MOVING TO ENGLAND felt like something of a homecoming. I’ve always been an Anglophile; it has to do with leaving Connecticut—its landscape and historical buildings—at a young age to move into tract housing in California. I’d learned to thrive in the new world, but my heart always yearned for the trappings of the old, and in that sense England was a cornucopia of distractions.
I’d arrived just in time to experience London in spring. There wasn’t a raincloud in the sky, and buildings that predated Columbus’s discovery of America were a dime a dozen. The British Museum became my second home; I soaked in the beauty of the antiquities that England had looted from around the world when they had ruled so much of it.
Old things make me happy, and now I was living in the heart of one of the great old cities of the world. Good old Claudia was back. I’d left that broken, needy excuse for a Claudia back in the land of the free and the home of the brave, a place where I could be neither free nor brave. In England I was the master of my destiny, riding the wagon of sobriety, whip in hand, driving its horses onward to a new and more promising horizon.
It had occurred to me that the UK wasn’t exactly the perfect country of choice for an alcoholic. After all, drinking is a national pastime. And I love pubs. I knew that was going to be an issue. I jokingly pondered moving to Saudi Arabia. It’d be much harder to get a drink, but, knowing me, I’d manage somehow and instead of getting stone cold sober I’d just end up getting stoned, literally.
So since the Middle East wasn’t an option, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back to my life in L.A., I decided that London would either make or break me. It was the battleground where the fight for the new Claudia would take place, and so far I was kicking ass and taking names. I was confident and filled with hope. I was so grateful to have another chance that minor temptations seemed like daisies in a field; I paid them no notice, flattening them as I passed.
After being so sick for so long, I knew it would take my body a long time to forget the experience. It’s like being forced to chain-smoke cigarettes until you turn green and throw up. You don’t want another cigarette. You don’t even want to think about smoking. That’s how it was with the monster and me. We’d broken up. She was like a persistent ex-lover who keeps on calling, wanting to get back together, but I wasn’t taking her calls. As far as I was concerned we had nothing more to say to one another.
It would take four more months before I worked out that I’d underestimated my disease and that I was dealing with something that was less like a persistent ex and more like a stalker who was willing to take me hostage to make her point.
The year is 3034. We have medically suppressed our emotions to stop illogical thoughts from interfering with our decisions.
—CAPTAIN BELINDA BLOWHARD
Starhyke was great fun—it was like a Benny Hill movie set in outer space. Aliens called Reptids release a weapon that unshackles the passions of the crew of the dreadnought Nemesis, producing unintended consequences. And in the strange way that art mirrors life, I was playing a robotically sober character who struggles to control her unleashed desires.
I’ve always put acting before addiction, even at the worst of times, and now that I was working I had my armor back. It was slightly tarnished and dented, but it was mine and I was strong again. The monster wisely kept her distance.
The show had a great cast. Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fett in the original Star Wars movies, was hilarious. And I got on famously with Suanne Braun, who had played the goddess Hathor in Stargate SG-1, and with Rachel Grant, who is an actress and an expert in Filipino martial arts. Everyone was very talented and enthusiastic.
It was a low-budget production. The food cost one pound per day per person, and boy, could you tell. Mystery-meat glop was the main course, and you couldn’t get a salad to save your life. But I knew I was in safe hands when it came to alcohol. Andrew Dymond, the director, and the majority of the crew didn’t drink, and when I went to the pub to socialize after work no one had a problem with my drinking Diet Coke.
At one point Andrew had some difficulties with the actors depicting the more intimate scenes. He asked me if I wanted to direct, and I jumped at the chance. Andrew directed the CGI and more technical scenes in the adjoining studio, and we developed a method for working in tandem that effectively allowed us to complete shooting on the entire first season. It was a great experience for me. I’d act in one scene and then jump over to the set next door to direct another.
In the storyline, Belinda Blowhard was battling the alien Reptids but failing to maintain control of her impulses, which was great fodder for comedy. By the time Starhyke production was coming to an end I could sense my inner monster was working on her own ultimate weapon. I’d have to do a better job of managing my passions than Belinda did. It was one thing to play a slapstick role and another thing to live it. I would not allow my life to become a farce.
