Finding Ultra by Rich Roll Page A

that moment on, I belonged to Skip.
I was his boy
. Sure, he was demanding. He expected much from me. But behind the intimidating mask, there was a devoted family man and a mentor who pushed me hard. Most important, when I eventually struggled through the most difficult time in my life, he stood steadfastly by me.
    Outside the office, there was one thing I learned quickly. When it comes to drinking and driving, Los Angeles doesn’t screw around. From the moment I started getting wasted at eighteen, I’d been pulled over by the police for suspicion of drunk driving no fewer than nine times. It seems like a lot. But when you consider how much I drove while inebriated, I should have been pulled over far more often than I was. Either that or maimed, dead, or responsible for someone else’s maiming or death. Yet each and every time thered and blue flashed in my rearview, I somehow managed to wiggle free without arrest. Sometimes it was fast-talking. Other times, just blind luck. I prefer to believe something outside myself was looking out for me—call it God, my Higher Power, my Guardian Angels, or the Universe. The label matters little.
    But my luck was about to finally run out.
    It was a particularly warm October evening when I began to detect that all too familiar sense of restlessness starting to throw me off my already precarious sense of balance. As the eerie, hot Santa Ana winds blew wide through the open windows of my apartment, I could feel my dormant demon stir.
I should go to bed
, I thought.
I have a lot of work tomorrow
.
    Minutes later, though, I was wending my way through the urban morass from Westwood to Hollywood, a tumbler of vodka between my legs. With the music blaring, I was firmly saddled in that sweet spot of distorted perception where everything finally makes sense.
I was in the groove
. Several nightspot stops later—and after further fortification from beer, vodka, and shots of Jagermeister—I was doing a liquid fade into beautiful oblivion. That’s when it happened.
    Bam!
My next memory was the sound of crushing metal, cracking plastic, and a broken horn. Somehow, I’d just decimated the rear end of a small sedan.
Shit
. It took less than two minutes for the cops to arrive, but only seconds for them to haul my goose limbs out of the car and handcuff me to the bus stop bench on the corner. In L.A., the cops don’t mess around. If you get pulled over, the assumption is
always
that the car is stolen, there’s a warrant out for your arrest, you have a shotgun under the seat, and you’re high on crack. And until proven otherwise, you’re treated accordingly. In my case, harsh treatment was warranted. On the Breathalyzer, I blew a 0.29 percent—more than three and a half times the legal limit. Most people would be passed out at this level. In fact,anything above 0.30 percent is considered lethal. But drive a car? Not just a bad idea, but close to impossible.
    I was uninjured. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the elderly woman I rear-ended. She was taken to the hospital and ultimately suffered from severe whiplash and chronic neck and back problems. I wish I could say that the moment caused my heart to swell with shame, remorse, and compassion. But mostly what I felt was the fear that comes from contemplating going to prison—that and the painful pinch of the steel handcuffs that were cutting off blood supply to my hands. I spent the better part of the night in jail before my allotted phone call roused Adam Glick—my friend and former Skadden office mate now working as an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. He was kind enough to come to my rescue, post bail, and get me home in one piece, just as the sun began to rise.
    A day of reckoning? Not so fast. A scare, for sure. But a failure when it came to modifying my ways.
Everyone gets a DUI
, I told myself.
What’s the big deal?
I gave little thought to the condition of the poor woman I