Entertainment journalist Jonathon Moran has led a wild life, reporting on the lives of the rich, famous and the notorious.
Now, he’s putting himself under the microscope with a tell-all memoir Mental As Anyone, written with Dr Jodie Lowinger, that traces his own battles with addiction and mental health issues.
Here, in this exclusive extract he reflects on how his addiction manifested in drunken late night calls to friends, acquaintances, anyone who’d listen. As he looks back now he wonders, is this type of behaviour a harmless lark or a cry for help?
I WAS NOTORIOUS for the drunk dial when I got wasted. I’d call around to see who would answer, sometimes to see if they’d join me at the bar, and other times just to chat and have someone to keep me company. After a few drinks and with my buzz on, I would ring pretty much from A through to Z in my phone book, no matter what time it was or where in the world I was.
I once rang my boss, an editor at one of the biggest newspapers in the country, while drunk at a friend’s wedding in Germany. Fortunately he found it funny, but it wasn’t an ideal time to call as I was spewing into the bushes on my hands and knees. My friend had to confiscate my phone after that.
I’m sure countless of my closest friends, and acquaintances too, blocked my calls on occasion. My friends laugh about the drunk dialling now, but there was a serious side to it.
The guilt and the shame the next day was almost too much to bear. I still feel shame thinking about it. While I could lie to myself internally about being out of control, this was an outward sign to others that I’d lost my shit. Also, I often had no idea what I’d said, and who I’d called. I’d even go into my call log and do a blanket delete so I wouldn’t be able to remember, and if anyone brought it up afterwards, I’d just laugh it off as a joke or a pocket dial.
I still feel shame thinking about it. In a way, drunk dialling is a cry for help.
One time, when I was staying in a five-star hotel in Los Angeles, I was on a bender. Cocaine in LA is about $30 a gram, compared to $300 in Sydney. That’s what it was then at least, though I’m not sure now as I haven’t touched the stuff in years.
That night I had been out at the infamous Chateau Marmont the celebrity place to hang out at 8221 Sunset Boulevard, where John Belushi famously died of a drug overdose on 5 March, 1982. Photographer Helmut Newton also died in 2004 after crashing his car pulling out of the hotel’s driveway.
The Chateau Marmont is the stuff of Hollywood legends. I try to visit every time I am in LA. A pivotal scene in A Star Is Born (the Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper version) was shot there. Heath Ledger was snapped by paparazzi there in 2006, in a grainy video surrounded by people snorting what looked to be cocaine.
‘I’m going to get serious s– from my girlfriend, we had a baby three months ago,’ Ledger is heard saying in the video. ‘I shouldn’t be here at all.’
I related to those words of acknowledgement from Ledger because every time I was on a bender, I knew I was on borrowed time almost as surely the clock was ticking on someone calling me out on my bullshit. I knew I was on a trail of self-destruction, and the inevitable pit of self-loathing come-down was on its way sooner rather than later. I’d drag out that partying to put off those feelings. I too would tell those I was partying with I needed to stop.
But hey, fuck it, I was already high anyway so why stop then. I’d deal with that shit later or it would deal with me.
The last (and only) time I stayed there (it’s about $600 a night for a basic room), it was wall-to-wall Hollywood stars, from Justin Theroux at the bar to Isla Fisher taking a meeting, Joel Edgerton having coffee with his girlfriend and Jon Bernthal playing with his kids in the pool.
I got into the spirit of the Chateau Marmont this one night with a couple of LA-based friends it would have been rude not to but with an infamous 2am curfew in the city, everything shuts down early. You either kick on to a house party or go to bed. My friends had to work the next day, so I went back to my hotel room by myself and, you guessed it, drank the mini-bar dry as I made my way through my phone contacts.
I wasn’t selective in who I would call. From TV stars to family members and distant acquaintances, anyone was fair game if their number was in my phone.
One actor back home in Australia on this occasion could only vaguely remember the call when I reminded her about it, but she didn’t recall details. ‘Phew!’, I felt, as for me these calls are one of the greatest shames and embarrassments of my life outward reminders of how fucked up I was.
I called my mate Charlotte Dawson. I rang two of my aunts, who were then in their late 70s (how kind of me, they would have been overjoyed and not worried about me at all!), a couple of my cousins and, of course, my sister. They didn’t know I’d had a few lines of cocaine, but they knew I was drunk and probably suspected other stuff. I always said ‘a few lines’ because it made me feel better, but it could have been a few bags (a gram being in each bag). They were understandably worried about me.
Thinking back gives me serious anxiety to this day – they thought I was living the dream, and then these phone calls would show how rocky I truly was. It was after my mum had died from cancer at the age of 56, and I was a mess.
Her death brought up all my other traumas that had been festering inside me for years. Having bottled up my shit and kept myself going on an even keel, or so I thought, it was these drunk moments that saw me fall into a puddle of emotions as I’d lean into making some very bad decisions. Cocaine didn’t help. I’d spill my guts about how shit I thought my life was, how much I missed my mum, how I still struggled and had nightmares about being abused.
I was processing all this shit still, despite the fact I’d had years of therapy. I was never a part of AA, or a 12-step program. Therapy for me was a combination of counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists and regular check-ins with my GP. That, on top of medication.
Getting drunk and doing cocaine was the last thing I should have been doing but when you place so little value on yourself, you just don’t care what happens to you. I kept myself alive, in this self-imposed cycle of hell, for my sister and nieces.
I’d ring people at random – going through my phone from A to Z and picking numbers.
One guy I rang said all the right things on the phone but then used my vulnerability against me by starting rumours in work circles that I was unstable and that I had threatened to kill myself.
It was malicious and nasty, and while I was on the edge and may have said some fucked-up loose shit, I knew I wasn’t suicidal because I know now as I knew then that my family was keeping me alive. I was genuinely struggling though so the call would have been alarming, I understand that. But instead of checking up on me in the days and months that followed, he used the incident as a moment to gossip. Was it a laughing matter? If he was so genuinely concerned, why did he not contact me or a family member the next day rather than doing his best to damage my reputation?
This is another reason I do not drink. I lose control when I do. I accept that and don’t blame anyone but myself. People do however find that hard to understand and when I say I don’t drink, nine times out of 10 people look at me like I’ve got three heads.
When they do get it, they assume I am an alcoholic. I don’t drink because it is my choice. It would be nice if that was more accepted in our society. Alcohol is such a huge part of our culture. We drink when we are happy. We drink when we are sad.
We drink at cafés. We drink at pubs, restaurants, on the street, in the park and on public transport. It is just so entrenched in what we do. The reason I don’t drink is not because I’m an alcoholic, although maybe I am. I haven’t really come to terms with that, although I truly don’t think I am. It is because I don’t stop at one drink. I don’t stop at five drinks. I stop maybe at 20 drinks (or when I’ve passed out). And five drinks leads to a cheeky line of cocaine, then a few bags. I can’t say no. I don’t say no. And it’s a spiral. You already know the cycle.
I’ve spent too much money on psychologists and counsellors and antidepressants to waste that. I made it to the point where enough was enough and I chose to have no regrets.
This is an extract from Mental As Anyone: A Toolkit for Surviving and Thriving on the Chaotic Rollercoaster of Life by Jonathon Moran and Dr Jodie Lowinger (Wiley), available now.
