Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict by Joshua Lyon Page B

into the bathroom to swallow them, but my tiny box had an air of authority and old-world sophistication that made people, even family members, politely look away as I’d snap it shut with one hand and reach for a glass of water.
    There was no one monitoring me at V Life . When I first started the job, I’d hoped I’d get to meet some of the Variety reporters. I’d always loved their film reviews and usually agreed with what they had to say. But they sat in high walled cubicles one row over and pretty much ignored me. The row of cubes I sat in was completely empty except for a lone sales rep. Since no one ever arrived at the LA office until at least 1:00 P.M. New York time, I could come in whenever I wanted.
    At first it was a dream job. I reconnected with all of my old film publicity contacts from Jane and spent my afternoons going to screenings and my evenings covering parties and film premieres. And I was functionally high out of my mind.
    My first month on the job, I flew out to LA to meet the rest of the magazine’s staff. It was a sterile cubicle environment, and the vibe was completely different from what I had been used to at Jane . We’d had cubes as well, but they were always overflowing with free CDs, books, DVDs, and weird personal items like a giant stuffed Yeti or Post-it notes attached to computer monitors with random messages like, “This world is uninhabitable.” At V Life , there were no thirty-minute gossip sessions on the floor outside the editor in chief’s office, no group lunch breaks to McDonald’s, no yelling questions across theoffice floor at someone when you needed to remember the name of some random person Paris Hilton had been sleeping with two months ago, and having four different people yell back four different names.
    But the LA staff was nice to me. I was too nervous to take any pills while I was actually in the office there, so I’d wait until I got into the parking garage at the end of the day before popping anything. I’d only learned to drive a year earlier, when I was living up in Hudson. I’d always lived in small towns or large cities, and no one had ever taught me how: I’d always gotten by on public transportation and rides from friends. After work I’d get in my rental car, take three Norcos, leave the Variety offices, and drive the Pacific Coast highway to Malibu. I’d find parking lots that said they were closed, but no one ever seemed to be watching them, so I’d pull up as close to the sand as possible and sit on the beach by myself until it got dark. The ocean always smelled rank and rotting, nothing like the clean salty air of the Atlantic. I’d walk along the beach until it got too cold and then head back to my car and just drive around for hours, turning down side street after side street, trying to imagine the lives of the people who lived inside these suburban homes. I’d always accidentally run a few red lights or stop signs because I was too high and distracted by the houses that I thought might have been the filming location for the exterior shots of Buffy’s house on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . None of them ever were, but luck was always with me as far as my driving indiscretions—there were never any cops around. Maybe it was Clover looking out for me.
    It was lonely, but at that point in my life I’d come to embrace loneliness. It was all I knew after a year away from the city. And as long as I had pills, I had a friend. The only time I ever really cared was at night, when I’d want someone to hold while I was falling asleep.
    V Life was putting me up at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, a midcentury modern building where all the rooms surrounded a swimming pool that was always empty. After I’d get back from my drive, I’d order a cocktail and lounge by the pool, with its flickering underwater lights, hoping someone would talk to me.
    I’d finally go up to my room, fall asleep, wake up, and start thesame day over again. I was becoming aware