The Harder They Fall (6 page)

I heard Tom, this Englishman in L.A., say that in recovery you start out as a superstar and work your way into the chorus. I had achieved that kind of status:
The Paul Williams Show
, isn’t that wonderful? What I think he meant was that the gift of recovery gives you the chance to step into the chorus, become part of the family of man, back away from your own drama, and experience the pure joy of belonging and the greater gift of being a valuable human who can help another. Someone very wise once said, “It’s all about love and service.” I’m beginning to understand.

Basically I stopped work in the eighties. I was too high to see myself in free-fall. When I finally tried to get sober, it was for a girl, Melissa, a young graduate student. I did aversion therapy for Melissa. They give you injections to make you sick and then alcohol to drink. You throw up and lay there for three hours with a towel around your neck with your own vomit in it. Just lying there thinking about your situation, the smells and all, is revolting. The next day comes a shot of sodium pentothal that knocks you out, like 99, 98, … 3. While you’re out, they ask if you want a drink. Then you go back for more vomiting. But the therapist said, “We’re worried about you, Mr. Williams, because you’re the only person we know that’s been consistently early for sodium pentothal.” I loved it! I wanted another treatment! For seven months, I didn’t drink. But I didn’t reflect or change on the inside—never cracked a book, shared my problem, or had a support system.

Next I went to Jamaica. Hadn’t had a drink in seven months on pure Paul Williams superstar-willpower. White knuckling it all the way. I went to Jamaica for a project called
The Secret Life of Queen Victoria
, a musical I’m still trying to get done. And at two o’clock in the afternoon at the producer’s beautiful home, by the pool, a gentleman in a white jacket comes out and goes, “Mr. Williams, would you care for something to drink? Perhaps a rum and coke?” I said to myself, “Wait a minute. I haven’t had a drink in seven months. I’m Paul Williams. I have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. I can have one drink.” So at two o’clock in the afternoon, I had a rum and coke. Two o’clock in the morning, I was at Bob Marley’s grave explaining reggae to a lot of black people I didn’t know. Lying through my teeth. I don’t know how I wound up there.

At this point, I realize I have a disease and total abstinence is the beginning of how I deal with it. Total abstinence gives me a chance to stay clean and sober and learn. And I had a capacity to learn. But then I was off and running for two more years of uncontrolled using. During that time, I put up a front about getting sober. To hide my use, I became a chronic and habitual liar. Say I was going to some event or to see people, Melissa would say, “I know you’re getting high. Just admit it. We’ll get you help. I’m not going to leave.” And I’d answer, “What the fuck is the matter with you? You have a lot of issues with men, don’t you? A lot of trust issues?” I’d turn it
on her, and she’d go to bed crying, worried about what was wrong with her perceptabilities to perceive reality. She thought she was dented, broken. Then Melissa would go to bed, and I’d sneak out the puppy door and go score more drugs. ’Cause the real door had a terrible squeak. When I’d been up two days and nights, it was
roar
, the world’s loudest door. So I’d sneak out the puppy door and go score. And I remember sitting next to her when she cried, wanting to hold her and be there for her, but being unable to connect with the emotion. Wanting to, but not being able to find the emotion. And eventually she left.

In 1989, right before I got sober, I went to Oklahoma City to do a gig. A doctor had prescribed Antabuse to keep me from drinking. Antabuse is a chemical that causes a violent physical illness if mixed with alcohol. So I was taking Antabuse but using cocaine with it, basically playing with fire as I lived the lie. Evidently the lie screwed me up because I had a full-blown psychotic episode before going on stage. Three o’clock in the afternoon, I’m in a tuxedo walking out of my dressing room with a promoter, never having been out of my hotel suite. And it’s like somebody grabbed me and threw me higher than my own head against the wall and then threw me down the escalator stairs. I was dragged by my ears. I experienced an episode—about three-quarters of an hour of pure hell. And in the rear view mirror, as we’re driving to the gig, I can see this little monster behind me. And he’s twisting my ear, laughing and biting chunks out of my neck. It was like a gruesome monster—a terrifying psychotic episode brought out by the toxicity. So Gary, the promoter, called the psychiatrist and postponed the show for a day and took me to a doctor who gave me something to calm me down.