When my monster did strike again I realized, too late, that I’d been preparing for the wrong kind of battle. I’d been expecting a frontal assault, something I could resist and perhaps overcome. In the meantime, the monster had been tunneling beneath the fortress walls, preparing a sneak attack.
It started with the affair I was having with one of the show’s executive producers. He was a very nice guy who’d lent me his flat in Bath while we were shooting the show. He was also a wine enthusiast. I figured that we had something in common, although I bet that no matter how much he knew, he wasn’t as enthusiastic about wine as I was. One day he invited me out to dinner, and I accepted, knowing there would be really, really good wine there and that he would offer it to me. That’s when the monster started whispering.
Claudia, you haven’t touched a drop in four months. You’re not an alcoholic, not even close. And this is an opportunity to prove to yourself that you’re not addicted. Just drink small quantities of the best stuff. Trust me, it’ll be okay.
I made an attempt to push the voice away, just for form’s sake. It knew it had me. It had already slipped past my defenses. It waited until I was sitting opposite my date and had seen just how good the wine was going to be.
Claudia. It’d be a shame to let half of a bottle like that go to waste. Have a little drink. You’ll stay on top of it this time.
And I did. For about a week. By the time you realize you’ve been pushed off the wagon it’s too late. You’re sitting on your ass choking on dust while life trundles off without you. The insidiousness of the disease makes you honestly believe that if you can stay sober for a few months then you are most definitely not an alcoholic and can therefore drink when you want to.
Sober for six months, drunk for a week, two weeks to recover. Sober for three months, drunk for five days, a week to recover. It’s a repetitive cycle, like that of Sisyphus, in the Greek myth, forever pushing that stupid rock up the hill only to have it roll down once it gets to the top.
WHEN STARHYKE ended I needed to find another job to earn a permanent work permit in the UK, so Andrew Dymond did me a favor and hired me as a receptionist and tea girl at his CG company.
“Hello, is that Lightworx Media? Can you advise me how to get more renderable data into my texture maps?”
“I have no bloody clue. I just serve the tea.”
Needless to say, I wasn’t well suited to the job, so I did us both a favor and quit. I sobered up, moved back to London, and rented a room in a friend’s flat. If I needed to work to stay in the UK, then it would be as an actress. My inner voice, the same one that had given me the confidence to move to L.A. when I was a kid, was back and giving the monster a run for her money.
Trusting in myself paid off again when I was introduced to a fantastic agent named Roxane Vacca by my friend Hilary Saltzman.
Roxane entered my life like a shining messenger of the gods, a letter in one hand stating she represented me and in the other a contract for a BBC series called Broken News. I’d booked a great job right out of the gate. I had enough documentation for my work visa, and I could stay in the UK. It felt just like when I landed Joan Green as an agent. Good representation is everything.
In the meantime, my stepfather had found a buyer for my home in L.A. and made me a million-dollar profit to boot, which made me feel much better about the loss of my house.
I was winning the battle for my new life. I was happy and confident. So why the fuck was I still stuck in a cycle of binging and detox? I started to see that I didn’t have an off button even when I was happy and my life seemed problem-free. When I was at a party I just wanted to keep on drinking and drinking. At dinners I wanted champagne, then wine, then a glass of port, and then another glass of port. I couldn’t have just one glass of wine, and I certainly never left half a bottle on the counter. I would see half-finished bottles of white wine in people’s fridges and wonder how the heck they did that. I’d find myself staring at people’s home bars, recalling the day when I’d stocked my own bar and never took a drop from it except to make other people’s drinks at parties.
I realized then that this was more than a matter of will or of emotional highs and lows. I always wanted a drink. I thought about drinking all the time. If I didn’t have a drink in my hand I’d be planning on how long it would be and what I’d have to do in order to be reunited with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. I had a full-blown, full-time addiction. For the first time in five years I was able to see myself clearly; I was able to admit that I was an alcoholic.
SINCE I hit the UK I’d been jumping around like a grasshopper, moving more than fourteen times in four years to temporary homes in Bath, Winterbourne Down, the Ladbroke Grove and Westminster areas of London, and many other locations. I was done with moving, but I just couldn’t find the right place to hang my hat. The last time I’d been settled was in my home in L.A. where everything went to hell, so now I figured I’d make myself a hard target.
