Hoping her story would amount to more than Cliffs Notes about her relationship with Scott Weiland, I picked up a copy of Mary Forsberg Weiland’s Fall to Pieces in an attempt to gain some insight into why he just couldn’t stay clean. Certainly his memoir left me with more questions than answers.
The Weilands met when Mary was not of legal age – she was an up-and-coming model who emancipated herself so that she could travel the world for work – and he was still an unknown musician assigned to drive her to appointments. A relatively innocent time for both of them, but that didn’t last long. Success came along and you know how that story goes . . . but in case you don’t . . .
They fell in love and they fell deep into drug use, with speedballs (heroin and cocaine) being their drug of choice. Of course, there was alcohol, pills, anything else they could get their hands on. And getting their hands on anything wasn’t all that difficult as they were both wildly successful by the time they crashed into each other in every way possible.
Countless attempts at rehab didn’t stick. Life without drugs seemed impossible.Their insatiable need for chemicals was so intertwined with their need for each other that it’s no surprise sobriety eluded the Weilands. Someone should have pulled the plug on their coupledom long before they pulled it on each other.
Well, that didn’t happen, but Mary eventually dropped the needle, they married, had children, and Scott continued through cycles of sobriety/insobriety. Mary was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, something bandied about in rehab, but not taken seriously until she had a major manic episode after getting clean. Eventually, finally, she and Scott divorced. And in December, he fatally overdosed.
After his death, Mary wrote a scathing letter to Rolling Stone about Scott’s absence from the lives of his children and the enabling environment of rock-and-roll. Last week, she filed papers that show she should be named the executor of Scott’s will. Sounds like she wants to be sure the children are taken care of financially, but many are questioning her intentions.
The answers to my questions . . . still don’t have them. While Mary was able to pick up those fallen pieces, Scott was not. Addiction is a complicated, messy thing, just like the story of these two.
