So, I went through the motions and got the photos, like every mom does on special occasions. Just get the damn photo so we can create the memory. Then I can go back to real life. Then I could go back inside and hide. In the photos, Eric has his hand on the small of my back. He is smiling, but I know he is scared for me.
As I turned to go inside, Eric announced we were all going trick-or-treating. All the kids at the party yelled in excitement, and I shrank. I forgot this had been the plan. We’d rented golf carts to take everyone out around the gated community where we live.
“Eric, I can’t,” I whispered.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” he said. He had been shouldering much of the party hosting on his own that day. There was frustration in his voice. “We’ve got like twenty golf carts.”
“I can’t.”
“Just get on the golf cart,” he said. “We’re going to go trick-or-treating.”
“I’m just gonna sit down for a while.”
I turned and went upstairs to my room. I could hear guests tooting golf-cart horns and kids laughing. I started peeling off the beard, but found it was stuck. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. I didn’t care if I had a house full of guests. I felt broken, undeserving of even being around them. I always put so much pressure on myself to have these parties. Now, it all felt so pointless. I would spend weeks choosing the perfect wrapping paper for people’s presents, and it would be ripped up in a minute. Nobody expected this kind of extravagance, it was just me imagining that they did. Now it was worse than not being enough—I couldn’t even show up for my own party.
I took an Ambien. Maybe two. It was a security pill to me—no matter how tired I was, I was terrified of being awake in bed. I knew exactly why I was always so afraid, but that didn’t mean I was ever going to do anything about it.
My housekeeper, Evelyn, found me crying in my room. She had been with me fifteen years and was like a second mom to me. She sat next to me and held me. I felt like I swam for hours, and barely made it to shore. She laid me back, stroked my forehead lightly, and I was gone. I welcomed oblivion.
HERE I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU THAT I GOT UP EARLY THE NEXT DAY AND got my kids to school. I did not. I slept in, afraid to see them and hoping that Eric would tell them I wasn’t feeling well. I had failed them. No matter how much of a mess I had been, I thought that I had always shown up for them. The fact that I wasn’t present for them, even for just one night, was unacceptable.
I hid until they left, then drank. I felt emotionally hungover, and thought I needed it to recover. I needed to be normal for when my friends came over for our weekly meeting. There’s a core three who help me take care of business: My publicist Lauren, who is way more my friend than my publicist to be honest; CaCee, my friend since I first signed with Columbia in 1997; and Koko, who is not just my assistant but one of my best friends.
Koko. I had bailed on Koko’s party. I had a huge cake for her and everything. I wondered if they’d even brought it out. It was another failure.
That day was supposed to be special, because I’d flown my hair colorist Rita Hazan in from New York. She’s an artist and has been doing my hair since 1999. She packs everything she might need into Burton snowboarding suitcases for an at-home process that takes about an hour. She is so chill and cool with her light Brooklyn accent that I never mind her hearing anything. The girls would be here while I had my hair done. Multitasking.
CaCee and Koko arrived first, finding me still in a panicked state as Rita readied her station in my home. Koko was obviously hurt, and I immediately started crying to her. I blubbered with apologies as Rita left the room to get something.
“I . . . missed . . . putting . . . the . . . candles . . . in . . . the . . . Ziploc . . . bag . . .”
“It’s okay,” Koko said meekly.
“But I feel awful.”
Stephanie walked in. She was there to load out the party she had put so much work into and that I had missed. She took in the tension right away.
CaCee gave me a sharp, direct, “Why do think you feel awful?”
“Because I wasn’t present?” I said, like I was guessing at a math problem.
“And why weren’t you present?” she said.
I knew that one. “Because I probably drank too much?”
“Probably?” CaCee asked.
Stephanie, the good cop to CaCee’s tough one, cut in with her sweet Texas lilt. “Jess, maybe you should—”
Rita came back in, and I was so relieved. She ran her hands through my hair, letting it catch the light to better examine it, and asked what look I was going for.
I sighed. “Bleach it,” I mumbled. “Just completely bleach my hair and make me look like Andy Warhol.” Suicide by hairstyle.
“What the hell are you talking about?” yelled CaCee, shaking her head “no” at Rita, her head of blonde curls swaying with her anger.
“I just want it all off,” I said.
“Jess, why do you think you drank too much?” asked CaCee. “Do you think you’ve been drinking too much a lot of days?”
“Yes,” I blurted. “I need to stop. Something’s gotta stop. And if it’s the alcohol that’s doing this and making things worse, then I quit.”
Stephanie sighed, as if CaCee had pulled the right plug to stop a time bomb at the last second.
But CaCee didn’t relent. She grabbed my face, holding my chin in her palm. “You better not be lying.”
The chin grab was CaCee’s signature move. The first time I had to go onstage alone after leaving my husband Nick in 2005, I stood frozen backstage, convinced no one would accept me on my own again. She grabbed my chin, and said a firm, “Get out there.”
“Jessica,” she said, as Rita looked on. “This is your rock bottom. This is it. Do you want to change?”
“Yes!” I said. “Like, right now. Yes.”
I know my limits, and I had gone beyond them. I was allowing myself to be taken away from moments that I should have been in. Now I needed to turn inward. To live in the moment and not live in the lie anymore.
I breathed in, breathed out, and looked around. “At least I can say my rock bottom had pretty pillows,” I said. “A soft landing.”
The girls gathered me up in a group hug, and from the center I called out to Eric.
He came in. “Babe, I’m gonna stop drinking,” I said, just like that. As if I said, “I’m going to the store. Need anything?”
He looked right at me. “Then I will too,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’re in this together.”
“Okay, can you make me one last drink?” I asked.
“What?”
“Just the last one to say good-bye.”
I know, I know. I hear the record scratch, too. But I said I’d be honest with you. I had one more glittercup.
But CaCee wasn’t going to let me weasel out of my promise. She immediately texted Lauren, who was still on her way. “Dude get your people moving. She’s ready.”
And then, as Rita wrapped foils around my hair to dye it a sane color, Stephanie, CaCee, and Koko explained that they had been planning for this moment for more than six months. Lauren already had a doctor lined up, one who specialized in getting celebrities in-home treatment for addiction. It’s a company town, after all. Lauren had pulled over and was already on the phone, getting a time for me to talk to the doctor, who would then dispatch a therapist specific to my needs depending on what I said on the call.