Cat Marnell was living the New York City dream. In 2007, she was 25 and had worked her way up to a coveted job at Condé Nast’s now-defunct Lucky magazine, where she was a beauty editor. From free beauty products and treatments to A-list parties and trips to Europe, her job was every bit as glamorous as it sounds. By all appearances, she had it all.
Except, she was an addict — to heroin, crack cocaine, PCP, Adderall, alcohol, everything.
In this excerpt from her new memoir, “How to Murder Your Life” (Simon & Schuster), she describes how she hit rock bottom on a dream trip to Italy for Lucky.
I WAS staying at the Hotel Eden, and the view from my suite was just glorious. I had time before the Gucci party, so I decided to go for a stroll. I’d never been to Rome.
It’s a rather walkable city — especially if one is on Vyvanse — and so I had a nice time navigating the winding streets in the rain. Plus there was great shopping — rosaries everywhere! I had to bring a few back to Marco. I stopped at a Bancomat machine by the Fontana di Trevi to take out some cash. Tra la la. It was lovely to be in Europe; I hadn’t been there since high school, and, gee, look at those pigeons — INSUFFICIENT FUNDS, YOU SPOILED IDIOT DRUG ADDICT F—ING RETARD LOSER BRAT, the Bancomat screamed at me. GO THROW YOURSELF IN THE RIVER.
No, no, no.
I checked my balance: -$1,800.
“F–K!” I shrieked at the pigeons. How was this possible? My head spun like a slot machine, remembering the shopping spree before Dawn’s wedding, cash I’d laid out for Dr. X., cash I’d given Marco to buy drugs — and, of course, my $1,600 rent check. So much for self-sufficiency. I was going to be traveling for a week. What was I going to do? I couldn’t call my parents. Those days were over. There was only one person I could think of.
“Darlin’?” Mimi accepted the collect call. She was living in Charlottesville, near the University of Virginia. “Caty? Is it really you?” I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year.
“Mimi!” I wailed into a pay-phone receiver. “Mimi, I need your help. I’m all the way over in Europe, I am all alone and I have no money! I started crying. “I’m at a pay phone in the middle of Rome. All by myself!” Liar. “I don’t know what to do. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!”
“I’ll go to the bank right now!” Mimi said.
“Thank you,” I wept. “I love you so much.” A–hole.
Mimi really did rush right out: she wired me $3,000 within the hour. I’d frightened my 81-year-old grandmother to — well, not quite to death. But surely a little closer to it.
Gucci headquarters was in a gargantuan 16th-century palazzo just across the River Tiber from the fabulous Castel Sant’Angelo. If that sentence sounds like it was lifted directly from the Internet, well — bingo. I barely remember anything about this party. That’s how out-to-lunch I was. I remember an awkward chat with Gucci’s foxy blond creative director, Frida Giannini. She didn’t seem to particularly speak English and at that point I barely did either.
Next up was a sit-down dinner. The editors at my table were from the best magazines from all over the world. A healthier me would have been on cloud nine, but I just wanted to crawl into one of the chic bottles of bubbly Italian mineral water on the table and drown.
The American editors returned to the Hotel Eden and said our good nights. When we got to the hotel, I was so drunk that I thought maybe I’d actually sleep — especially since I hadn’t on the flight from New York — but instead I just lay awake feeling agitated, clammy, and anxious. I’d left my sleeping pills and Xanax behind. So now I had “rebound insomnia,” which was 90,000 times worse than the insomnia I had in the first place. I couldn’t have dozed off for a million dollars. I took baths and did deep-breathing exercises in bed. Nothing worked.
By 3 in the morning, I was freaking out — screaming inside. I wasn’t used to being so uncomfortable and helpless. In New York, I would have been at the 24-hour Rite Aid, buying Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Pop-Tarts, and Powerade.
Then I did something that I absolutely should not have done: picked up the phone and ordered binge foods — expensive binge foods — from room service. This wasn’t specifically forbidden or anything, but . . . you just don’t do that on a press trip. Especially on a press trip with a major advertiser! I was representing Jean, and Lucky, Procter & Gamble were paying for the room, and the publicists would see the bill when we checked out. I’d already missed my first-class flight; ordering a bunch of room service was just . . . a bad look. I knew all this. But I ordered pizza, tiramisu and a pastry basket anyway. I was hoping to spike my blood sugar and then come crashing down and into sleep — an old “trick” of mine.
Thanks for the first UK press @thetimesmagazine ! Profile by Will Pavia. How To Murder Your Life out over there Feb 1; in the USA January 31. Thanks to @benritterphoto. taken late nite on XMAS EvE 2016 ❤️. Story here: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine/the-times-magazine/addicted-to-lipstick-and-drugs-the-secret-life-of-a-beauty-editor-0vlz5gdtz
A photo posted by Cat Marnell (@cat_marnell) on Jan 20, 2017 at 2:40pm PST
Yeah, right. After I binged and purged, I picked up the phone again — I was in a half-hypnotized state, truly — and ordered room service again: a cheese and charcuterie plate, a basket of bread, another tiramisu. Another order came up on another rolling tray. I threw all that up, too. By then it was 6 in the morning and all of the alcohol had worn off. I took two Vyvanse and started packing up my stuff. We were all going to the airport together and flying to Milan. At 9 a.m., I met the other editors in the lobby. The publicists were at the front desk, checking out. I wanted to disappear. But no one looked at me funny; no one said anything. At least, not to my face.
