Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster (21 page)

Life starts to become fun again. But the best part is, it also becomes scary again. Not the kind of scary you’ve grown accustomed to, like waking up with two black eyes, a loose front tooth, and ten voice-mail messages letting you know that your totaled car was found last night on the Long Island Expressway. No, this is the good kind of scary, the kind where you can’t even believe that you’re actually swimming with sharks off the Great Barrier Reef.

It’s almost as if you’ve become an old toddler, unhampered by any preconceived notions of how awful things usually turn out. This innocent stupidity is what led me to agree to write this damn book in the first place. One fine day last summer, I was wandering around my agency, Paradigm, spreading my sparkling wit and dazzling charm to anyone bored enough to pay attention to a forty-two-year-old boisterous baby. That’s when Lydia Wills, a literary agent, introduced herself to me and said, “Ever thought about writing a book?”

I laughed and said no, but I told her she was my favorite literary agent ever.

Later that night, I was brushing my teeth and marveling at the fact that I now no longer had pimples. It was much better than that because
NOW
I was blessed with both wrinkles AND pimples. (A few months ago, I even discovered a pimple
within
a wrinkle.) Globs of frothy white dripped from my O-shaped mouth as I dropped my toothbrush in horror.
Oh, no.

You see, I knew all too well that the combination of pimples
and
wrinkles could mean only one thing:
I was no longer a spring chicken.
And as everybody knows, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that Hollywood finds more distasteful than a female chicken with no spring. I’ve always found all the bullshit actresses are forced to do to “stay in the game” (waxy, tight face, fat mouth, extreme dieting) to be completely repulsive.
Well, I’m fucked.

If you’re ever unlucky enough to experience this cruel and in my opinion totally unfair combination of pimples and wrinkles (or, as I like to call them “pwinkles”), I really hope you’re not an actress. Because pwinkles are really just braille for “NO ONE WILL EVER HIRE YOU AGAIN.”

My pwinkle terror was compounded because I’d spent most of the last ten years getting wasted, doing plays, getting sober, and teaching acting, and it had recently been brought to my attention that I was very, very close to being “flat broke.” Of course, when I received that terrible news, I reacted the way any sane, healthy person would—I promptly went on eBay and bought a huge painting of a monkey smoking a cigar. Because, as an addict, whenever someone tells me I can’t or shouldn’t do something, a switch in my brain goes off and I immediately think,
Oh-ho-ho, yes I
can
.

This becomes quite handy in certain situations. But unfortunately, most of the time I just ended up looking like an asshole with a painting of a monkey smoking a cigar.

And then it hit me. What if I ended up a sober asshole with pwinkles and a bad painting who’s
poor
?

I’ve supported myself since I graduated from NYU, and started making a living acting when I was twenty-five, an age when most of my friends were still living with ten roommates on Avenue C and eating pot for breakfast. I tried to think of what else I could do for a living, and the answer was
not a goddamn thing.
Other than acting, the only jobs I’ve ever held were “actress jobs” such as waitressing, catering, and a brief stint at the Limited. I’m sure it will surprise no one that I sucked at all of them.

That night I was plagued with frightening, realistic nightmares, always waking up right after uttering, “Hi, I’m Kristen. That’s right, I used to be an alien. Would you like to hear the specials this evening?” A black hole of hopelessness and fear began to suck me in.

Then I remembered Lydia, my favorite literary agent ever.
Yes! That’s it! I’ll write a book! How hard can it be? I love books!
I called her the next morning. We met a week later, and I excitedly told her about the idea I had feverishly cooked up the night before, a safe and charming self-help-type book. And I wouldn’t have to work too hard or expose myself in any real way. She pretended to be interested and asked to see a sample of my writing.
Oh, shit.
It never crossed my mind that she’d want to read something I
wrote.

After a long pause—
Think, Kristen, think
—all I could come up with was this nugget: “I’m pretty sure I still have a few of my college term papers. Would you like to read them?”

To her credit, she didn’t laugh in my face and instead politely demurred.

Think, chicken, think.

Out of desperation I said, “Well, friends sometimes say I write funny e-mails.”

“Forward them to me.”

I left the meeting feeling like a total asshole. But I forwarded her a few of the longest ones I could find, and among them happened to be an e-mail I had written my newly sober friend Chris when I had been clean five months.

I knew I’d never hear from her again.

She called an hour later. “This e-mail you wrote to Chris,
this
is your book.”

I started laughing. “You have got to be kidding me. Listen, Lydia, I appreciate your passion, but there’s no way in hell I’d ever write about my addiction. Ever!
Never ever.
”

About ten minutes later, I started writing and couldn’t stop.

I proudly tell people I wrote every word myself, but I’m not sure that’s true. It’s as if some unknown part of me, some mysterious creature hidden deep inside (the truth-telling ghoul?) was guiding every sentence. I know one thing, though: from that first second I started writing, this book went from just another way to afford more flea market nonsense to mattering far more to me than anything else I’ve ever done in my entire life.