Then I had a series of accidents that forced me to slow down. I was walking around the streets of London, property guide in hand, looking for a place to buy with the proceeds from the sale of my L.A. home when I got hit by a guy on a Vespa. No major damage, just a sprained ankle, a chink in the armor so to speak. A few days later I made the mistake of going out in a pair of three-inch heels. The place I was living in had the steepest fucking stairs I’d ever seen in my life, and just as I was about to take the first step down, the injured ankle gave way, turning me around so that I fell backward down the entire flight of stairs, bumping the edge of every step as I went. It was like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, except instead of getting up and brushing myself off while everyone laughed, I found I couldn’t get up and that there was a baseball-sized lump bulging out from the back of my neck. I fished out my cell phone, only to discover that I didn’t know the UK emergency number. I’m dialing 911, and no one’s answering. Eventually one of my roommates found me and took me to the hospital. It turned out that it was a neck fracture. They put me in a neck brace, went over my X-rays, and then sent me on my way.
Alcoholics always overanalyze every minute detail of an incident in the hope of gleaning some insight that will help in the fight against the enemy. You’re like a military commander staring down at a map, studying the terrain.
So were the accidents just accidents, or were they my body’s way of slowing me down, of letting me know that I needed to stop moving and put down roots before things got really bad? Or was it the monster knocking me out of commission so that I’d be forced to sit still, grow impatient, and have a drink? My previous home had been a mixed blessing. I’d loved it, but it had also been a place of suffering and misery. Should I be looking for my own place? Would it make things better or worse?
You see how you can turn into a raving lunatic? You’re at war with yourself, you can’t trust yourself, you second-guess every thought and impulse. In short, life sucks.
I trusted my instincts and stumbled across the perfect place, a cute little flat in Notting Hill, and when I saw it I thought, “This is it. This is the place where I can make things right.”
I’d finished work on Broken News, and there was nothing else in the pipeline, but I knew just the trick to deal with the out-of-work blues—remodeling.
I was back in my element. I could redo the flat and make it look exactly how I wanted. I had some money left over to allow me to live comfortably and fund my pet project. I started building closets and tearing down walls.
And I had another project that kept me busy—devising systems of alcohol regulation to manage my problem. I lived next to a charming pub and I made a rule that this was the only pub I was permitted to drink in and that I’d only be allowed one drink per visit. I never kept wine in the house, so if I had a dinner party I would make the guests take the half-empty bottles home with them. The wagon might have been teetering along on broken wheels, dragging its load behind it, but at least it was going.
Those rules helped me, but they also created a whole new series of problems. Social drinking is so common in London that I found myself coming up with a litany of excuses to explain why I couldn’t go out drinking with friends at other pubs. I’d started by saying that I was driving but once people learned that I didn’t have a car I had to come up with something else.
“I’m on antibiotics. I’m pregnant. I’m allergic.”
I’d say anything to avoid being conspicuous, and in doing so made myself incredibly conspicuous. Keeping to my self-imposed rules was hard. Having a glass of wine with friends is one of my favorite things in the world. Wine loosens the lips and helps people relax and unwind. You laugh more, you confide secrets, hopes, and dreams. I missed that. Then I’d remind myself that the same stuff can turn you into a screaming bitch or a bona fide whacko, and I didn’t miss that at all.
I finished the apartment, and as if on cue more roles magically appeared. They were in crappy action films made in Eastern Europe. I was glad to have them, but I just couldn’t seem to land any more parts in the UK. There were about a dozen Americans and Canadians in London—like Gillian Anderson and Elizabeth McGovern—who’d lived there for years and seemed to book all the expat gigs.
Not allowing myself to drink also made it hard to make friends in England. I had no work or social life and the flat was finished. I tried working on my social life. People were more formal and reserved than in L.A., so I found it hard to strike up conversations with new people. God knows I tried. I would blabber on and smile like an idiot, but even in the grocery store or in elevators people would ignore me.