Two months later, in a blackout, I phoned a doctor. He called me the next day. “I found a place for you,” he said. And I said, “What are you talking about?” “Well, you called me last night,” he replied. “You said you wanted to get sober and go into treatment.” I didn’t remember this at all and I started crying. Help was the last thing I wanted, but I went into treatment. … Now cut to ten years later. I’m ten years sober and had just spoken at a men’s lockdown in Nashville, Tennessee. So I’m full-tilt Gandhi-meets-Jiminy Cricket-Paul Williams.

Back to my hotel. A river to my people, saving lives left and right, I reek with self-importance. I go up to my hotel room, and my key doesn’t work, and I’m like, “Son of a bitch!” It’s a quick trip from Gandhi to Himmler for me. My recovery’s out the window. I want my key, my room, my bed. I go down and get the new room key, and the lobby of the hotel is full of guys with little badges identifying where they’re from. It’s a convention of talent buyers. And this one gentleman comes up to me and says, “My name is Curt. I booked you once and just wanted to say hi.” I noticed the nametag on his chest says Oklahoma City. I went, “Oh my god, are you the guy who booked me when I did my Linda Blair? When my head was spinning? Oh was I possessed!” “Yes, that was me.” And I got all puffed up. “I’m ten years sober now. I just spoke at the prison.” I was pumped up and shining. “Yeah,” he said, “I heard you were sober.” I asked, “Are you sober too?” And he reached in his pocket and pulled out a coin from a recovery program, commemorating seventeen years. “Wait a minute.” I did the math. “You were seven years sober when I had the psychotic episode? What did you think?” “You scared me to death.” “What did you do?” He said they put together a prayer circle the next day in the hopes that I would find a healing for my disease. “That you’d be able to find sobriety, be able to make that choice.” And two months later in a blackout, I called that physician.

You can go from that story to that wonderful statement that we show up as superstars and work our way into the chorus. I slid deeply into the chorus. Because I’d been the star of the Paul Williams recovery up to that moment. In some level of my consciousness, I’d taken credit for the effort I’d put into my sobriety. That effort remains strong. So do the pride and gratitude. However, what changed was I saw that every bit of it was a gift. Every bit of my recovery was a gift from the men and women that have gone before and who care enough. And when we hold hands and pray, the prayers are heard and work. Once in the South I heard a woman say, “It always makes me laugh. Worry, worry, worry. Why worry when you can pray?” It was so simple to her. So we can pray and change our actions.

My dad took me to a baseball game when I was thirteen. Drunk as a skunk, he woke me in the middle of the night, put me in the car to drive to see the Cleveland Indians play baseball. Only he drove to Cincinnati, the
wrong town. It was a pouring rainstorm, and Dad sat in this empty parking lot saying, “We’re going to get really good seats. We’re early.” Finally he got up and walked to the stadium ticket office and found he’d gone to the wrong city. And I saw his shoulders slump into that alcoholic slump that I’ve repeated myself with my children through the years. And he came back and said, “Well, there’s not going to be a ball game, but it’s the thought that counts.”

Those words were immense in my psyche: “It’s the thought that counts.” Because until I was forty-nine years old, I was one of the “thoughtiest” people you ever met in your life. I had the best intentions. I did. I meant to show up on time, or get that song finished for you on time, or give to charity. I said I would. I meant to vote, but I didn’t. When I got sober, what was shown to me was that the crux was not the thought, or even my feelings about a matter, as much as my actions.

From the minute I got sober, a friend who supported me would call me up and ask how I was treating the world today. The first time I was like, “You’ve had a slip of the tongue. Don’t you mean how is the world treating me?”

“Well, I do care,” he answered. “But I can’t do much about that. I guarantee though that if you monitor the way you treat the world, you can change every element of your life. And that’s the gift right there. It’s magnificent, isn’t it?”

We were so affected by the praise. But we so desperately needed it. I don’t know all the individual stories of the other people in this book—or little Gary’s story. I don’t know what they or little Gary were like. But they needed that praise, needed to be held the way that drugs held them, maybe to strike out and get even to what had hurt them. So I needed to be held the way drugs held me, but I found that drugs were not faithful lovers.

