20

DEAR REHAB

You and I first became acquainted when I was one day old and Dad checked into the Betty Ford Center, where I would go visit you, a mere babe in Mum’s arms, for the first three months of my life. You became a more important part of my past when I was nineteen. That is when we got hot and heavy for about five years, but now I am very proud to say I don’t know you anymore.

My first trip to rehab at nineteen was a literal trip, after I was so fucked up that I fell down in the living room floor and all my drugs came spilling out of my bag.

With pills rolling everywhere, my parents realized I was a mess. They decided I was going to rehab, something we knew all about, since, as I mentioned, Dad had checked into the Betty Ford Center the day after I was born. Still, I didn’t know what to expect for myself. As soon as it dawned on me that this was really happening, I grabbed handfuls of pills, whatever I could find, and swallowed them.

I figured it was my last chance. I might as well go out with a bang.

My parents then threw me into the back of an MTV production van, where the crew covered me with a blanket so they could sneak me past the crowd of paparazzi outside our house and take me to Promises Treatment Center in Malibu. I completely blacked out and didn’t come to until after I’d pissed myself in a chair in the waiting room at check-in.

As I woke up and looked around, I thought I was tripping because I could hear my parents’ voices. Little did I know they were coming from the TV, because they were on Larry King Live at that very moment. They’d gone on the show to promote the third season of The Osbournes, but instead they were talking about how I’d gone to rehab when I hadn’t even made it past the front desk.

I was covered in piss and angrier than sin.

It took me a long time to get over that. When I saw Mum and Dad talking about me on Larry King Live, I thought they were trying to show the world that it wasn’t their fault. I was already hurt because it seemed as though it had taken forever for them to step in and say, “Hey, we love you and don’t want you to die. You have to stop this.”

I’d always thought I was a bad liar, so I was angry that no one had seen what was happening and that it had taken this long to get to this point. Fuck you, Mum and Dad! I thought. I’m here in a living hell, and you’re on TV trying to prove you’re not bad parents?

Now that I’ve grown up, I see what they did for what it really was: their way of owning their responsibility and trying to protect me and the family when I was in such a fragile state. What else were they supposed to do?

Mum had practically invented the art of feeding stories to the press, and she also knew this was something we could hide for only so long. If she and Dad broke the news, it was our story, and not one for the tabloids to break. By being open about my self-medicating, they were telling the world that they were standing by me. They weren’t ashamed of me, and I shouldn’t be ashamed of myself, either.

I didn’t really pick up on that message at the time. “This is all your fucking fault!” was practically my mantra. It wasn’t their fault, though. They didn’t put the drugs in my mouth, they didn’t give them to me, and now they were dealing with it in the best way they knew how. I was scared and angry—not just at my parents but at myself, the media, everyone I knew, basically the entire world. I was throwing a fit because I didn’t want to live life on life’s terms—I wanted to live them on mine.

What were my terms? Well, for starters, I wanted to be a totally different person and never have to deal with anything that hurt or was difficult. Tough shit—we all know that was never going to happen.

Promises had a reputation, but it wasn’t a very good one. It has since overhauled itself a lot and become a respected facility, but back in 2004, the joke was, “Promise promises we won’t stay sober.” It was a hotel without a bar and people checked in and out of there like it was the fucking Four Seasons. It had a red tile roof, fireplaces, and two different pools. If you felt like it, you could hit golf balls off into the ocean, get acupuncture or a massage, or work out with a personal trainer.

I’d been taking so many pills that I started to go into withdrawal almost immediately after I arrived. For the first three hours, I just sat there violently shaking, like I was in the middle of an earthquake that no one else could feel.

Even then I knew I wasn’t going to stay sober. I couldn’t wait to get out and do drugs again. I was simply playing the game and biding my time.

I honed my lying skills on the therapists and nurses, even getting one doctor to write me a prescription for Klonopin because I convinced him it would help me kick my synthetic heroin addiction. Let me put it this way: Klonopin makes Xanax look like Benadryl.

