Dan Peres, AS NEEDED FOR PAIN
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[1:01]I'm thrilled to be here today with Dan Perez, who's the author of As Needed for Pain,
[1:05]and Memoir of Addiction.
[1:07]As the former editor-in-chief of Details Magazine for 15 years,
[1:10]Dan won two ASME awards, and prior to Details, Dan spent nine years at W Magazine,
[1:16]including as the European editor for three years.
[1:19]He currently lives in New York with his three cents.
[1:22]So welcome, Dan. Thanks for coming on mom's on have time to read books.
[1:25]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:27]I loved your book. I couldn't wait to read it when I saw it as I told you,
[1:30]as needed for pain and memoir of addiction.
[1:32]So thank you for sharing it with me and talking about it today. I'm so excited.
[1:37]Thanks. I'm excited too. It's amazing that it's here and that it's done,
[1:42]and it's been a really interesting process.
[1:45]Tell listeners what it's about.
[1:47]As Needed for Pain is about my struggle with a massive addiction to opiates,
[1:56]prescription painkillers.
[1:58]The major part of my addiction, which lasted for about seven years,
[2:03]overlapped with my time as being the editor-in-chief of Details Magazine,
[2:08]which closed in 2015, but was published by Conde Nast.
[2:14]So I had this sort of really great and exciting job in media
[2:20]that had me visible to the world and interacting with lots of people,
[2:26]but I had a huge secret. I was a drug addict.
[2:30]One of the things that I found so interesting is your ability to hide and
[2:33]plain sight with this addiction.
[2:35]Like, if you're an alcoholic, not to compare different addicted food,
[2:38]but I feel like there's some things where it would be much harder to disguise,
[2:42]or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.
[2:43]I don't think you're wrong. I think that, well, first of all, yes,
[2:49]I was a quote-unquote high-functioning addict, but I was also a hot mess and a train wreck.
[2:58]And in the beginning, I was able to mask it with some measure of ease.
[3:04]But as the addiction progressed, as my need to swallow more and more pills grew,
[3:16]I would imagine that my ability to hide from everyone what I was doing,
[3:23]I think some cracks started to show. There's no question about it.
[3:27]But I, you know, so much of being an addict is being a con man in my case, you know?
[3:35]And so I was running this con and lying to everyone, myself also, most definitely
[3:44]but it was like a juggling act.
[3:47]The scene on the roof with Mike Tyson, by the way.
[3:51]One of my favorite moments in that you were trying so hard,
[3:55]but physically you couldn't help it anymore.
[3:57]Like your body just couldn't hide it.
[4:00]It's that Mike Tyson chapter is actually one of my,
[4:03]if not my favorite chapter in the book, because it's this hot September day,
[4:13]and I'm up there meeting him on the roof of this building because he's going to
[4:19]do something with the magazine. And I had just swallowed a handful of pills.
[4:24]I think maybe Vicodin at the time. And they started to hit me.
[4:30]I was wearing like a heavier suit than I should have been wearing.
[4:34]And it was oppressively hot around the roof of a building, staring up with these pigeons
[4:39]that he kept on the roof of the building. And it just came over me like a wave.
[4:45]And I literally was scared. I was going to fall off of that roof.
[4:49]Is this like one of the scenes when you look back at the time? Was this like a warning to you?
[4:53]Or was it just like part of the process?
[4:57]You got it. You know, there were, there were no real sort of profound moments.
[5:05]There were few, but you'd be surprised how few there were where I said to myself,
[5:12]hey, like there's something wrong with you. I knew deep down that I was a drug addict.
[5:19]I knew that I couldn't stop taking the pills. And of course I knew that it could kill me.
[5:25]But none of that stopped me. And none of that permeated my like every day thinking.
[5:33]Because for me, my every day thinking was dominated really just by one thing which was
[5:41]pills, taking them, counting them, getting more of them and not running out because running out
[5:49]was awful. It was like being tied to, you know, train tracks. And so the day of my sort of Tyson
[5:58]episode was just another, just another day. That's how bad it had gotten.
[6:04]Wow. In the book you wrote about your fear of withdrawal, what you're saying like the running out,
[6:09]I'll just read this quote. He said, I'm not sure which is worse going through withdrawal or the
[6:13]fear of going through withdrawal. The anxiety is crippling. It's like a scene from a horror movie.