I began to feel invisible, a feeling accompanied by a mild paranoia. Was it London or was I going slightly mad from alcohol withdrawal? Self-discipline is all well and good when it comes to drinking, but at the same time life seemed to have lost some of its color. That feeling wasn’t helped by the long, wet London winter. I began having dreams about riding my motorcycle down Sunset Boulevard, the warm L.A. wind rushing over my face carrying the smell of orange blossoms and the beach. I wasn’t sure how much of my depression was me and how much was the weather, so I actually went and got light therapy at a place where they stick you in a little box and zap you with UVA rays.
I started going stir-crazy. I had to do something, so I jumped on a plane back to L.A. for the family Christmas party.
DURING MY time in the UK I’d travel back to L.A. every year for pilot season.
I’d prepare well in advance, getting totally sober and as fit as I could manage. I’d pack my bags and head back to Hollywood with big expectations. I was going to book something. It was comeback time, baby!
I’d look great and feel great and sit in this Archstone apartment that I was paying $3,000 a month for and wait for the phone to ring. I didn’t get one audition, let alone an actual part. I had a shitty manager who promised me the moon and delivered nothing—not one meeting or audition.
One year I stayed in L.A. for four months. The apartment complex was filled with people who dreamed of working in Hollywood, wannabes and stage moms, their heads in the clouds, and at one point I realized that I was no different from them. I couldn’t book work, I was back at the beginning, all I had was a dream and an ever-deepening hole in my savings. As I sat by the phone I could feel myself becoming increasingly drawn to the bottle with each passing moment. It would only be a matter of time. I needed to keep moving.
So I started treating Los Angeles as I treated London. I’d do little day trips. I thought that if I took the pressure off waiting for the phone to ring, it might actually ring. Sometimes it works that way; this time it didn’t. Then I got a call from London. There was a meeting. A producer wanted me to come in and read for a part.
“I’m in L.A.”
“I need you here tomorrow.”
“I can’t. Christmas is coming. I’ve just rented a place. I just can’t.”
It seemed that I just couldn’t catch a break.
The year I went back for the family Christmas I was in for a pleasant surprise. It was in Aspen and it was snowing. Everyone made an effort to be nice, there were no fights, and I managed to stay sober. But I was bored, and my dreaded fortieth birthday was bearing down on me like a runaway car. I felt like I’d been possessed by Bridget Jones. I stared out the window at the falling snow. The last five years of my life had rushed by in a blur.
I was due to fly back to London, and I resolved to do something, anything to shake things up and reclaim a social life. I needed distraction, I needed friends, I needed a sex life. And so, like any modern girl who has trouble meeting people, I dove headfirst into the world of online dating.
LONDON WAS a different place from when Dodi was alive. Back then it had been sensuous and classy. My new London was bleak and lonely, so I joined an exclusive dating service for the super rich and those of royal peerage.
To weed out gold diggers the membership fee was $25,000 U.S., but there was a loophole. If you were attractive, were sane, lived in an upmarket area, and had no criminal record you could join for much less, something close to $50. This ensured that rich old men who paid the full fee wouldn’t be stuck dating rich, ugly women. I sent in one of my Playboy shots, cropped to show me from the shoulders up, and within a few days found myself in the offices of the dating service undergoing a psychological test. They checked my passport to verify my age. I had to sign statutory declarations that I had no criminal convictions. I felt like I was interviewing for a position at Scotland Yard.
What the fuck am I doing here? Am I this desperate?
It was a bizarre experience, but still better than inviting my old dinner date, the monster, out for a good time. No, better to keep her locked safely away. I was so desperate to stay out of trouble with her that I didn’t mind stepping into a little trouble when it came to dating real people.
“Claudia, you’ve passed the initial screening. Now we’d like to conduct a home inspection.”
“Seriously? You just photocopied my passport. What more do you need?”
“We like to take every precaution. A member of the nobility has already expressed an interest in you.”
“After all this, it had better be bloody Prince Charming.”
The home inspection was carried out by a flamboyant Russian woman who bounced around my flat with the energy of a meth head.
“Ure antiques are so lubely. Your garten, it is so beautiful. We are soooo embarrassed to intrude but the gentleman is veddy particular.”