I didn’t know how serious my drug use was and I didn’t understand what I was doing to myself. Drugs were my safety blanket, and I didn’t want that taken away. I was in mental pain because of what my family and I were going through, and I was also in physical pain because, though I didn’t know it at the time, I was suffering from undiagnosed Lyme disease. The symptoms varied from day to day, but the constant was that I felt like shit daily. I’d forget words or names that I used every day. When that stuff happened, I’d feel stupid, like maybe I really was as insignificant as people thought.

I had no idea what was going on, and with Mum in the hospital with cancer, I didn’t feel as though I had anyone I could talk to about it. I just knew that drugs helped me get through the day, and so I was not giving them up. Now I can honestly say that I don’t know if my drug use would have gotten as bad as it did if I wasn’t trying to run from the effects of Lyme disease, but like I’ve said, the past is the past, and I’m not trying to tempt fate or blame anyone, or anything, for what I did.

Addicts and treatment centers often say once you’ve been to rehab, whether you were ready to go or not, it changes you. It’s true. Even if, like I did, you don’t try to quit and you only half pay attention, you learn that there is a way out—if you want it. You never drink or use the same way again. You will always see your conscience at the bottom of every glass, pill bottle, or baggie. You start to think that maybe this isn’t the only way.

Rehabilitation can fall under so many umbrellas, but it’s basically breaking yourself down and then building yourself back up. You can see why that’s so hard. First off, you have to be honest with yourself and everyone in your life, and the last thing an addict wants is honesty, since the foundation of who you are is based on lies.

Addicts are so used to lying, manipulating, and believing what we want to believe that we’ve often forgotten what it’s like to be straightforward with anybody. We’ll lie even when we don’t have to, because we’re just so used to doing it.

When I was in treatment, the people who got through to me the most were the group counselors, not the doctors or therapists. The group counselors were almost always former users who were now sober. With addicts, it takes one to know one. Whereas you might be able to tell a few sob stories and drum up some sympathy from a doctor, a former addict is not buying your bullshit. They know all the signs, and believe me, you come up with some shit when you are getting sober.

There was no placating me, no “yes ma’am”ing me, just the truth, told kindly and persistently over and over again. “Kelly, you are killing yourself. Is this what you want? What do you think your life will be like if you keep using? Do you want to keep using? Is this the kind of life you want for yourself? The only places left for you are prisons, institutions, and death.”

This approach, over time, began to break the drug shell I had built around myself, the one that convinced me I was so unique that no one else could ever possibly understand what I was going through.

The first phase of rehab is the physical detox, where your body is in shock because it’s become chemically dependent on the drugs that have suddenly been taken away. I puked, I sweat, I shook. I had no control over my body. My arms shot out and my legs kicked in a spasm of twitches. I finally discovered what “kicking the habit” really meant.

I swore that if something would just take away the pain that I was in at that moment, I would never touch drugs again and would devote my life to doing something good. That was one second, and then the next, all I wanted was my drugs.

I honestly can’t count the number of times I detoxed, because in addition to my trips to rehab, I also did several home detoxes so the media wouldn’t find out I’d relapsed again. Detox is not something I got better at with practice. Each time, it hurt just as much physically and even more emotionally, because I knew that the last time I had done this, I swore it was the last time. Get through this, I would have told myself the last time, and you’ll never have to detox again. Yet there I was, detoxing. Again.

People typically spend thirty days in rehab, but I think it should be at least twice that. Most people don’t really even start to come alive until the second or third week. A physical detox can take anywhere from one to four weeks (or longer), and I didn’t even begin to know who I was or where to start until the chemicals had left my system. Once I did start to figure out who I was, I didn’t like that person. In fact, I despised her.

Almost everyone goes through the same stages in rehab. First, I was pissed off. I’d think, I don’t want to be here or I’m not meant to be here. I’m not like these fucking people. Good rehab facilities make everyone share a room with another patient, and they strip everyone of all their comforts. Everyone has a roommate to remind them that we are equal in our addictions, and it was a constant flow of people coming and going.

Eventually, the anger wore off. I submitted to where I was, and then my true sadness took over. I did not want to be a part of anything, but I would still go and sit through the therapies, because I did not have a choice.

