James Frey caused a national sensation when it was discovered that his memoir of addiction, A Million Little Pieces, did not contain unadulterated truth. The fracas raised a strange debate over how pure we want our drug literature to be. Patrick Moore slyly preempts the discussion of integrity in his own addiction memoir titled Tweaked by writing, “So much of what I say is a lie. I’ve been lying for so long, in so many subtle ways, that sometimes I don’t know the truth. It’s not that I even mean to lie. It’s my nature as a tweaker.” Tweak is the slang term for crystal methamphetamine and so its users are called tweakers. But Moore utilizes the term even more cleverly by also associating it with the act of writing, which often involves tweaking the truth.
Moore is an Iowa farm kid who first started getting drunk and high as a teenager. He follows the long white powder lines to New York and Los Angeles. His book is a lucid confessional confiding as much about anonymous gay sex as about drug use. According to Moore, each behavior fueled the other until he was unable to distinguish between his addictions. He writes, “It is said that, for addicts, drugs are cunning, baffling, and powerful. Crystal is all that and cheap as well. Crystal first finds a way to fix all of the problems that we have and then, when it has made itself indispensable, reveals its true self.”
Moore effectively captures the eclectic screwiness of Los Angeles and paints it as a particularly lush fantasyland for meth-induced paranoia. He even finds the rehab meetings held in various environs of Los Angeles to be endlessly entertaining. Meetings in the Palisades were filled with celebrity sightings and a mournful seriousness. Santa Monica and Venice meetings buzzed with hot young straight alcoholics as well as burned-out former hippies transformed into movie producers. Housewives in furs and diamonds populated Beverly Hills [meetings]. Silverlake and Los Feliz mixed leather men with artists and writers. And West Hollywood meetings were filled with show biz queens who knew how to put on a show. I loved it all. Whereas going to meetings in New York had been depressing, Los Angeles was a huge treasure hunt.”
As intently as he chases a high, Moore also seeks curatives. Some of the so-called solutions sound as scarring as the addiction itself. He finds that one of the more sensible and restorative routines is to simply take a walk along the westside beach pier, admire the sunset and feel like being at the center of the universe.
Moore concludes his book with a particularly rough guide to the perpetual precipice of freefall that all addicts tread. It is all the more disturbing when considered in the context of yet another confession revealed earlier: “I have this problem. I can confess to anything but it doesn’t affect me. I have the ability to tell the truth while, internally, making it feel like fiction.” If his writing ability is a type of Faustian trade-off of success bestowed in exchange for a life of degradation, then we can only wish Mr. Moore less talent and more peace. As alarming as his demons are to read about, he does not have to persist indulging in order to entertain us. The price is too high.
Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir
By Patrick Moore
Kensington Books, 215 pages, $15 paperback