They pored over my things. I felt like a Mongolian mail-order bride being checked for fleas.
The prospective date called me the next day. He sounded terribly uptight, the kind of guy Basil Fawlty would have dreamed of welcoming in his hotel.
Fuck it, I’m already in for fifty bucks. I might as well get a free dinner and come out ahead.
He picked me up on time, which was good, but he had a Herman Munster head, the kind that looked like it had gotten caught in an elevator door. As we left my flat and walked toward his Bentley I warned him that he should be careful parking in my neighborhood, because the parking inspectors were brutal.
“Those fucking wogs. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.”
I was not amused. Nor was I amused when he berated the waitress or when he snapped his fingers at the sommelier. Even less amusing was the goodnight kiss, which was delivered with an octopus embrace and a straining erection poking against my leg. I gingerly extracted myself from his tentacles and hurried into the safety of my flat, slamming the door behind me. So much for Prince Charming.
You’d have had a much better night if you’d gone to the pub next door. It’s still open. Why not drop in for a quick one?
I told the monster to shut the fuck up.
The next day I got a polite inquiry from the dating service regarding my status: “Still single?”
I could sense the bewilderment of the Russian and her business partner. Why hadn’t I fucked the aristocratic pinhead, moved into his castle, and started spending his money?
My reply read: “Still single. The one guy you sent was a putz, and I haven’t met anyone else in the last twenty-four hours. Next time send a photo and bio first.”
And they did. None of them was young, spiritual, or sportif, yet they all claimed to be a combo platter of Lance Armstrong, Donald Trump, and the Dalai Lama. All in all I went on a half-dozen lame-ass dates. It seemed that having lost one Dodi Fayed, it wasn’t so easy to find another.
Then I made the mistake of agreeing to go away with a guy I’d never even met in person. We started emailing and then talked for hours on the phone. He had a northern accent, and I struggled to make out every other word, but he seemed funny and nice.
I was doing a play at the Edinburgh Festival and he offered to travel to Scotland, see my play, and take me to dinner. It sounded romantic, so I agreed to meet up. That night I made the colossal mistake of falling off the wagon and ended up in the sack with him and in the bathtub with him and on the floor with him and hanging over the balcony with him. I apparently did things to him that no woman had ever done before, and now he wanted to take me to Cyprus.
I don’t even know how it happened. When I woke up the next morning I had only a sketchy recollection of the night before—my memory was a blacked-out city—nothing. The monster was gathering power, and I was getting a little frightened. It was like something out of a fucking Stephen King novel, the kind where you have an evil-twin personality who takes you over and does stuff without your knowing. Scary shit.
I’d been seeing a talented actor in Edinburgh, a young fellow who performed improvised skits in ancient Sanskrit to drunken highbrow audiences. I liked him a lot but, hey, Cyprus beckoned, so I returned the call.
The good news was that Cyprus was lovely. The bad news was that I couldn’t recall a single detail of my lovefest with the northern guy, so I had no idea what he expected or even what he looked like naked. I had a feeling it involved something anal, otherwise the poor guy wouldn’t be so bloody excited. And one thing was certain: I wasn’t going to touch a single fucking drop of alcohol.
We’d both been dreadfully sick on the flight over. My body just quit after a month of work on the play, and he contracted food poisoning. But now that we were in the five-star luxury resort being massaged and eating fabulous food, things would improve. Right?
Now I’m the last one to judge people’s behavior whilst they’re imbibing. I’ve fallen asleep at my own dinner parties and slept with far too many strangers to be the one pointing the finger. But I’m usually a happy lush, never mean-spirited or cruel. This guy wasn’t a mean drunk, but he was a whining drunk. After he’d had a few he started complaining about everything. I laughed too loud, the service was dreadful, the pool was too cold, the room smelled. None of this was true; we were in a Cyprian paradise and I was a sober little church mouse on her best behavior. Really.
I figured that I must have been way toasted the night we had sex, because now the beer goggles were off and I could barely stand to look at him. I was struck with horror by his yellowed, crooked teeth, his calloused feet, and his fungus-infected toenails. I wanted to scream in frustration at his wardrobe of different-colored but otherwise identical golf shirts. I was back in hell, and I hadn’t even had a drink.
