Dan Peres - As Needed for Pain: A Memoir of Addiction

To Oscar, Sam, and Julian

For showing me the way

Everything that I write about in this book actually happened. (Sorry, Mom.) The events I describe are based on my memory and interpretation of some truly unforgettableand regrettableexperiences and interactions. This is, however, my story, and as such, I have changed the names and identifying characteristics of many of the people mentionedchildhood friends, girlfriends, acquaintances, all of the doctors (except for my pediatrician), etc., as well as altering the exact location of several events. I have also changed the name of at least one businessElegant Affairs. I did my best to stay true to chronology, but one or two minor things have been moved around to make for more linear storytelling. Lastly, I tried to be as accurate as possible with respect to the quantity and dosage of the pills I was takingbut as the pages youre about to read will illuminate, sometimes things got a little fuzzy.

Pills roll. First they bounce and then they roll.

Shape doesnt matter. Perfectly round. Oblong. Squares with rounded corners. Capsules. It may defy the laws of physics, but in the end they all roll. Ive dropped more pills than the average person swallows in a year, and when they hit the floor, they scatter like roaches. And when they roll, they dont stop until theyve reached the farthest, most undesirable destination imaginable. Deep under beds. Wedged beneath the floorboard. Hidden in plain sight in the low pile of wall-to-wall carpeting. And, as it turned out on one particular evening in early 2003, under the urinal in the bathroom at the Waldorf Astoria. Three of them, to be precise, whichon a bended, tuxedo-clad kneeI rescued, promptly put in my mouth, and swallowed.

Its not the first time I did something Im not proud of while wearing a tuxedo.

There was the night I threw up in a garbage can in Times Square on my way home from a benefit performance of some Broadway show. I cant remember the name of the show, but I do remember a man with a ponytail and a leather vest clutching his date tightly by the arm as they walked past me on a crowded sidewalk. Dont look, he told her. Just keep moving.

Then there was the time I stole a bottle of Valium from the master bathroom medicine cabinet of my friend Ingrids parents Upper East Side duplex while everyone was downstairs toasting her thirtieth birthday. I didnt just take a few pills like any normal self-respecting degenerate might. No, I literally pocketed the whole bottle. Not just all of the contents of the bottle, but the actual bottle. They rattled like Tic Tacs in the breast pocket of my tux as I made my way past a multicolored Calder mobile and down the sweeping staircase to rejoin the party.

And there was the middle-of-the-night trip to the emergency room at St. Vincents, where I conned an exhausted young doctor into giving me a prescription for thirty Vicodin after being repeatedly flashed in the waiting room by a woman in a pink paper gown.

I was in black tie for all of them. Dressed to impressjust as I was that night at the Waldorf Astoria in 2003. I was attending a gala fundraiser. Invitations to events like these were common, even if my attendance at them was infrequent. Sometimes Cond Nast, the publishing giant for which Id been working as the editor in chief of Details for a few years by this point, would buy a table and Id be asked to join. Other times, the evening would honor an executive or designer from a fashion company and the organizers would try to fill tables with editors, celebrities, and celebrity editors. I was, I assumed, a Plan B guest: fit to attend, but not first choicelike an alternate on an Olympic team.

And I was rarely invited with a plus-one, though I wouldnt have brought anyone had I been. As with just about everything else I did, I preferred to go to these functions alone. Plus-ones gave me anxiety. They slowed me down. They wanted to be treated like humans. They wanted to show up on time and be introduced to people and mingle and eat and stay for the performance. There was always a performance. Once, shortly before September 11, 2001, after she had been asking for months to join me at one of these, I finally agreed to bring my long-suffering, nightlife-loving girlfriend Caroline along. And of course she insisted on staying for the performance. I think it might have been Patti LaBelle. Or maybe it was Gladys Knight. Either way, Caroline wasnt interested in leaving when I was.

Can we please just get out of here? I pleaded halfway through the dinner. I was highI was always highbut not nearly high enough for another hour and a half of small talk and rubber chicken.

What is wrong with you? she asked for the thousandth time in our relationship.

Im not here to have fun, I said. This isnt fun for me. This is work.

Work? Were at this amazing party with all of these incredible people and an R&B legend is about to perform, she said in the type of clipped loud whisper often reserved for public spats.

All of a sudden Miss Indie Rock is dying to see the Queen of Soul?

Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul, asshole, she said.

I knew I shouldnt have brought you, I shot back. Plus, everyone is staring at your nipples.

Youre a dick, she said.

She was right. I was dick. A dick in a tux.

From that point on, there were no more plus-ones. And so I went alone to the childrens benefit at the Waldorf in early 2003, but not before doing something else I wasnt particularly proud of. Something that my fashion magazine colleagues would have frowned upon perhaps even more than my drug addiction.

I went to the tailor and let out my tuxedo.

Getting fat in fashion was never in fashion.

I wasnt what the editors of Details referred to as sexy fat, either. This was actually a thing. We once published a story about the Tony Soprano Effect and how heft had become hot. Guys like James Gandolfini and Julian Schnabel and Jack Nicholson. Guys who owned it and never bothered to suck it in. That wasnt me. I was more like Philip Seymour Hoffmans character, Scotty, in Boogie Nights, awkward and fleshy and testing the limits of my clothing in ways that made just about everybody uncomfortable. Nothing worse than bulges in all the wrong places. I was eating a lot.

There were meals and there were feedings.

Meals were food. Feedings were drugs. Both were vital and well planned. And I consumed both with gluttonous delight. As a rule, feedings generally preceded meals. Drugs kicked in faster on an empty stomach.

My diet alone should have been enough to kill me. I had developed a three-bagel-a-day habit. At 10:30 a.m. , on my way to the office and around two hours after the days first feeding of fifteen extra-strength Vicodin, I would pick up a toasted everything bagel with two eggs, bacon, and Swiss cheese.

Dont forget to butter the bagelboth halves, Id remind the guy behind the counter.

Once in my officea small square room with giant windows overlooking the Empire State Building, framed Details covers lining the walls, an overstuffed beige love seat, and a round blond wood table that served as my deskId open a couple of small to-go salt packets and dump them out onto the greasy foil that wrapped my morning delicacy, then dunk the sandwich, glistening and slick, into a mound of salt before each bite. As if everything bagels werent already salty enough. I was going for maximum bloat.

Lunch usually happened at around twoa couple of hours after my midday feeding of fifteen Vicodinand was generally either a smoked turkey, a Black Forest ham, or a tuna sandwich on a plain bagel with a bag of chips and a Diet Coke from the company cafeteria.

I usually didnt eat dinner until 8:30 or 9:00 p.m . Id survive on Cool Ranch Doritos, Twizzlers, three or four Diet Cokes, and half a pack of Marlboro Mediums between my 4:00 p.m . opiate feeding (fifteen pills) and dinnerthe only meal of the day that I ate before taking drugs.