In some ways, this process was even harder than those months I spent alone in the hospital, because I had to relive every detail of it while being stone-cold sober. Some parts were so awful that I had pushed them far, far down in my memory. Some parts still make me blush from embarrassment. Besides, I’m an instant-gratification kind of gal, and no one applauds after you’ve written a good sentence. But as each horrible, embarrassing, funny, or miserable detail was exposed, I found myself feeling lighter, happier, freer. I’ve never shared the details of what really happened to me in London with anyone until now, and I think it’s because a huge part of me still felt that I had gotten exactly what I deserved.

I’d like to make it very clear that I no longer feel that way. Now, the pride I feel in fighting this damn disease, and in my teaching, acting, writing, healthy relationships, and other accomplishments far outweighs any residual shame I may feel.

By the way, I intentionally chose not to go into a great deal of depth when it came to my loved ones, whether it be friends or my family, because I don’t think it’s fair to reveal someone else’s personal details just because I’m dumb enough to reveal mine. No one has the right to tell someone else’s story.

Until they’re dead, that is.

There are exceptions to this, stories I felt vital to mine that involved people dear to me. I’m so honored they let me include them, especially the bullying suffered by my brave, kind, and truly gifted brother.

The e-mail I sent to Chris, which started it all, is actually the final chapter of this book, “Welcome to the Planet of the Apes.” Admittedly, I’ve added and removed some parts and fleshed out others. But it’s pretty much what I wrote him. It was strange to have the ending done the entire time I was writing. It loomed over my head the whole time. I tried a few other endings, but finally I had to face that it’s the only ending this story could have. Because even though it’s the end of the book, that e-mail really signifies the beginning of my life.

It took me a while to realize I didn’t just write that e-mail to Chris. I think I wrote it to anyone out there who’s struggling to become the person they know they should be. But mostly, I think I wrote it to myself. Almost as if I needed proof, in black and white, that it had actually happened.

Recently, I was out in LA for a job. While there, I went to a friend’s birthday party and ran into someone I hadn’t seen in years. He’s a genuinely good man, and I’ve always adored him, in spite of his career choice (he’s an agent). The last time we had hung out, I had been a shit-faced shipwreck. Which is why, after we hugged and told each other how awesome we looked, I was excited to tell him I was sober.

A few hours later, as I was leaving, he pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted some free advice.
Uh-oh,
I thought.
Would it be weird if I said no?

“Oh-kay, shoot.”

“You
really
gotta stop telling everyone that you’re sober.”

I was completely flabbergasted. “What? Why? I mean, I’m writing a freaking book about it!”

“That’s different. I’m just saying that telling people, it could get into the wrong hands, and it could really hurt your career. Besides, it makes people uncomfortable.”

I left seething. And feeling as if my hand had been slapped, as if he would have
preferred
it if I had gotten trashed and puked on his shoes. As if I was
supposed
to be embarrassed that I was sober. As if I should keep my mouth shut like a good little sober girl.

It made me feel like a Freak. That’s when I remembered that comments like that are the entire reason I wrote
GUTS.
He’s probably right, I don’t know. But I simply don’t care anymore. I refuse to feel ashamed of who I am. I most certainly won’t be embarrassed that I’m an addict. So screw my career or my privacy or other people’s sensibilities. I’ll tell whomever I damn well please.

I don’t think we
should
be told to stay silent, locked away in church basements. I think it’s time for people to tell whomever the hell they want to about it, whether they’re still sick and suffering and need help or are twenty years sober. Or, if you need it to be a private matter, then keep it private. Whatever helps you not to use.

If pushing a peanut up a hill with your nose keeps you sober, well, then, just push a peanut up a hill with your nose.

There’s simply no possible way to have a legitimate statistic regarding the exact amount of deaths every year that are caused by drugs and alcohol. I’m not just talking about overdoses, even though those are impossible, too, due to families’ embarrassment. But think about all the murders, carjackings, car accidents, suicides, “heart attacks,” “accidental deaths,” and robberies that occur while the person is high or drunk. If you entered a prison and asked, “Will those of you who
weren’t
on drugs or alcohol while committing the crime that got you in here, please raise your hands?”

I promise you, not one hand would go up.

Whether we want to admit it or not, this is
our
black plague, a terrible scourge that’s just as deadly as cancer or AIDS. It is destroying people by the untold millions. And I believe, without a doubt, that the shame and secrecy that shroud the disease are just as deadly as the disease itself.

In my opinion, the best “slogan” when it comes to addiction isn’t found in some church basement, or some book. It’s a phrase six gay activists from New York City coined in 1987 in the midst of the AIDS crisis:
Silence equals death.

I won’t stay silent any longer.

I hope you won’t, either.

The author is donating a portion of her advance from this work to SLAM (Sobriety, Learning and Motivation), a board of New Yorkers dedicated to the creation of New York City’s first sober high school. For more information, or to see how you can help, please call (855) SLAMNYC.