The Daily Beast looks at Hollywood's drug problem

By Nancy Tartaglione

The Daily Beast today takes a look at Hollywood's drug problem. Chris Gardner, a former Hollywood Reporter, People magazine and Variety staffer provides TDB with insight into the dark underground of partying with celebrities while law enforcement officials talk about the increase in prescription drug abuse. Following are excerpts from the piece.

For Gardner, drugs were easy to handle in the beginning. And the first few years in L.A. were golden. By 2004, he was writing a nightlife column for People magazine, a job that required him to buddy up to hot female celebs and which carried both a deep expense account and flexible hours. Most days, after partying in the Hollywood Hills and hanging out at local hot spots, the gossip reporter would roll into the office around noon. Unknown to the magazine's editors, Gardner's nights were, by now, fueled by drugs.

"There's a lot of people who want to party with someone famous," Gardner tells TBD. "I wasn't rich by any means. But I always had it. I think people recognized me as a party boy. There were several famous names who would ask me to take them to the bathroom."

"There was no doubt Chris was living the life he was reporting on," Todd Gold, the former managing editor of People, tells TDB. "With the kind of reporting he did, he was trading in gossip. You have to go out and assume the role of friend, or confidante, or party companion, or wiling cohort."

Gold continues, "The way the gossip world is practiced - the editor and reporters are, in a sense, enablers. You want someone young and eager [who] is willing to participate. And as glitzy and glamorous as it can be, it has its dark side, and it can take its toll, like it did on Chris. It's easy to cross the line, and you are no longer an observer and a gatherer of facts. You've become a participant."

Gardner says he socialized, partied with "and did cocaine with dozens and dozens of actors." Not all were A-listers, he says, and not all were actors. "I also partied with producers, studio executives, agents, managers, studio publicists, personal publicists and fashion professionals. And many times, my drug use got me access to people I never would've had the opportunity to hang out with otherwise."

Gardner says he spent as much as $1,000 a week on drugs, to provide for himself and for others.

"A celebrity friend would call and say 'come here and bring me this stuff.' And I would," he says. "Celebrities don't want to be the one to do it. They [don't] want to have to deal with the dealer."

In 2005, Gardner was pulled over by police on Rodeo Drive and put in jail for a traffic violation which resulted in his missing People's Emmy party that year. "It's not every weekend a gossip columnist is arrested and put in jail on Emmy weekend," he tells TDB. "At the time, it was such an embarrassment."

People fired Gardner and Daily Variety picked him up the same week. Unable to rid himself of his cocaine habit, he recounts, Peter Bart eventually "left a note on my desk saying, 'This ain't working.'"

Gardner ultimately packed up and drove back home to Iowa. "I didn't feel like a good person anymore," he tells TDB. Gardner is now one year sober and still in Iowa. He is writing a book about his time in Hollywood.

On the flipside, TDB looks at the drug problem from a different perspective:

Dr. David Sack, CEO of the drug rehab center Promises, tells TDB that prescription drug abuse has increased dramatically over the years. "Twenty years ago we saw many people who had alcohol as their only drug," he says. "Now we see many more people abusing multiple drugs. They are harder to treat."

Prescription drug overdose is the second biggest killer of teenagers after alcohol, John Niedermann, the LA County Deputy District Attorney, tells TDB.

According to TDB, authorities say prescription-happy doctors who feed the appetite for prescription drugs are also a problem. Sarah Simpson, an agent with the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, tells the site that in San Diego County alone she has made over 100 prescription drug busts a year since 2000, of which roughly 10 to 15% involve licensed medical professionals.

"We have definitely increased these investigations [and] there'll be more prosecutions of these crimes in the future," says Niedermann.