[6:18]You are hiding under the bed. The boogeyman enters the room and slowly stops around.
[6:23]You hold your breath. You see his feet as he goes past. You hope and pray that he doesn't find you
[6:28]and just when you think he might be gone, he takes you out by your ankles and slaughters you.
[6:33]That is intense. It is. And I just felt that for a second as you read that.
[6:37]Listen, the anxiety of anything is not great, right? Like I took my kids to get flu shots,
[6:44]you know, a couple months ago. And one of my three sons, you know, was getting himself so
[6:51]worked up over the idea of the flu shot, you know. And so I see it unfolding in different ways
[7:00]around me, you know, the way that anxiety sort of can change everything. In the case of withdrawal
[7:07]and the onset of those kind of like acute physical effects or symptoms, I guess.
[7:13]It's those alone are incredibly powerful, right? Your whole body starts to ache. You are nauseous
[7:22]and crampy and you can't sleep and you're hot and then all of a sudden you're freezing. It's just
[7:28]it's absolute misery. The anticipation of that was just as bad for me because I had gone through it
[7:38]so many times that when I knew that it was coming, I would just panic and I would do everything
[7:46]that I could to get more pills. I would call and try to go see new doctors. I would go to an emergency
[7:54]room and pretend to have excruciating back pain. I would, you would do anything. I would get down
[8:02]on my hands and knees and search the carpet for pills that may have dropped over the past,
[8:08]however long. I would search the suit pockets of my clothing and inside drawers because
[8:15]the fear of it coming was like the fear of some nightmare creature from your childhood. In this
[8:25]case, I write about the boogeyman. And I was struck also by how many pills you needed to
[8:31]fuel this addiction. It's an insane amount of pills you were taking like dozens and dozens and
[8:36]every day. I was. It was, first of all, it's a miracle that I'm alive. Yeah. And I know that.
[8:44]And I got sober in 2007 and still every day I'm grateful for the fact that I'm alive today
[8:53]because it truly is just a blessing to gift. But yes, I was taking massive amounts of pills
[9:02]and as I write in the book, you know, initially I was taking what was, what is called
[9:06]extra strength, Vicodin or Vicodin ES, which is essentially like the active ingredient that
[9:12]which is hydrocodone, which is the opiate. And it's, it's married with like basically extra strength
[9:17]tylenol. So I was essentially taking 60 extra strength tylenol a day. I mean, it's just we're
[9:27]that alone for getting even the opiates that that are attached to that should have, should have
[9:32]killed me. The disease sort of works in different ways for different people. And I've known
[9:37]people over the years who had, you know, what I'll call like a low grade addiction, maybe needed,
[9:44]you know, seven or eight pills a day. In my case, I was taking 15 at a time four hours a day.
[9:53]I mean, excuse me, four times a day, every four hours. It's just my, it's my book. I know. It's crazy.
[9:59]It's crazy.
[10:00]I can look back on it now with a smile on my face, and I can look back on it now and kind
[10:06]of just be like, oh my God, that was nuts.
[10:09]But I don't minimize what I went through and what other people are going through.
[10:13]Not only is it insane amount of anything to put into your system, but it's also a very
[10:21]difficult amount to keep around.
[10:25]So I had to get crafty, and in some instances I got very lucky, and I would find ways
[10:34]to sort of to get these pills.
[10:37]And you start, so one thing when I read any books about addiction or I hear any stories,
[10:42]I always want to know like, well how did this happen?
[10:44]Like how did this guy get, how did it, was it something he was childhood, was he always
[10:49]destined to be addicted to something, was it just happenstance, like what factors sort
[10:54]of play into it?
[10:56]Could you have seen it coming?
[10:57]And that's why I thought it was so great because you wrote a lot about your childhood
[10:59]and feeling a little bit on the outside of things and a little awkward, not that that
[11:04]makes somebody likely to be an opioid addict later in life, but just how even you doing
[11:10]magic alone in a bathroom during a bar mitzvah and getting caught by people hooking up
[11:14]and like all those scenes.
[11:17]And then it was just a random cartwheel you did.