The Hotel Principe di Savoia was magnificent, but I blew that Popsicle stand the second we checked in and hit the streets. It was hailing in Milan. While the other beauty editors had afternoon tea, I slogged through the icy-cold rain, looking for lit-up green crosses. There were — I knew — farmacias everywhere: elegant little shops you had to be buzzed into, not big drugstores like in the States. It didn’t take long to find one. I stood and rang the doorbell outside. I was wearing leather Goldsign jeans, Nike Dunk Lows, and a soaking-wet white fox-fur coat. It was freezing. Why weren’t they letting me in?
BZZZZZ. Finally! I burst inside. I looked for something like Tylenol PM or NyQuil, but didn’t see it. I went to the counter. There were two people working in the pharmacy.
“I need medicine for sleep, medicina,” I said. “Please.”
The farmacistas stared at me.
“For sleep, for sleep.” I made a pillow with my hands like a little Hallmark Store angel. “Please. Sleeping pills. Tranquilizers.”
“Americano?” the woman said rather . . . snidely.
“Si,” I said. I mean, what did that have to do with anything?
The male pharmacist gave me the ol’ Italian stink eye, but the woman came down from behind the counter. She led me to a wall of herbal sleep supplements. Everything was in
cute packaging, like beauty products.
“Thees,” she said. “Melatonia.”
“Oh, um, grazie,” I said. Yeah, that wasn’t gonna cut it.
“Okay?” the pharmacist said.
I pointed behind the counter.
“Do you have Valium?” I said. Wasn’t Valium over the counter in some parts of the world? Maybe not. “Or cough syrup?” Then, as an afterthought, I fake-coughed: Cough.
“No,” she said coldly.
Fine. Stupid Europe! I grabbed every incarnation of s–tty melatonia in the joint — tablets, gel caps, powders in capsules — and brought it all up to the register. God knows how much I paid. It didn’t matter. I knew none of it was gonna work.
The next night, at the Dolce & Gabbana party, I got a smooch on both cheeks from either Dolce or Gabbana — I do not know which one, but he was very tan and smelled predictably fantastic. It was another glittering cocktail reception. I sipped white wine. There was more to drink at the sit-down dinner, which felt more like a wedding reception. It was a huge party — so many guests! The dining room was decadent and dazzling — no overhead lighting, just 10,000 candles, and exotic flowers spilled on every table. This time I actually knew someone at mine: Eva Chen — the Eva Chen — was seated next to me.
I actually had something to talk to her about. Charlotte had attended Eva’s wedding over the summer and had shown me the photos when she visited me at Silver Hill.
“Congratulations on getting married!” I said. I was a little toasted.
“Charlotte showed me the pictures over the summer . . .”
Hide yer kids! Thanks @nypost @kirflem !!! (And that blue wig photo is by @stosdada )
A photo posted by Cat Marnell (@cat_marnell) on Dec 11, 2016 at 2:40pm PST
“Oh, she did?” Eva said. She was still the beauty director at Teen Vogue. I’d never forgotten how kind she was when I interviewed there. Which may explain —along with my
usual excuse, sleep deprivation — what happened next.
“Yes,” I said. “When, when . . .” Don’t. “When she visited me . . . in rehab!”
Then I started blubbering — right there at the table, into my glam risotto.
“Cat,” Eva said, putting her fork down. She reached out and touched my shaking arm. “Are you OK?”
“It’s a g-g-g-ood thing you d-d-didn’t h-h-hire me,” I wept. “I’m a d-d-drug addict.” I told her everything: about forgetting my downers at home, the room service I’d ordered, how my boss Jean didn’t know I’d relapsed.
“It’s OK.” Eva Chen patted my back. She probably couldn’t even understand what I was saying, I was crying so hard.
At least it was so fashionably dark in that dining room that no one was watching us.
“Shhh.”
As the first course arrived, I went into the bathroom and cleaned the eyeliner from my cheeks. I was such a freak show. Thank God Eva was so nice.
I gorged on melatonin that night. I probably took 30 herbal pills. They did nothing except make me feel sick. I lay in the dark in my suite at the Principe di Savoia, waiting for sleep. I would have swallowed arsenic if someone had promised that it would put me under for at least a few hours — that’s how bad prolonged insomnia feels. But eventually, I gave up: on sleeping, on self-control, on my career, on myself. I gave up on all of it. I just f–king gave up.
This time, I got prosecco — a whole bottle — plus pastries, cheese plates, pizza and tiramisu. The bill would be . . . God, I don’t know — 150 euros . . . 200? I couldn’t stop.
I knew that I should quit my job when I got back to New York. And I was so f–ked up that I didn’t care.
I was wearing a purple silk slip and I kept taking it off to vomit in the marble bathroom. When I’d emptied my stomach of the first giant room-service order, I called and ordered it again. It was so sick.
The bathroom was the size of a New York studio apartment. At some point — I guess I’d gotten really drunk — I finally passed out in there. When I opened my eyes again, I was on the marble floor by the toilet in my underwear. I knew I’d slept for a few hours. Thank you, God.
I got up and put on a robe. Then I went to the window in the bedroom and peeked out the heavy hotel-room curtains. Was it light out? Not yet. The sky was dark purple. Then it slowly turned into light gray. I sat there watching for a long time. I heard the Italian birds wake up.
I’m never going to be OK, I thought.
From “How to Murder Your Life” by Cat Marnell. Copyright © 2017 by Cat Marnell. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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