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By the time I arrived, Jay had been there two weeks, which to me, just beginning to come down from the pills and dope, seemed like an incredibly long time to stay clean. Over the next few weeks, his robust optimism and constant wisecracking would be an inspiration to me as I muddled through very early sobriety. I had been convinced after that first night that I would never laugh again. Jay was proof that life without drugs could be fun--that you could retain your sense of humor.
He was a tireless booster of whatever happened to be going on at that exact moment--group therapy, meditation, laundry. This enthusiasm was both his greatest strength and perhaps his fatal flaw. If on the job he channeled that eagerness into getting a client interested in a new script or a studio in a project, in treatment he pumped his fist about how great it felt to be drug free. He was always, consummately, in the moment. And for him, there had been some pretty hairy moments. He had begun doing cocaine about six months before, and in a pattern familiar to most addicts had gradually been increasing his consumption until he was ingesting nearly fatal doses. Desperate to stop, he had had elective heart surgery, reasoning that nobody would be insane enough to do cocaine while recovering from heart surgery. Jay was doing blow within two weeks of his operation.
You get very close to the other patients in treatment. Your weaknesses are on display, and you trust the others not to attack you where you are soft. It's how the place works; you're all supposed to get better together. We gathered twice a day for two-hour sessions to process issues of grief, relapse prevention, fears, depression, abuse and insecurity. We were supposed to acquire greater awareness of, and healthy respect for, the disease of addiction by identifying with other addicts, the theory being that it's easier to recognize the manipulations and dissemblings in another person than in yourself.
Jay wasn't gifted with vast self-knowledge. He had become successful so very young--dropping out of the University of Southern California to become an intern at CAA while still a teenager, becoming a full agent by the time he was 21 and a millionaire by his mid-20s--that he never had a chance to figure out who he was, beneath all the trappings of worldly success. He spoke eagerly, with a midrange, clipped California accent, his voice filling the room with vague blandishments about how eager he was to stay sober and how grateful he was to his fellow agents who had intervened to send him here and how he was looking forward to getting back to work.
Maybe it was the black BMW 735 parked outside, or the fact that his agency was still sending videotapes of the latest daily rushes to him by courier, or just that he was so very successful, but Jay never really appeared vulnerable. He talked about being unsure of who he was and what he was doing, and he cried when he was supposed to. But Jay was doing what we called rehabbin', giving the counselors what they wanted, just as in another arena he had got movie stars and directors what they wanted. The only time I really believed him was when he said, over and over again, in the middle of eating a bowl of cereal or rewinding a video, "God, I'd love some coke."