I cringe when I remember moments on stage when I was out of control on blow and booze. Tasteless jokes. I think I enjoyed digging holes for myself with the audience, and then trying to climb back out. And I fell, more than once. My record was in Detroit, opening for Joan Rivers. I walked out, and there was an orchestra pit that wasn’t there during the sound check. Or so I thought … I fell fourteen feet into a concrete-floored
pit and survived with no major injuries. Just some bruises and a sprained hip. The years were not wasted on any level to me. And none of it was for naught.

You know you’re an alcoholic when you misplace a decade. And the eighties are pretty much a blur. The fast track to my bottom was cocaine. I was using it every day—an eight ball a day by the end of the eighties. A lot of money. But what it cost me was nothing compared to what it cost me. What I mean is the choices I made were almost always selfish and self-destructive behind the drug. And the years of my children’s infancy deserved a father that was truly present. Loving and fully present.

I lost so many valuable years to my addiction. But they aren’t really lost if speaking about the disease helps reduce the stigma. I went to Florida a couple of years ago to speak at the NCADD. I was briefly on the board of directors of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. I jumped in a cab and the driver said, “Hey, Mr. Williams, what are you doing in town, a concert?” I said, “No, I am speaking for the National Council on Alcoholism.” He asked why I was doing that. I told him because I am an alcoholic. The driver remarked on the genetic connection to the disease. I found this heartening. Never touched by alcoholism, yet he knew that. It showed me that the public is educated that we have a disease. We don’t have to be ashamed and can be open about recovery.

The brightest, most energetic, and generous group of people I ever met in the world are recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. I have never seen such light as in the eyes of those recovering when someone reaches out to them. To be at this point in my life and have a sense of beginning and usefulness is more than I could have imagined. If I can stay in a place where I am within God’s touch, then every day will be built on a foundation of pure gratitude—or my name ain’t Paul W.!

My name isn’t on the cover of
Variety
or
Rolling Stone
, but it has not been listed in the obituary column either, which is where I was headed. I have a life today. I’m writing a musical about a decade that I missed, writing of themes like fear and ambition. I’m identifying and kind of kicking through those emotional values.

Melissa, the twenty-three-year-old psychology major, was the first
person who reflected the truth back to me and said, “You’re an alcoholic and you’re going to die, and I’m not going to stick around to watch it.” She had a lot of Ernest Holmes books around. He was the creator of the Church of Religious Science, and his whole thinking, like Emmet Fox’s, is about the power of thought. If you go, “I’m not going to get that job, I’m not,” the universe hears it as a prayer. Emmet Fox goes to the next step that there is no competition, there is no limited supply—there is abundance. If you have a struggling shoe store and a major chain of shoe stores opens across the street from you, you pray for their success.

I used to think such thoughts as “I am not going to do a good job,” so the universe hears in the negative. And you can see the fear. I was having fun, but when you look closer, it’s like watching someone ducking or waiting to be hit. I was walking up there grabbing the Oscar for “Evergreen,” and you would think that moment would abound in life and gratitude. In my acceptance speech, I said I would thank all the little people and then remembered that I am the little people. Funny, but also very revealing that I felt some part of me didn’t deserve an award.

It’s been said that fear is the activator of all our character defects. The power of fear was the headwaters of my disease. I see the fear in my eyes if I watch videotapes of myself during the years I drank and used. Footage at the height of my disease in the eighties on
Hollywood Squares
or some game show network is hard for me to watch. My eyes were dead. Things were spoken with no restraint of tongue, no editing for social grace. It’s as if there were no inner thought. In reading spiritual philosophy, I discovered a new rule book governed by trust. A friend once told me that if the cash went low, he always went shopping. And I love that kind of thinking, ’cause I think like that now. Go shopping, ’cause you’re going to get taken care of. God didn’t bring me this far to drop me. No way!

I always joke about being master of the codependent anthem. But the joke nuzzles a truth. “I Won’t Last a Day Without You” isn’t really a healthy thought. But it’s reflective of a way I’ve felt many times … and so has the rest of the world. It’s odd. I’m less embarrassed about the “neediness” in my own lyrics today, even though I think I’m less needy.