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NW Top Story: Inside Hollywood's secret drug parties
http://ninemsn.com.au/NW/info2.asp?blipid=7707
Los Angeles
Picture the scene - models, pop stars and Hollywood actors in an exclusive private club. The champagne's flowing and the A-list are crowded around a table filled with a huge ornate bowl, taking turns to sample its wares.
Incredibly this is not a film clip, but a cocaine-fuelled reality which takes place every week in LA.
For a while, the traditional cocaine bowl at Hollywood parties was relegated to smaller, private rooms. But now it's back in its pride of place, filled with thousands of dollars worth of the class A drug.
Due to the prevalence of paparazzi and other prying eyes, stars tend to indulge mainly at private parties or at smaller bars - such as the snooty Whisky Bar or the impossible-to-get-into strip club Forty Deuce. "There isn't as much of a drug problem in the big Hollywood nightclubs these days," reveals a source. "Incidents like River Phoenix's death and Jason Donovan's collapse at the Viper Room seem things of the past - probably because drugs are more widely available elsewhere. Especially at those A-list parties at mansions in the Hollywood Hills."
And to guarantee pleasing their greedy guests, the celebrity hosts of these parties know they need an abundant supply of drugs available. And with most dealers delivering to the stars' door (or to the door of their manager or publicist) and travelling with a wide variety of illicit drugs in their stash, it's easily achieved.
One notorious supplier who works the Hollywood scene has a series of display suitcases, one for each type of drug - heroin, speed, crystal, cocaine, marijuana, mushrooms, 'exotics' such as opium, peyote and prescription drugs. These suitcases also feature scales, measuring tools and free samples ready to be taken by any interested celeb. All it takes is a quick call to one of these dealers and the star's drug of choice will be couriered to them within a half hour.
One partygoer recalls how a bash at a Hollywood mansion, belonging to a balding star, was transformed after such a visit.
"He was literally bouncing around on a space hopper for the next hour. He took a couple of ecstasy pills and literally changed in less than an hour."
There are also tales of hedonistic sex parties, involving top class prostitutes and a gaggle of famous male actors, including most infamously Charlie Sheen. It looks like there is a heir to the Sheen throne with one of Hollywood's golden boys fast developing a reputation for his bad boy ways.
He has such a taste for drugs and sex that he will often offer one for the other - in either order and with either sex. At exclusive parties he will entice women and men into bed by getting them loaded on coke and pills. If he's out of drugs, then he will offer sex in return for a hit.
It is this easy accessibility that has caused the downfall of many a star. Point in case is actor Ed Furlong. The Terminator 2 star started with the so-called 'party drugs' such as cocaine and ecstasy, 25-year-old Furlong then descended into a heroin habit that saw him struck of all the top guest lists because of his erratic behaviour and frightening appearance. It left him jobless, frighteningly gaunt and broke (he admitted to spending a whopping $3.5 million on drugs). When he lost the central role in Terminator 3 he spiralled even deeper in drugs," says a friend of the star. He goes on to describe how Furlong collapsed at a friends house in Malibu at the end of one marathon party night in September last year at which the star spent close to $100,000 on drugs. And while some stars publicly blame the pressures of fame for their drug problems, a pal of notorious narcotic abuser Robert Downey Jnr, summed up the more common truth when he said of his pal from the teenage years "I don't think it was the pressure that drove him to use. He doesn't have any pressure, he just parties."
These tales of excess lifestyles are legendary and sadly too common. One reason for Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley's recent divorce was his fear that his wife would return to her wild party ways. During her peak cocaine use, it was not unusual for Lisa Marie to party for up to 72 hours straight. "This one night I had been up for three days," she recalls. "I was high on cocaine and I had some more. It was either do it or go to sleep."
And the list goes on, with one blonde TV actress abusing cocaine so massively that every weekend she'd inevitably show up at the hottest party or club one dress size smaller than the week before, seeing her shrink from a curvy size 12 to a skeletal size 4, She thought nothing of doing coke in the middle of a party, regardless of who was present. She soon lost her bubbly character and was renowned for her clenched jaws and her fiery, violent temper. But the sad fact is that many female stars and models are attracted to cocaine even more due to the dramatic - yet highly dangerous - weight loss it promotes.
One infamous and tiny model was so out of her head on cocaine that she had sex with her actor boyfriend overlooking a bar through a two-way mirror, and didn't seem to mind who stumbled across them in the act.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg with the stars search for new highs leading them to experiment with cocktails of various prescription pills. The new kid on the block is Vicodin. "The hottest drug in Hollywood right now is not hard stuff like heroin but a pain-killer... Vicodin. Its celebrity associations have made it the hottest drug in Hollywood," asserts a film industry insider.
A narcotic pain-killer, Vicodin basically makes you drowsy and numb. But for party purposes Vic, as it is commonly known, is combined with alcohol leaving the star "buzzing" and typically 'out of it'. Matthew Perry says his addiction to the drug got so bad "I was scared for my survival". Vicodin was just one of the pharmaceuticals found in Winona Ryder's bag. Another was prescription drug OxyContin (or Oxycodone), known on the scene as 'poor man's heroin', it is also now widely used at the hottest Hollywood parties.
Find out about the illicit party scene in:
* London
* Sydney
Plus updates on the bad habits of Winona Ryder, Anna Nicole Smith and Karen Mulder.