I had been in a cloud of fucking chemicals for so long that I did not remember what it was like to feel. Then all of a sudden, I would feel everything. I was fresh, raw, and incredibly vulnerable. I had to learn how to be a person again. I realized that I was there, so I might as well start talking. I had plenty to talk about, too. I had been in limbo for so long that my life had filled with unattended problems that got worse and worse every time I decided to get high instead of dealing with them.

One of the hardest things about rehab is that I was suddenly in an environment where everyone was telling me what to do. No matter who I was outside of rehab, in it, I felt like I was treated like a child. Everything is scheduled, from the alarm that goes off in the morning to a mandatory lights-out at night. Most facilities are set up so that men and women are treated completely separately. At my last rehab, if I so much as looked at a guy, I would get written up and be cleaning the toilets before I knew it.

That is because they were trying to protect me from myself. When my body was coming off drugs, my hormones went crazy trying to regulate themselves again. Most addicts, myself included, are as emotional as teenagers in this stage, and then throw in the fact that a lot of addicts just switch addictions. They can come off drugs and move on to sex without skipping a beat. I am so grateful that I didn’t get that, because I’ve seen how much it hurts everyone involved.

I met a lot of amazing people in rehab, who listened to me and cared about me in ways that no one in my regular life did, but I’m not going to write about them here. Though I am not in the program anymore, I stay true to and uphold the principles that gave me life again. Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Al-Anon are all anonymous. Attending meetings and listening to other people tell their stories helped me realize I was not alone in my problems, but I typically do not share in the meetings. I did once, after a lot of urging from my sponsor at the time, and talked about things that were happening with my family. A few days later, that story ended up in the tabloids.

I don’t know who in the group leaked it or what—if anything—they got from doing it, but I think that’s about the lowest of the low. Needless to say, I have not shared since, but it also reaffirmed my belief that I would never gossip or share someone else’s story outside a safe space, in any way. For me, what happens in meetings stays in meetings.

I cycled in and out of rehab from the time I was about nineteen until I was twenty-four, and tried other things as well. Mum once locked me in a mental institution for three days, and it scared the hell out of me. People were endlessly playing checkers (I don’t know why this is a thing in mental institutions, but it is) or in straitjackets, rocking back and forth and screaming. I had to wear paper shoes, since I could potentially kill myself with a shoelace, and wasn’t allowed to have anything metal, not even a spoon. I wasn’t suicidal by medical standards, but I heard Mum’s message loud and clear: Stop using drugs before I was gone for good.

At one point, I moved to London, because at the time, my drug of choice was unavailable there. I pretty much kicked the habit on my own and was happier than I’d ever been before, because I finally felt like I was my own person. Then I moved back to LA so that we could start filming Osbournes Reloaded. As soon as I was in the land of yoga pants and palm trees, I fell right back into my old habits. I was trying to kill myself, though I wouldn’t have admitted it if anyone had asked me. Every day, I was taking more and more pills, hoping that I wouldn’t wake up. I joked that the only friend I had was Jesus, my Domino’s Pizza delivery guy, except that it wasn’t really a joke. Most days, he was the only person I saw because I barely left the house and just stayed inside doing drugs all day. Using drugs had never been so depressing, because now I knew who I was when I was off them. I wanted to quit. I really did. I just wasn’t strong enough yet.

I’m no stranger to an intervention. My family has gone through about ten of them with my dad, and I’ve also been through them with friends. So when a guy showed up at my house and said he was there for my intervention, I knew what was in store, and I hated him immediately.

Now, at this point, I was ready to quit. I really was, but I was also so, so angry. I knew I had a problem, and again, I found myself in a selfish train of thought, wondering why it had taken everyone around me so long to help.

When I kick off, you cannot stop me. I went ballistic and made the intervention guy stand outside while I screamed and yelled inside. Mum called the cops, and when they showed up, they felt sorry for me. Instead of arresting me, they gave me their business card and said to call if I ever needed anything. After that, I made everyone leave the house, then fell to the floor and sobbed. I do not know why or how, but in this I managed to have one second of clarity that spiraled into shame. Why was I blaming everyone else for what I was doing to myself? Finally, I packed my suitcase and let the guy with the clipboard take me to rehab. I was ready to go.

