Jon and I exchanged worried glances, as neither of us belonged to a church near our respective homes there. Then I remembered that I’d gone to Easter services at a church near my home in Beverly Hills, and that that church was run by a very avant-garde minister. So Jon and I hastily made an appointment to see him, planning to tell him about the required letter of recommendation and throwing ourselves on his mercy in the hope that he would write it for us. That meeting went very well, and we were told that the next required step was for us to see another minister, who would instruct us in the finer points of the religion.
Beforehand, we were both nervous, not knowing what he was going to ask us. In particular, Jon was worried that he might ask us about sex, and if we were sleeping together.
Seeing how worried he was, I reassured him. “No, no, definitely not, Jon. A man of the cloth would never ask that question!”
Jon was mollified, and I breathed a sigh of relief. So we set off together for Grace Cathedral and our appointment with the third minister.
First he asked us about our individual attitudes toward marriage, then about our respective children, our relationships with them, and how the children felt about each of us. Then he asked another question: “Well, then, how’s sex? Are you sleeping together?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Finally I mumbled, “Yes,” then held my breath, half expecting to be hit by a thunderbolt.
“Right, that’s good,” the minister said.
Jon and I breathed a collective sigh of relief and thanked our lucky stars to have found a nonjudgmental minister.
Once we’d gotten the letter we needed, we rushed home and called our friends, asking them to come to the wedding and then to the Fairmont for champagne and cake in the suite we had rented for our wedding night.
Our wedding invitation was so impromptu, so last-minute, that when I arrived at the cathedral, I half expected none of our friends to have turned up at all. Boy, was I in for a big surprise! The church was full, and all our friends were on hand to witness our wedding.
In the midst of greeting all our friends, there was a hilarious moment when a good-looking young man in purple priest’s garb came up behind Jon and his son, Jon David, and hollered, “Hey, Jon?” Jon David spun around and said, “Lucky Chuckie?” It turned out that the two of them had gone to college together at SMU in Texas!
Jon and I walked down the aisle together, hand in hand. My sister, Alison, stood up for me, and Jon David stood up for Jon. The ceremony was moving, the reception afterward warm and congenial. The day would have been perfect, except for one thing. Amid all our happiness, all our joy, all the love and the hopes for our future, one person was missing from our joyous wedding—my son, Matthew.
But Matthew’s absence from my wedding was neither a surprise nor a snub. He was in residence at the Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota, one of the eight times the clinic would make another attempt to cure him of his drug addiction, an addiction that dated back to when he was just ten years old.
IN HINDSIGHT, THE signposts are so clear, the pitfalls so evident, Matthew’s fate so inevitable, but living through the hell of all of it, day by day, week by week, year by year, was quite another story. And it is really only now that I’ve finally been able to look back and piece together the full, horrifying saga of my son’s tragic descent into drug addiction.
In 1974, Michael, Matthew, and I were living in our ranch-style home in the San Fernando Valley, a prosperous community of well-heeled, well-educated people. Little did we know that someone who lived close by, a wealthy hippie, a man with children of his own, was growing pot in his garden and smoking it with the neighborhood kids. I guess that particular person thought that what he was doing was fun, cool, harmless. If I ever came face-to-face with him, I’d happily kill him.
Fate is so strange, and I often ask myself this question: if Michael and I had lived in another neighborhood, not one where our neighbor was growing pot and handing it out to kids like some kind of candy, would Matthew have avoided becoming a drug addict?
But the reality may well be different. Marijuana can be an extremely addictive drug, and the addiction is intensified if a child not only starts smoking when he is extremely young but also has a marked genetic predisposition to addiction. Sadly, Matthew fell into both categories. Michael and I both had alcoholism in our respective families. Michael’s grandfather was an alcoholic, as were both my mother’s older sister and her brother. Matthew’s early addiction to marijuana easily led to an addiction to harder drugs later on.