[11:21]Yeah, I mean, listen, no cartwheel-grown man does his random, it's a bizarre thing.
[11:28]So yeah, you make some really great points, couple things.
[11:32]One, it's really impossible for me to know whether or not I was destined to become an
[11:42]addict, right?
[11:44]Whether or not there's some sort of genetic, I believe that this is a disease, there's
[11:48]no question about it and I want to be really clear about that.
[11:51]I just don't know what did it.
[11:55]I wrote a lot about my childhood so that I could contextualize what I think were the things
[12:02]that helped sort of lead to this, including never really feeling like one of the guys
[12:10]and always feeling a little bit like an outsider and as I write in the book, I feel like
[12:14]everyone had been given like a manual on how to do it and boys and girls and men and
[12:19]women and how to, this is how you do it, this is your blueprint for life and I didn't
[12:25]get one.
[12:26]And so I never felt, never really had a sense of belonging.
[12:31]So I escaped through magic, right?
[12:33]Yeah.
[12:34]It was a real huge escape for me.
[12:36]I loved to do magic tricks and to watch magic shows and to learn magic tricks.
[12:41]And while my brother who was incredibly, incredibly popular was out and about doing things
[12:47]and the captain of the lacrosse team and doing all of these things and I was kind of alone
[12:52]in my childhood basement pretending to be David Copperfield and doing magic tricks, also
[12:57]teaching myself to juggle.
[12:59]But who knows?
[13:00]In my case though, to circle back to your question, yeah, I hurt myself, which is a super
[13:05]common, right?
[13:06]People, not the way I hurt myself, which was doing a cartwheel to try to impress a woman
[13:11]whom I didn't even know.
[13:13]And in the marble lobby of an office building, I came crashing down and surely I made a great
[13:22]impression and ultimately needed to have back surgery.
[13:25]And now this is incredibly common, right?
[13:29]These drugs are prescribed and I think this has changed a little bit, right?
[13:34]So this was in the late 90s, right?
[13:40]These pharmaceutical companies, not that we need to get spent a lot of time on this, but
[13:45]they had sort of spent hundreds of millions of dollars marketing these drugs to the medical
[13:53]community and did falsely minimize the risk of addiction.
[14:01]So doctors were prescribing these drugs very freely.
[14:05]So it's not uncommon to hear about people that had some kind of injury and ultimately
[14:10]become addicted to drugs like this.
[14:13]My brother actually is a producer and he did a movie called Ben is Back with Julia Roberts
[14:18]and Lucas Hedges plays a character in the role, who literally had one small surgery and
[14:23]then it becomes like it's exactly what you're saying.
[14:25]So it takes.
[14:26]It's all it takes.
[14:27]There's a scene where she confronts basically the family of the doctor and this is your fault,
[14:33]like you ruined our whole lives.
[14:36]It's really powerful because the one, I don't know, it's just one misstep in life.
[14:41]It's like one little thing and then your life goes off in a whole different tangent.
[14:44]Listen, it's one car will go wrong.
[14:47]It's one, it's just crazy.
[14:50]And now here we are, right?
[14:52]And so I will say this, I have very few regrets and I incredibly grateful and I really
[15:02]believe that this was my path and that may seem a little sort of hokey or new agey.
[15:10]But like this is, I'm here today, I'm talking to you, I've had the opportunity to write
[15:14]this book, I'm a dad, I'm here because of all of this.
[15:20]So there's nothing I would go back and change, including the carwheel, I think.
[15:26]And you also talked a lot in the book about your relationship with food, which I feel like
[15:30]is more rare from, I mean, not to be gender stereotyping, but it's a little more rare.
[15:36]But it's a little more rare and so beautifully the way you talked about like tracking all
[15:41]the things that you would eat and how just terribly you were treating your body in terms
[15:44]of the types of food, the amounts of food, how you then felt about your body, like
[15:50]your clothes feeling tight and sort of your abuse of yet another substance along the
[15:55]way.
[15:56]In many ways, that's exactly what it was.
[15:58]I think as a child, I struggled with, maybe not as a child, but as a teenager, I struggled
[16:04]with my body.
[16:07]I was not overweight, but I was surrounded by this group of guys, friends, and I mentioned
[16:14]my brother who were athletes, they were in terrific shape.
