(3 of 3)
He was an expert at making other people feel special. And of course, during his years at CAA, he had perfected that uncanny knack for taking charge. One weekend Jay persuaded our case managers to allow a sober field trip. He had his assistant at CAA arrange beach houses on the shore for some of us rehabbers. When we arrived at the luxurious quarters, Jay welcomed us from behind a dining table he had converted to a reception desk, where he passed out T shirts reading AWOL FROM A TREATMENT CENTER. That night, at the beach, while dozens of us addicts were on a carnival ride called the Tilt-a-Whirl, I caught a glimpse of Jay in the car behind me. He was smiling, his arm around a cute brunet, obviously pleased with the way things had worked out. This was when he was in his element. We were his clients, and he had put together a terrific package.
Jay and I were discharged--gonged out, we called it--within days of each other. Back in L.A., he called me, and we went out to lunch and talked about what we were going to do now that we were home and sober. I was hoping to get my book back on track. Jay was re-ensconced in his offices at CAA, where he was negotiating feverishly to keep a famous director from defecting to another agency. He was thrilled to be back in the game. And from where I was sitting, he looked like a guy who had got it all together. He had every reason to stay sober.
We met every Tuesday evening for sandwiches at a movie producer's office. Jay, always the dealmaker, had put together a support group of a few of his friends--three writers, a musician and the producer. The point of the gathering was to talk about the challenges of staying sober and to broach topics we couldn't discuss with civilians.
Then Jay missed a few meetings. He stood me up at a breakfast appointment. And when Jay, known as an agent who always returned calls, didn't return mine, I knew he'd slipped. He showed up sheepishly the next Tuesday and recounted his latest run, which included trading his blue Ferrari GTO to a dealer for drugs. Once again I noticed that only when he spoke about the dark excitement of that coke jag could I tell he really believed what he was saying.
Now that Jay is gone, I want to look back and say I could tell he wouldn't make it, that he didn't try hard enough or have sufficient will. But that's all nonsense. Drug and alcohol addiction is a chronic disease that, like diabetes, requires ongoing treatment, according to the American Medical Association. What frightens me is the random nature of this disease. I am in my fourth year of sobriety, but I can think of no real reason why I am sober--or in remission--and Jay is dead. Jay tried harder than anyone I know to beat his habit: four rehabs, a stay on an Israeli kibbutz, a summer picking bananas on an island in the Caribbean, anything to get away from drugs. The last time I saw him, he was just back from the Caribbean, looking tan and fit. We met in New York City, while he was putting together another management company. However, within a few weeks he had slipped again.
Addiction is the only disease in the world that convinces the afflicted he does not have it. Jay used to say he knew he suffered from a virulent strain of addiction, but I wonder if he knew himself well enough to believe it.