Alice Cooper Finds Sobriety in Christ

I sat in the back of the station wagon that night with the windows cracked against the heat still rising off the asphalt. Alice had finished the last takes on DaDa two weeks earlier and the studio smelled like stale tape and cigarettes. He kept a bottle in the console between the seats. When we pulled up to the hospital entrance in White Plains he didn’t reach for it. His hands stayed on his knees.

Shep Gordon had already called ahead. Sheryl met us at the door wearing the same coat she’d worn on the last tour. She didn’t raise her voice. She just said the words they had rehearsed in the kitchen that afternoon. Alice looked at the floor and nodded once. The admitting nurse took his name and weight and asked if he had insurance. He answered every question in the same flat tone he used to sign autographs.

They put him on the third floor in a room that faced the parking lot. The first night the shakes started after midnight. I stayed in the chair by the window because the bed was narrow and the rails kept him from rolling. Around three he asked for water. When the nurse brought it he drank half and set the cup on the table without spilling any. That small steadiness surprised both of us.

By the second morning the doctors had run the blood work twice. The liver numbers were worse than they expected. One resident told me in the hallway that another week of the same drinking would have finished the job. Alice heard the report without comment. He asked only whether they could keep the television off. The screen showed old concert footage from the 1977 tour and he didn’t want to watch himself.

On the third day he asked for a Bible. The hospital had a small cart in the lobby. I brought one back and left it on the nightstand. He opened it after lunch and read without speaking. When the nurse came to check his pulse he kept one finger on the page. That evening he told the doctor he wanted no visitors except Sheryl and Shep. The staff put a note on the door.

The fourth morning the shakes had eased. He walked the length of the hallway twice before breakfast. A man in the next room recognized the name on the chart and asked for an autograph. Alice signed a paper towel and handed it back without looking up. Later he told me the other patients treated him like anyone else because most of them believed they were already dead. That fact seemed to settle something in him.

He stopped asking for the call button after the fifth night. The craving that had lived behind his ribs for years simply wasn’t there when he reached for it. The doctor who had treated him in 1977 came by on a consult and stared at the latest labs. He said the numbers didn’t match the history. Alice answered that God had taken the desire away. The doctor wrote the phrase down and underlined it.

Sheryl came every afternoon. She brought clean shirts and sat with him while he read. On the seventh day she told him the divorce papers were still in her drawer at home. She hadn’t filed yet. He nodded and asked if she would wait until he finished the book he was on. She said she would.

They released him on a Tuesday in late September. The discharge papers listed the diagnosis as cirrhosis with complications and noted the patient’s claim of sudden cessation. Alice folded the papers once and put them in his jacket. Outside the building he stood for a minute under the awning and looked at the sky the way a man checks the weather before a long drive.