Growing up as a celebrity in the 80’s was no easy feat. There were no boundaries, no rules. Everyone around me acted like they were God. But that was probably due to all the cocaine that flowed in on every breeze. Sure, from the outside everything looked fine and dandy.And I won’t lie, it certainly was a lot of fun. But after a certain point the fun stopped and a dark world took its place. The blow began to take hold on pretty much everyone I knew. Very successful people in the industry, who had the world in the palm of their hands, now had a coke addiction in the core of their beings. No one knew it would happen. It always started out innocently enough. Just try a little at an event and have a good time. Pretty soon events would be fueled by blow. Everyone thought that they were immune or not doing coke enough to become addicted. They told themselves that one toot in the morning to get going was normal and o.k. And then another one at lunch. And maybe a few in between meetings. But before anyone knew, it would be night time, and that’s the time to party so… And in the 80’s it basically was normal, but never o.k.
Seeing cocaine addictions around me became more and more frequent. Everyone I knew, including my parents, were going nuts on the white stuff. Here I am, living the dream. The life that everyone envies. The life of a star… surrounded by a nightmare.
Addictions to cocaine, and by that I mean real life coke addictions, are not in any way shape or form glamorous. In fact they are downright ugly. I watched my own father, who was a big time producer, go from a successful and happy man to a depressed, maniacal, and nearly homeless coke fiend. He was young and good looking. His cocaine addiction quickly thinned him out and made him look aweful. After a couple straight years of hard usage, he began losing big movie deals that eventually cost him and us, his family, everything we had. His losses drove him even harder into his cocaine use and drove the rest of us out of a home. Not to mention the spotlight.
Luckily my father had real friends who cared about him. One of his old buddies who he grew up with, who happened to be a house painter, convinced my parents to go on a little “vacation” with him to Florida. Meanwhile I stayed with my grandmother in Wyoming. They came back six months later, fresh out of rehab, looking healthy and renewed. My dad secured a new movie deal right off the bat and we were back on track.
I learned early in life that cocaine is not something to be messing with. Addictions to cocaine come on without warning and don’t let go of you without a hard battle. My family has to endure a lot of pressure from many different sources. And now that the evil blow is thankfully out of the picture, we are able to handle the pressure with more ease. Now that I’m a grown up and stepped into my father’s professional shoes, he’s been able to take it easy a little more often. I look at him with sad admiration as I see a man who got old and torn down before his time, but won a hard battle that others we know have fought and lost.