All in this week's NW magazine
http://ninemsn.com.au/NW/info2.asp?blipid=7707
Los Angeles
Picture the scene - models, pop stars and Hollywood actors in an exclusive private club. The champagne's flowing and the A-list are crowded around a table filled with a huge ornate bowl, taking turns to sample its wares.
Incredibly this is not a film clip, but a cocaine-fuelled reality which takes place every week in LA.
For a while, the traditional cocaine bowl at Hollywood parties was relegated to smaller, private rooms. But now it's back in its pride of place, filled with thousands of dollars worth of the class A drug.
Due to the prevalence of paparazzi and other prying eyes, stars tend to indulge mainly at private parties or at smaller bars - such as the snooty Whisky Bar or the impossible-to-get-into strip club Forty Deuce. "There isn't as much of a drug problem in the big Hollywood nightclubs these days," reveals a source. "Incidents like River Phoenix's death and Jason Donovan's collapse at the Viper Room seem things of the past - probably because drugs are more widely available elsewhere. Especially at those A-list parties at mansions in the Hollywood Hills."
And to guarantee pleasing their greedy guests, the celebrity hosts of these parties know they need an abundant supply of drugs available. And with most dealers delivering to the stars' door (or to the door of their manager or publicist) and travelling with a wide variety of illicit drugs in their stash, it's easily achieved.
One notorious supplier who works the Hollywood scene has a series of display suitcases, one for each type of drug - heroin, speed, crystal, cocaine, marijuana, mushrooms, 'exotics' such as opium, peyote and prescription drugs. These suitcases also feature scales, measuring tools and free samples ready to be taken by any interested celeb. All it takes is a quick call to one of these dealers and the star's drug of choice will be couriered to them within a half hour.
One partygoer recalls how a bash at a Hollywood mansion, belonging to a balding star, was transformed after such a visit.
"He was literally bouncing around on a space hopper for the next hour. He took a couple of ecstasy pills and literally changed in less than an hour."
There are also tales of hedonistic sex parties, involving top class prostitutes and a gaggle of famous male actors, including most infamously Charlie Sheen. It looks like there is a heir to the Sheen throne with one of Hollywood's golden boys fast developing a reputation for his bad boy ways.
He has such a taste for drugs and sex that he will often offer one for the other - in either order and with either sex. At exclusive parties he will entice women and men into bed by getting them loaded on coke and pills. If he's out of drugs, then he will offer sex in return for a hit.
It is this easy accessibility that has caused the downfall of many a star. Point in case is actor Ed Furlong. The Terminator 2 star started with the so-called 'party drugs' such as cocaine and ecstasy, 25-year-old Furlong then descended into a heroin habit that saw him struck of all the top guest lists because of his erratic behaviour and frightening appearance. It left him jobless, frighteningly gaunt and broke (he admitted to spending a whopping $3.5 million on drugs). When he lost the central role in Terminator 3 he spiralled even deeper in drugs," says a friend of the star. He goes on to describe how Furlong collapsed at a friends house in Malibu at the end of one marathon party night in September last year at which the star spent close to $100,000 on drugs. And while some stars publicly blame the pressures of fame for their drug problems, a pal of notorious narcotic abuser Robert Downey Jnr, summed up the more common truth when he said of his pal from the teenage years "I don't think it was the pressure that drove him to use. He doesn't have any pressure, he just parties."
These tales of excess lifestyles are legendary and sadly too common. One reason for Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley's recent divorce was his fear that his wife would return to her wild party ways. During her peak cocaine use, it was not unusual for Lisa Marie to party for up to 72 hours straight. "This one night I had been up for three days," she recalls. "I was high on cocaine and I had some more. It was either do it or go to sleep."
And the list goes on, with one blonde TV actress abusing cocaine so massively that every weekend she'd inevitably show up at the hottest party or club one dress size smaller than the week before, seeing her shrink from a curvy size 12 to a skeletal size 4, She thought nothing of doing coke in the middle of a party, regardless of who was present. She soon lost her bubbly character and was renowned for her clenched jaws and her fiery, violent temper. But the sad fact is that many female stars and models are attracted to cocaine even more due to the dramatic - yet highly dangerous - weight loss it promotes.
One infamous and tiny model was so out of her head on cocaine that she had sex with her actor boyfriend overlooking a bar through a two-way mirror, and didn't seem to mind who stumbled across them in the act.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg with the stars search for new highs leading them to experiment with cocktails of various prescription pills. The new kid on the block is Vicodin. "The hottest drug in Hollywood right now is not hard stuff like heroin but a pain-killer... Vicodin. Its celebrity associations have made it the hottest drug in Hollywood," asserts a film industry insider.
A narcotic pain-killer, Vicodin basically makes you drowsy and numb. But for party purposes Vic, as it is commonly known, is combined with alcohol leaving the star "buzzing" and typically 'out of it'. Matthew Perry says his addiction to the drug got so bad "I was scared for my survival". Vicodin was just one of the pharmaceuticals found in Winona Ryder's bag. Another was prescription drug OxyContin (or Oxycodone), known on the scene as 'poor man's heroin', it is also now widely used at the hottest Hollywood parties.
Find out about the illicit party scene in:
* London
* Sydney
Plus updates on the bad habits of Winona Ryder, Anna Nicole Smith and Karen Mulder.
All in this week's NW magazine