[16:19]And I remember quite vividly one weekend, a group of friends and I was included in this
[16:25]group decided, let's see if we can make a little bit of money washing cars.
[16:30]And there were maybe four or five of us and everyone but me had their shirts, their shirt
[16:35]off.
[16:36]And I just never felt comfortable taking my shirt off.
[16:41]And ultimately, when I years later, when I developed this addiction, I started to eat
[16:48]in very sort of unusual and unhealthy ways.
[16:52]First of all, I was convinced that if I ate before I took the pills, it would minimize
[17:01]their effect.
[17:02]And I wanted like a maximum impact with respect to the high that I was getting.
[17:07]And so there was almost like intermittent fasting in some ways, you know, because I was like,
[17:13]you know what, if I'm going to take these pills in an hour and a half, then I should
[17:18]probably not eat now because I don't want to have a full stomach.
[17:23]So by the time I would take the pills, the high would kind of roll over me, I would
[17:30]be starving.
[17:32]And so I would eat lots of bagels with tons of carboloting, right?
[17:37]I was eating bagel on bagel on bagel on bagel on bagel on bagel.
[17:40]I was eating ice cream by the pint.
[17:43]I was eating tons of candy and twizzlers and things like that.
[17:48]Pop tarts, which I don't think I wrote about in the book.
[17:50]I was eating lots of pop tarts.
[17:52]It was unbelievably unhealthy.
[17:55]And as I write in the book, like that alone should have killed me for getting even the
[18:00]drugs.
[18:01]And I started to get heavy, you know, and self-conscious about that and not feeling comfortable
[18:10]about that and being in a job that had me, you know, like someone, I don't want to overstate
[18:16]this, but a somewhat public facing job, certainly within the media world.
[18:21]And it was tough, you know, and so I was feeding lots of things into my body and all of
[18:30]them were unhealthy.
[18:31]I was also smoking ton of cigarettes at the time.
[18:35]And yeah, it was, it was bad.
[18:38]Well, so tell me about the book part of this whole journey.
[18:42]When did you decide that you wanted to share this whole experience?
[18:46]How did this book come to be?
[18:48]What was the process like?
[18:49]Was it really emotional?
[18:50]Was it like just take me through the whole thing?
[18:54]You know, I think once I started to have a little bit of sobriety time, I was able
[19:00]to, you know, if you've ever been to, if anyone's ever been to a meeting of a 12-step
[19:07]program or any kind of group meeting where people are coming together to help each other deal
[19:14]with a common issue, doesn't have to be a 12-step program.
[19:18]You find that the stories that you hear as you go around the room are tragic and heartbreaking,
[19:25]but also sometimes really funny and relatable.
[19:30]And I started to realize that I had stories to tell.
[19:37]I actually, my initials sort of like thinking about the book was, was rooted in that
[19:44]Mike Tyson chapter because to me it embodied everything that had happened to me.
[19:53]And so I started talking about it a little bit with friends that have written, had written
[19:58]books.
[19:59]All right.
[20:00]hadn't kind of openly disclosed my status as an addict in recovery, and so I was still working
[20:08]at Conde and asked, but I was to people that I knew well and trusted. I was talking to them about
[20:13]it. And one friend who became my agent as who is in many Bill Kleg, who has also written about
[20:22]his struggle with addiction. That was a great book. Yeah, portrait of an addict as a young man was
[20:27]a really wonderful book. And so Bill was a friend and I started talking to him about it. And
[20:31]he's like, well, you know, put pen the paper, you know, and this is what people say, right? When
[20:36]this, you know, because I've had people come up to me and say, hey, I've been thinking about writing a
[20:40]book and really the only thing that you can say to someone when they say that to you, right? You have
[20:44]to start writing. Then that's awesome. Right. You know, and essentially that's what Bill had said to
[20:48]me. And I didn't, but I've been thinking about it. And then I, you know, I was away on a trip. I was actually in
[20:55]Tel Aviv. And I saw something that just triggered a very powerful childhood memory. And I was like,
[21:03]you know what? I need to start writing. And I just started writing for myself initially and
[21:08]send a couple of, you know, what turned out to be chapters to Bill. And he was said, hey,
[21:14]listen, maybe there's, I think there's something here, you know, so keep going. The writing process
[21:20]itself is excruciating. As I know you know, it was cathartic and challenging and fun and awful
[21:34]all wrapped into one. I remember many years ago seeing a 60 minutes interview with Paul Simon.