•   •   •

Eventually I stopped hating Clipboard (I won’t say his name, because I want to respect his privacy. As you can imagine, what he does is very sensitive and confidential, and I would never want to violate that) and he became a close friend and a pillar of support. Years later, when I broke my foot and a doctor wrote me a prescription for painkillers, I turned it into a piece of art and gave it to Clipboard, a little memento of gratitude to him from his most difficult client (a title that I still hold today).

On this trip, I went to Hazelden Betty Ford’s Springbrook center, outside of Portland, Oregon. It saved and changed my life. It was finally where I learned how to differentiate myself from my family. There, I learned that structure, schedule, and rules really do work for me, and when I left, for the first time ever, I felt equipped to live life on life’s terms, even though I was terrified.

What finally made my last trip to rehab successful was that I learned that you cannot just treat your addiction and leave your other problems out to fester and rot. It’s a constant healing process. I’d been to therapy on and off since I was a kid, but at twenty-four, it started to make a difference. I read a book, recommended to me by my therapist, called Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody, and something clicked. I finally understood my life and my feelings, and that realization was so freeing. Now that I knew what I was dealing with, I could work toward solutions.

In a dysfunctional family that is dealing with trauma or an active addict, everyone has a role to play. That role is often different from the person they really are. In my family, I was the fuck-up daughter. That was how everyone saw me. They got uncomfortable when I asked them to see me as anything else. Eventually, I stopped asking. Even though Fuck-up Daughter wasn’t the part I would have chosen for myself, it was the part I played. When I finally learned, through lots of therapy and reflection, that this was just a character and not who I really was, it was like I’d finally been handed the answer to a question I hadn’t even known I was asking. The term codependent clicked and made sense in a way that addict never had.

I’ve never been 100 percent comfortable with the wholesale label drug addict. My issues have always been complex, not totally black-and-white—I’ve had periods of heavy drinking and drug use, but when I was in a good place emotionally, I could have a glass of champagne or two, and then head home to go to bed early. True addicts have lost the power to choose whether they use. It’s a compulsion, like OCD. They feel as though they have to do it or they will die. That was never me, but I still didn’t understand why I kept ending up back where I’d started.

On my last trip to rehab, I finally learned that I couldn’t heal my addiction without healing my dysfunctional relationships. Growing up with an addict as a father, I’d become used to one-sided relationships and putting my own needs last, both of which are classic codependency traits. That’s why, when I was happy and getting over my addiction on my own in London, I gave it all up and moved back to Los Angeles as soon as I was asked, even though I knew it would be bad for me.

Through therapy, I started to learn how to set boundaries and to ask for what I needed without feeling guilty. I had to say, “I love you, Mum, I love you, Dad, but I have to start living my life for me now. It doesn’t mean I respect you any less, because I respect you more than anyone else in the entire world, but I can’t do this anymore.”

I also encouraged them to set boundaries with me. One outcome of this was that we made a rule with one another about being late. We would wait no more than twenty minutes, because we were all so busy that sometimes we wouldn’t realize we’d double-booked, and leave the other person waiting for hours. That meant that even if you show up when I’m leaving, I’m still leaving and you can’t be mad.

Drugs are no longer my coping mechanism. Now I manage pain through creativity, friendship, and self-care. The crazier my life gets, the more focused I become on the things that make me feel good. I’ll write or make mood boards for my next clothing collection. I make sure to talk about what’s going on and how I feel about it, rather than keeping it all to myself. I go to the gym or do yoga. After so many years of feeling sorry for myself and being selfish, I now get satisfaction from doing things for other people. Whether that’s helping to spread the word about a cause that is important to me or babysitting Pearl so Lisa can have the afternoon off, it makes me feel good and reminds me that I have more love in my life than I do problems.

Rehabilitation is a never-ending process, and I’m still working on myself. I know what works for me and what keeps me in a sane place where I can be happy and productive. For the first time ever, my life is manageable. I see a therapist, and I will continue to do so because I truly believe that only crazy people do not go to therapy.

I still struggle to accept who I am and the life that I was born into, but I’m learning to be more patient with myself and with other people. I’m different, and yeah, I shouldn’t have seen a lot of the things that I saw, but you know what? That’s life.

We move on.

Everything that happens shapes you into who you are.

I’m proud of where I am and what I went through to get here.

Love,

Kelly O