Moby - Then It Fell Apart

I wanted to die. But how?

It was 5 a.m., and Id had fifteen drinks, $200 worth of cocaine, and a handful of Vicodin. After I stumbled home at 4 a.m., depressed and alone, I wandered from room to room in my apartment, sobbing and repeating, I just want to die.

I calmed myself and considered my options.

I could tie a long rope or extension cord to the edge of the rough wooden fence on my roof and drop twenty or thirty feet down the back of the building, most likely breaking my neck. But I knew that sometimes after a long drop the head could become separated from the body. That seemed unnecessarily grisly for the person who found me.

Or I could get into the pristine white bathtub in my minimalist bathroom with the stainless-steel Kohler faucets and the Calacatta marble floor and cut my wrists and slowly bleed to death.

Or I could take an entire bottle of Vicodin, which, combined with the vodka and the cocaine and pills already in my system, would probably stop my heart.

I was still a WASP from Connecticut, and even though I wanted to die I needed to be polite. So before killing myself I would have to remember to unlock my front door and tape a suicide note by the doorknob. That way anyone coming into my apartment would know what to expect and not be too upset.

Over the last few years my depression had been building, and nights like this were becoming the norm.

I was a lonely alcoholic, and I desperately wanted to love someone and be loved in return. But every time I tried to get close to another human being I had crippling panic attacks that kept me isolated and alone.

Id had a few successful years of making music, and sold tens of millions of records, but now my career was sputtering. I couldnt find love or success, so I tried to buy happiness. Three years earlier I had spent $6 million in cash on a luxury penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It had been my dream home: five stories on the top of an iconic limestone building overlooking Central Park.

Having grown up on food stamps and welfare, Id assumed that moving to a castle in the sky would bring me happiness. But as soon as I moved into my Upper West Side penthouse I was as sad and anxious as Id been in my small loft on Mott Street.

I sold the sky castle, moved back downtown, and recommitted myself to debauchery. I put tinfoil over the windows and had weekend-long orgies fueled by alcohol and drugs. But the more I threw myself into degeneracy, the more I ended up filled with self-loathing and loneliness.

The world of fame and success that gave me meaning and legitimacy was being taken away from me. And now the only respite I found from anxiety and depression was an hour or two each night when I was full of vodka and cocaine, looking for someone lonely and desperate enough to go home with me.

Recently Id considered buying a bar and turning the basement into a light-proof apartment, reasoning that if I lived only at night, Id find happiness. My plan was to sleep in the basement below the bar, wake up at 6 p.m., have dinner, and start drinking and doing cocaine around 10 p.m. Id stay up until 8 a.m., take a handful of Xanax and Vicodin, and sleep until 6 p.m. Id spend the rest of my days or years like an anxious, defeated Nosferatu, until my life finally, mercifully ended.

For decades alcohol and drugs had made me happy. But now I needed more and more alcohol and cocaine to get drunk and high, and my hangovers lasted for days. And when I was hungover, which was almost every day, I couldnt string sentences together or even remember simple words.

Id vaguely considered getting sober, but the impulse never lasted for more than a few days. Id even gone to some AA meetings, and while I appreciated the chance to look at beautiful alcoholic women covered in tattoos, Id decided that institutional sobriety didnt work for me. So I kept drinking, kept buying cocaine, kept trying to stave off hangovers with handfuls of Xanax and Vicodin, and kept wanting to die.

My daily routine had become rote and tautological: after getting out of bed in the late afternoon I would stumble to my bathroom, step into the shower, and as the hot water poured over me Id say one word over and over: Fuck.

As in: Fuck, Im hungover again. And: Fuck, Im sick. And: Fuck, Im such an idiot. And: Fuck, I hate myself.

But maybe tomorrow I wouldnt wake up and say Fuck in the shower. Because maybe I would finally be dead.

Which brought me back to the question of how to end my life. Hanging myself or cutting my wrists seemed too violent. And Id heard that swallowing pills didnt always work sometimes people just vomited them up and ended up alive, but with severe liver and brain damage.

A few years ago Id read about elderly people killing themselves by tying plastic bags over their heads and quietly suffocating on their own exhaled CO2. So, considering all of my options, tying a bag over my head seemed like an easy and painless and polite way to kill myself.

I walked into my kitchen, got on my knees, and found a box of black plastic garbage bags underneath the sink. I took one out of the box and looked around. When Id bought this apartment in 1995 it had been an empty storage space in a nineteenth-century loft building. But after a year working with a local architect Id ended up with my first real home. And it had been beautiful, with skylights and tall ceilings, white brick walls, and a kitchen filled with maple cabinets.

I had made most of my albums here, from the ten million-selling Play to my most recent record, the hundred thousand-selling Last Night.

Id fallen in and out of love here. Id had dinners here with my mother and grandmother, both of them now dead. Id shown Lou Reed around my studio. Id even sat on the $8,000 dark-green-and-teak Danish modern couch in my living room and played Heroes on acoustic guitar with David Bowie.

Growing up Id assumed that if I could release even one small indie record and play shows to a hundred people a night, I would be happy. Now the long, tall wall leading from my front door to the kitchen was covered with hundreds of gold and platinum records, and I was miserable. So after a lifetime of baffling sadness I was declaring defeat.

Id built this home. This was where I was going to die.

I took a belt out of my closet and got into bed.

I sobbed into my pillow, asking, Why?

I felt like I was asking my dead parents, What did I do wrong? Why didnt you love me? Why did you leave me?

I put the bag over my head and thought, This is it, my last memory: crying inside a plastic garbage bag. I pulled the belt tight over the bag and lay back, resting my head on my pillow. Im sorry, God, I whispered, and closed my eyes.