It didn’t.

“I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.”

With Candy Westbrook at the “Model of the Year” competition in Washington, D.C.

First kiss with Scott and then some, London, 1993.

Ivana
(left)
, Kristen
(right)
, and me “throwin’ it” for the camera at Kristen’s twenty-third birthday at the Whisky in L.A.

With Steve Jones at my birthday party at the Little Door in L.A. This picture captures a rare moment—I’m in Steve’s presence but not bent over with laughter.

Never too fucked up to shop: Scott and me during the Chaos Tour, hemorrhaging money on Rodeo Drive.

Scott always loved this rubber dress (I had to powder my body to get it on). We are at a Japanese restaurant in Hollywood before the start of our hotel run with his brother Michael. Little did I know that within days I’d be reviving the dead.

After Scott did a solo show in L.A., we hit the Chateau Marmont and, later, downtown. This photo was taken in the back of a limo moments after we confessed to each other that we’d both relapsed—and before we went looking for heroin.

Pajama party at the Playboy Mansion. I had no clue till much later that Scott’s time in the bathroom was spent with a crack pipe in his mouth.

The framed picture of Keith Richards that we used to prep speedballs. When you’re not seeing clearly, everything’s an icon.