Luckily the diarrhea that went with his food poisoning kept on running like Niagara Falls. He hadn’t approached me sexually, but as in a B horror movie, you know it’s coming. It’s just a matter of time until the hand creeps over and goes for the grope.
When the moment came he couldn’t get an erection, and I thought the horror flick was over until he leaned in close to me and said, “Maybe if you did to me what you did in the bathtub that night we first met . . .”
He was talking about the night I’d blacked out. What the fuck had I done to him in the bathtub? It didn’t bear thinking about; I had to get out of there. I offered my condolences about his inability to perform and locked myself in the bathroom for a few hours on the pretext of secret women’s business. When I came out he’d gone to the bar and I made a hasty retreat to the next village, where I booked into a shithole hotel, then flew back to London the next morning.
“Nothing’s free, baby,” a voice in my head kept on repeating.
Was that the monster or the voice of wisdom? I figured they might as well be one and the same since the fucking voice of wisdom, when it can be bothered raising its head, always does so after you’ve jumped headfirst into the shit heap.
BY THE time my fortieth birthday came around I’d been dry for almost six months. I was sober as a judge and just about as boring.
Long ago I’d set forty as the goal by which I’d be free of my problem and have my career back in full bloom. My career had wilted and dried up, but at least my disease seemed to have followed suit. I’d been seeing a new guy, and he encouraged me to come celebrate my birthday with him in Ibiza, the Spanish island where Brits go to let loose and party. I went to sunny Spain, stayed stone-cold sober, and had the worst vacation of my life. The travel agent booked us into a hotel on the wrong side of the city. We were supposed to be staying in the sexy party zone; instead I found myself sharing the beach with fat German businessmen and obnoxious Brits who wore black socks and were orbited by screaming, sunburnt kids. I was unemployed, sober, living in a foreign country, and my birthday sucked. Life didn’t begin at forty, it damn well ended.
I went back to my flat in London totally miserable only to discover that the annual Notting Hill carnival was taking place right outside my front door.
Claudia, this is your chance to have a real party. You made it to middle age, you survived. You deserve to celebrate. Go and have a good time.
The monster had picked its moment well, because, right then, those words rang with authority. They made such perfect fucking sense!
So I listened. No falling off the wagon this time; I threw myself off the fucking thing, right into a tasty pint of lager at my local.
That’s one of the things I fucking hate about the monster. I’d lasted it out. I’d buckled up and ridden the fucking bull for half a year, and then one slip and I was back to square one. It’s beyond frustrating; it’s a disease that swallows hope.
WHEN I was finally done with my birthday binge, I looked up the address of the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous and headed on down. I was desperate; I was a mess. The room was filled with cigarette smoke; I sat in the back row and kept quiet.
That wasn’t my first time at an AA meeting. During one of my visits back to L.A. I’d gone to the Beverly Hills meetings because I heard there were cute guys there. And one of them came right up to me and said, “We don’t shake hands here at AA. We hug.”
Something about that sent a shiver up my spine. It was as if they were there as a comfort group, to sugarcoat something that was deadly serious to me. A hug wasn’t going to fix the monster. You can’t wrap a viper in a knit-wool sweater, give it a hug, and expect it not to bite you. The monster doesn’t fuck around; the monster is playing for keeps.
And I’d been to one other meeting with my brother in Lake Arrowhead. That was mainly a bunch of old-timers talking about the shittiest things they’d done to their loved ones when they were drunk.
I hated the idea of AA. I hated getting up there and making my confession to a room full of strangers. The very idea was demoralizing, but this time I was desperate and I was in London, so maybe it really would be anonymous. I’d stick with it this time. I’d reverse my childhood divorce from God and really surrender to Him.
When it was my turn I got up there and said, “Hi. My name is Claudia, and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for one day.”
After I’d spilled my guts, we had a break and everyone rushed out to smoke some more. I was alone again and there was no relief. I’d hated saying it, it depressed me to say it. I thought, wouldn’t it have been great to get up there and say, “Hi, I’m Claudia, and I used to be an alcoholic”?