Another factor, one for which I will blame myself to my dying day, is that Matthew was only nine when I asked Michael for a divorce, and he never really recovered from having his hitherto happy home broken up. He wanted his mommy and daddy to stay together forever, but I denied him that, and will feel guilty about that for the rest of my life. If I were able to turn back the clock, I would have stayed married to Michael until Matthew was older and able to cope with us splitting. To be fair to myself, the majority of kids from broken homes don’t use drugs, but that still doesn’t console me.
At the time of my divorce from Michael, I never dreamed of the impact our divorce would have on Matthew. As the years flew by, he seemed like a happy little boy, albeit one who slept a little longer than most kids his age, but drugs? Never!
It wasn’t as if Michael and I were neglectful or permissive parents. Quite the reverse. I had always made it my business to check out as much as I could about the children with whom Matthew played, and I made sure to visit their homes to ascertain that everything there was all right and that it was safe for Matthew to visit. Of course, I didn’t know what a marijuana bush looked like.
Looking back, I see that one of the main problems is the manner in which I was raised, which discouraged me from looking into Matthew’s drawers or snooping in his closet. How wrong I was. And if I could live my life again, I would look in Matthew’s drawers and snoop in his closet, simply because it is dangerous not to. After all, I was the parent, I was the responsible adult, and I should have made it my business to check on Matthew at every turn. Instead, I carried on, oblivious.
Despite my short foray into the world of party drugs with Chuck, I was basically ignorant about drugs and addictive behavior. For years, the Doors’ anthem “Light My Fire” had been one of the highlights of my Las Vegas act. It was only after Matthew explained it to me that I realized that the lyrics referred to marijuana.
Neither Michael nor I had recognized the signs of serious drug addiction in Matthew: the weight loss, the sluggishness, the inexplicable bouts of temper, the hours wasted in sleep, the dramatic personality changes. The trouble was that, like many parents, Michael and I were still living partly in the past, warm and secure in our glowing memories of the adorable child who loved both of us and whom we both loved so much. But when it comes to drugs, as we would learn during the harsh years that followed, love just isn’t enough. Neither Michael nor I had the slightest intimation that our beloved Matthew was secretly taking drugs, spending his nights and days in his room doing little else.
The truth only slowly began to dawn on me in 1984. Matthew was nineteen and studying at City College in the San Fernando Valley. Each morning I watched proudly as he set off for college, his books in hand, eager to start a day of studying, or so I fondly imagined.
One day I came into the kitchen to find that he’d left all his schoolbooks on the counter. I grabbed them, got in the car, and raced to City College as fast I could, hoping against hope that I’d get the books to Matthew before his first class of the day began.
I looked all over for him, then, in desperation, went to the administrator’s office and explained, “I have to find Matthew Ansara. He left his schoolbooks at home, and I have them for him, so please could you direct me to his classroom?”
The administrator shook her head. “I’m sorry, we don’t have a Matthew Ansara at this college,” she said.
Outraged at her inefficiency, I demanded that she check again. Same answer. Matthew was not registered at City College, nor had he ever been.
Despondent and afraid, I drove home and waited there for him, trembling from head to foot with a combination of fear and anger.
When Matthew arrived, I confronted him directly about not going to college, about baldly lying to me and pretending he was. Thereupon Matthew, generally a sweet and kind boy, flew into a vicious rage. There was no explanation, no excuse, no apology, not even a glimmer of contrition. Then he stomped off into the night.
I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had gone to Michael’s house. But I didn’t hear a word from either Matthew or Michael. Distraught with worry, I finally called Michael, who, shocked beyond measure, told me that Matthew had not come home, nor had he heard from him for quite a few days.
We spent the next days searching for Matthew all over town, in bars, even under the freeway. For a hellish month we called friend after friend, to no avail. Neither of us had a clue where our son was living, whom he was with. Eventually we were able to discover that Matthew had been living partly on the streets and partly with a friend who’d taken him in out of pity.
Not long afterward, I received the call that helped rip the last vestiges of the veil of ignorance from my eyes. An off-duty officer called me to say that he had Matthew in custody and that he shouldn’t be driving a vehicle because he was dangerous both to himself and to other people.