[21:44]I think it was the late great Ed Bradley doing the interview. And he was talking to Paul Simon
[21:51]about his process when writing a new song. And if memory serves, and I hope I'm not getting this
[21:58]wrong, Paul Simon talked about bouncing a ball. Maybe it was a rubber ball. Maybe it was a tennis
[22:04]ball. I don't know that it matters. Just off the wall, bouncing it, catching it, bouncing it,
[22:09]catching it, bouncing it, catching it, catching it. And this was part of his process. And I remember
[22:12]that striking me as being so weird. You know, I now completely understand that because for me,
[22:19]the writing process was a lot of making the kids beds and doing the laundry and cooking for my kids.
[22:28]And, you know, my house was spotless. I was constantly just moving around and cleaning.
[22:34]So much of the writing process for me had nothing to do with writing. It was just sort of turning
[22:40]it over my head, figuring out what's the best way to tell this story. And to really make sure
[22:44]that I was being honest. And by that, I don't mean not lying, but just like, am I telling this
[22:53]in the truest sense possible? And I'm trying to understand like, what was motivating me here? What
[22:59]was I really thinking? What did this mean? There's a part in the book where I go to an addiction
[23:06]specialist, Dr. Ron. And I was weepy and I was tired and I was done. And I was basically at his
[23:14]mercy. And I was essentially begging him to help me. And he was incredibly kind and did all that he
[23:21]could to help me. But I, you know, when I look at it now and when I looked at it as I was writing,
[23:26]I wondered like, well, was I just trying to con him because I was out of drugs and he was going to give
[23:32]me something to help mitigate the withdrawal symptoms until I could get more drugs. And if I'm being
[23:40]really honest, I think maybe that's what it was. I know that I wanted to stop. I know that I needed
[23:46]to stop for sure. And I knew that I was slowly dying, you know, that I was slowly killing myself.
[23:52]But the addiction is really powerful, you know, and I wanted to keep going also.
[24:01]So I had to search for these truths through this process. But listen, writing is hard, you know,
[24:08]and I've had a lot of friends who have published books over the years and I consulted many of them
[24:16]during this process. And pretty much all of them said the same thing, which was sit down and write.
[24:24]And that's easier said than done.
[24:27]Sure, you're right. Having gotten this out there, do you have any, like, I know you said you've
[24:32]no regrets about anything. Do you feel like it's out there to help other people? Like, was your
[24:37]motivation? Like, I want to get my story out there to heal myself or is it I want to help other
[24:42]people who might be struggling or I want to help people who love people who are struggling?
[24:47]You know, listen, of course, I think it's a little bit of all of it. You know, I think
[24:52]the idea of helping people in the way that I was helped by reading other people's
[25:02]accounts of their own attempts to get sober and ultimate recoveries was incredibly important to me,
[25:09]right? If I can show that there's hope, right? If I can show that that all is not a loss,
[25:18]that there's a way through this, then that's that's great. And that's that's a number one
[25:25]priority, right? I also wanted to just tell the story, you know, I think I had entertaining
[25:34]stories to tell. And I tried to make the book lighter, you know, listen, this is like a very
[25:41]heavy subject, right? And I think that there are parts of the book that that can feel heavy. But I
[25:47]also tried to bring lightness and humor and a levity to it because that's who who I am. And so
[25:54]I had experiences, you know, my, my editor at HarperCollins said to me, she said, God, you know,
[26:02]your mom comes off as like a stereotypical Jewish mom, you know, should we, should you maybe
[26:11]contextualize her a little bit? I'm like, hey, guess what? Like, my mom is a stereotypical
[26:17]Jewish mom, you know, and so showing little elements of what my life was like and and trying to
[26:26]bring some humor and levity to such a profoundly serious subject was important to me. But I also
[26:34]enjoy storytelling, you know, and wanted to just see try my hand at it. And so what's what's coming
[26:41]next? Do you have another book that's brewing in you? Are you, are you doing still editing like
[26:47]full time on a daily basis? Not right now. No. And so I'm doing some consulting and and likely,
[26:55]you know, sort of end up back in a regular editing position. I absolutely want to write again,
[27:01]I miss it. I've started making some notes and some ideas. And we'll see, there's a couple of
[27:06]things that I'm playing with. I'd like to stay in the sort of nonfiction memoir genre or area,
[27:16]but I'm most definitely interested in writing again. I obviously am a man. I've never had children,
[27:26]I've never birthed children. I have three children, but I certainly didn't carry them, obviously.