I returned to my seat and, as I listened to them talk about God, I couldn’t help but think that if there was a God, he would want us cured, not eternally suffering. The people I saw get up and talk on the podium were all in pain, all still desperate. I saw myself in them and it occurred to me that this wasn’t a cure, this was disease management. I knew management; I’d been struggling with my disease for years, wrestling with the monster, and this was a support group to help continue the struggle. This was a way to kill some time so you don’t drink.
I left the meeting. There was nothing uplifting or joyful, and the smoking rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed to me that they were just replacing one bad habit with another.
A week later I was back at AA, this time at the Portobello Road center. I reasoned that I had to overcome my own disinclination to be there. What if the answer to my problems lay on the other side of my inherited Germanic pride? I’d do it for real. I’d get up there at the meeting and do my thing, and afterward I’d go and work all of the twelve steps. And I did. I even did the one where you’re supposed to make amends to everyone you’ve ever hurt in your life. I tried it for half a year, but it didn’t change the disease. It didn’t change my genetic disposition toward alcohol. Some of the reports I read said that AA doesn’t work for the gross majority of the people who try it. The numbers are difficult to track because of their policy of anonymity, but I read one report that said less than 5 percent of people who rely on AA to stay sober do so after the first year. The relapse rate for people in AA is huge.*
I came to the conclusion that if some people benefit from it then great, good for them, but this was not the way for me. I was tired of fighting, I didn’t need support or love or strangers sharing their pain with me. I didn’t need hugs and handshakes from withered-up smokers or sugar junkies with fat bellies. I needed a cure; I needed my life back.
I went home and started buying books. I read just about every book I could find on addicts and their struggles. I pored over the pages of other people’s stories trying to find a common link.
There were common stories of trauma, of death and divorce and rejection, but there was something that none of the material seemed to cover—the change that had taken place in my body and brain. I’d changed. Everyone who told their stories in those books had. We all went from partying to becoming unwitting addicts. Why can some people drink heavily but not become full-blown alcoholics? Why was it so easy for me to give up cocaine? I’d never liked blow, never craved it. But wine, wine was a friend. I liked wine and I loved champagne, and now I’d changed. We had a symbiotic relationship; I couldn’t live without them.
I gave up on AA but not on God. I’m not an atheist. I’ve always had a strong spiritual life; it’s one of the things that’s kept me hanging in there. I’ve always felt that God was watching out for me, and when I maintained my prayers I felt strong enough to go head to head with the monster. At the same time though, I discovered that God cannot cure this disease just as He cannot cure cancer or make you grow back a limb.
So I kept on praying, but if God was saying anything back, then I couldn’t hear him. I figured it was just like the telephone that wouldn’t ring; I just had to hang in there and have faith. Just hang in there a little longer.
AFTER FIVE years in the UK I sat down and re-evaluated my life. It was crunch time. I wasn’t booking anything in London, I wasn’t booking anything in L.A., but I was hemorrhaging money in both towns. I’d moved to the UK hoping for a fresh start but instead felt like a tightrope walker again, swaying back and forth on a thin line between two lives with the abyss always there below me. If nothing else, my time away from the United States had taught me where my true home was and that I could never really leave it. My fascination with history, with the old world, would always be a part of me, but I was bound up with Hollywood body and soul. I missed the sun, the people, and the wheels of the entertainment industry moving around me, even if I was not an active part of it.
And do you know what the ultimate deciding factor was? I came to the realization that if I couldn’t shake the monster in time, if it broke me and I ended up just like my friend Jeff Conaway, then I had to decide where I wanted to die. That was my final moment of clarity that got me on the plane back to L.A.
I rented out my London flat to a nice American couple and headed home. I was done with optimism. There was no spring in my step. The monster was riding me hard, weighing me down. I didn’t know what I had to do to get things back on track. Nothing in my life was stable. I was flailing around, searching for the right combination of choices that would allow me to get my life back. The memory of the old Claudia was strong. The good times were still vivid in my mind’s eye, but the means to recover them were elusive. I was like Tantalus in the underworld, the fruit he eternally hungered for hanging just beyond his reach.