My then-boyfriend, Stanley Frileck, and I jumped into our cars and drove up to Mulholland Drive, where we met the police officer, who still had Matthew with him.
Before we drove off, me in my car and Stanley driving Matthew in his, the officer wagged his finger at me and said, “You’d better find out what your son’s been taking!”
A further shock was ahead of me when Matthew had an almost fatal accident while driving a truck. He totaled the truck, broke his nose, and cracked a clavicle. At that point, Michael and I joined forces and confronted him.
Faced by both of us, and put under the greatest possible pressure we could muster, he would only admit, “All I do is a little pot and a pill or two. Everybody does exactly the same, Mom!”
“I don’t give a flying fig if everybody does it,” I said. “Drugs are unhealthy and taking them is against the law.”
Looking back, I can’t help seeing how naive I was. Did I really think that if I, his adoring mother, read him the riot act and gave him a civic lecture about the illegality of drugs and the ill effects of using them, my son would stop taking them altogether? Yes, and pigs would have flown to the moon.
In the end, Matthew agreed to go into rehab, and Michael and I thought the worst was over. After a few days, we were summoned to see the drug counselor, who, without making any bones about it, handed us a lengthy list of all the drugs Matthew had been taking on a regular basis.
Electrified, Matthew lunged for the list and screamed, “Don’t hurt my mom and dad! I don’t want them to know anything about what I’ve been doing.”
It was too late. We read the list. We didn’t want to believe it, but he had been using practically every hard drug in the world, and not in small quantities, either.
I started crying.
Matt promised to kick the habit, and I believed him. But the story had only just begun, although I didn’t know it at the time. (If I had, I think I’d have gone crazy.)
Over the next few years, Matthew fought against his drug habit, but with little success. Although Michael and I were divorced, we were united in our burning desire that Matthew be cured, and we prayed each night that he’d succeed in banishing drugs from his life.
Meanwhile, I tried every conceivable way of helping him in his battle: maternal love, tough love, Al-Anon. One of the hardest lessons came after he’d attended yet another rehab. The counselor explained to us that if a child is using drugs, he has become the drugs; he is no longer your child and he no longer has a home with you. I found out Matthew was still using, and I locked him out of the house.
Over a period of fourteen years, Matthew was in and out of drug rehab constantly. And each time I went through the same process, rather like a sleepwalker following the same steps over and over.
When he left for rehab, I’d stand there crying, praying, Dear God, please let this work. He’s a good boy—let him lick this addiction before it destroys him. Then the waiting began, battling the fears and rejoicing in the hope that this time he would come out cured and start his life again, for real and for always.
After I met Jon, he became the greatest support possible to me during all the vicissitudes of Matthew’s struggle with drugs. We’d just begun our relationship when I went to visit Matt in Hazelden. Like I’d done many times before, I flew to Minnesota by myself and checked into a hotel. I saw Matthew at the clinic, spent time with him there, and spoke with his counselors, then flew back to LA a few days later.
This time when I got back to my hotel near Hazelden, the manager greeted me with the words “Your friend is very worried about you!” and handed me a sheaf of messages from Jon. I called him immediately, happy because I finally had someone in my life who cared about me. I wasn’t accustomed to that anymore, and I loved and gloried in it.
By the time Matthew was in his twenties, I’d learned the cruel and bitter lesson that no matter how much I loved him, it was foolhardy to fall into the treacherous trap of trusting him. Although I longed for his visits and enjoyed every moment of them, after he left I would be confronted with harsh reality: silverware was missing, and often money from Jon’s wallet. Matthew became almost brazen about how he stole from us in order to fund his drug habit, announcing, “Here I am, better lock up everything in the house!”
But when he was sober, he’d tell me, “I’m so sorry, Mom. I love you more than anyone else in the world.”
I believe he did. But drugs held more power over him. There were some hopeful times, but they rarely lasted. When he was twenty-seven, he fell in love with a marvelous woman, an accountant, and they had a big, glamorous wedding in Oregon. I was so proud and happy, particularly afterward when he got a job and began studying creative writing at UCLA part-time. Then the cycle began again.