[27:31]So I've heard over the years women that have gone through pregnancies, say,
[27:38]oh, the sort of like hell of childbirth. I'm never doing that again. And then it's sort of,
[27:45]you know, a year later or however long later, you know, the same women were like, of course,
[27:51]I want to have more kids. And so for me, the writing of the book was really intense and brutal
[27:58]at times and awful at times. And I was pulling what little hair I have left out of my head.
[28:05]But now on the other side of that, I can say to you, you know, yeah, my God, I absolutely want to do
[28:12]that again. It was just incredible and amazing. And I'm really excited about this.
[28:18]Yeah. Well, as a reader, I didn't want it to end. I want to like, what next? Like, what happened next?
[28:23]Anyway, so I will be eagerly waiting for a part two if that ever comes.
[28:28]I think it might come. I think it might come. I will say, though, because you're right, the book
[28:33]ends when I have 92 days of sobriety and my oldest son is born. So I will say, and I think it's
[28:42]important to say that this is a sobriety and recovery or hard. It is day at a time as the sort of
[28:52]trite and cliched saying goes, but I have been sober since then. And it has been a lot of work.
[29:00]And I have had an extraordinary support network blossom around me, people that I never thought I would
[29:08]connect with. I have really beautiful friendships with. And addiction is awful. It is
[29:16]opiate addiction specifically, but all forms of addiction. It is the great equalizer. If it can
[29:24]get to me, New York media executive, if it can wipe out towns in the rust belt and everyone in between,
[29:34]it is brutal and merciless and it knows no bounds. So it's important for me to say that I
[29:42]am doing it a day at a time for the last 12 plus years. And there is hope. There is a light at the
[29:52]end of the tunnel for people that want to stop and reclaim their lives. And I just want to throw out
[29:59]this crate.
[30:00]I know I've called a week connect which really helps with the recovery process and helping
[30:04]people maintain their sobriety and it's a really fantastic app and it should, if anyone
[30:10]wants more help, look into a week connect.
[30:13]Yeah, and that's wonderful.
[30:14]I think where we have to go now is focusing more on recovery, more on education.
[30:24]It's one thing to try to get these to stop the boom of these drugs to slow that down.
[30:32]And that's starting to happen, I think there have been some fairly high profile settlements
[30:38]coming from Johnson, Johnson and Purdue and others.
[30:43]But the real focus needs to be on education and recovery and providing treatment options
[30:51]and recovery options.
[30:52]For people, I had the good fortune of being in New York City.
[30:56]I also had the good fortune of being able to afford whatever I needed.
[31:01]That's not the case for most of this country.
[31:04]So I don't know we connect but based on the description or any other place, there are any
[31:11]other sort of things that can help people connect to other people in recovery is incredibly
[31:18]incredibly important, you know, because it's one thing to stop doing something, in
[31:25]my case, taking pills, it's another thing to stay stopped and connections with other
[31:32]people that are going through the same thing will really help you stay stopped.
[31:38]That's amazing.
[31:39]Well, Dan, thank you so much for sharing your story for this amazing book and for coming
[31:45]on this show.
[31:46]Thank you so much for having me.
[31:47]I really appreciate it.
[31:48]My pleasure.
[31:49]You've been listening to Moms don't have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[31:53]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com to get more updates about
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[32:00]Thanks so much to Claire Maiser and Eric Osrullo and their amazing podcast, A Thing or Two,
[32:06]which you should definitely check out.
[32:08]You can follow me on Instagram at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:12]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[32:16]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[32:20]trim music.
[32:21]Thanks for listening.
[32:22]You can always email me at zibiadzibiowens.com.