A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll,
and Mental Illness
Mary Forsberg Weiland
with Larkin Warren
In March 2007,
twenty-four hours after Mary Weiland
dragged her husband Scott's pricey
rock-star wardrobe onto their
driveway and torched it, she was
locked up in a mental hospital.
Watching all this were her
frightened extended family, a
conflicted husband wrestling with
demons of his own, and a tabloid
industry gone gleeful at the
"Bonfire in Toluca Lake!"
To the outside world, Weiland had
led what seemed to be an enviable
life. A successful international
model in the nineties, she married
her longtime sweetheart—famed lead
singer of Stone Temple Pilots and,
later, Velvet Revolver, Scott
Weiland—in 2000. Mary was the sane
one, went the story—it was the
tempestuous, unpredictable Scott who
was crazy. In her gripping memoir
Fall to Pieces, Mary Weiland reveals
that the truth is somewhere in
between.
From her earliest days in San Diego,
Weiland displayed signs of trouble:
a black depression that sometimes
left her immobile for days, a temper
that sent her into wild rages she
didn't understand, an overdose. But
her fierce determination to "have
more" led to early success as a
model. At sixteen, she fell in love
at first sight with Scott Weiland,
then an aspiring musician who was
hired to drive her to and from
modeling gigs. Slowly, her casual
relationship with beer and pot grew
into an affair with cocaine and
heroin that rivaled her love for
Scott, who was addicted as well.
From rehab to rehab, from breakup to
reconciliation to eventual marriage,
the couple fought their way back,
welcomed the babies they'd dreamed
of, and hoped their struggles were
behind them. Then came the bonfire
breakdown and the full onset of
Mary's bipolar disorder, a widely
misunderstood and misdiagnosed
mental illness that affects more
than five million Americans and had
been, in fact, stalking Mary Weiland
since her teens.
With refreshing candor, innate comic
timing, and earned wisdom, Weiland
recounts the extreme highs and lows
of her life, including an
unforgettable love affair with the
man she always knew she'd marry, the
careers and rock tours that took
them around the world, and her fight
to finally come to grips with the
addictions that could have killed
her. In her journey to understand
and manage her bipolar disorder, she
takes the reader on a wild ride into
the dark and back into the light.
Reviews:
"Fall to Pieces is a brutally
honest and compelling account of
Mary Weiland’s struggles with
addiction and mental illness that
will have you on the edge of your
seat with every turn of the
page…Brave, bold and unfiltered,
Mary's writing injects humor and
levity in a way that is both
entertaining and necessary, while
keeping the focus on the extremely
serious and life threatening
behaviors that she confronts."
—Dave Navarro, guitarist of
Jane’s Addiction and formerly Red
Hot Chili Peppers
"Mary Weiland's beautifully crafted
memoir takes the reader through the
journey that is so very common
today, the slow drift into addiction
and mental illness. Fall to
Pieces is perhaps the most vivid
rendition of this experience I have
ever come across. Honest, clear, and
accurate, Mary takes us into the
reality of a world that is idealized
in the tabloids.”
—Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of
“Loveline” and “Celebrity Rehab with
Dr. Drew,” author of The Mirror
Effect and Cracked
"Mary Weiland describes the depths
of madness and addiction with
surprising clarity. Fall to
Pieces is a wild, gripping story
told with intense emotional
honesty."
—Terri Cheney, New York Times
bestselling author of Manic
"Weiland's lively, vernacular memoir
tells the sadly wasted but
ultimately self-directed tale of her
meteoric rise as a model from
impoverished, half-Mexican roots to
a precipitous plunge into drug
addiction. Growing up in a broken
Southern California home in the
1980s, where she lived mostly with
her working Mexican mother in near
poverty, the author, née Forsberg,
found autonomy and financial
independence early on in modeling;
by age 14 she was a finalist for a
Seventeen magazine modeling contest
and traveling to New York; by 16,
she had quit school, been legally
“emancipated” and booked overseas
jobs. She also became infatuated
with aspiring rock and roller Scott
Weiland, who was briefly her driver,
and as he became hugely successful
with his band, Stone Temple Pilots,
he slid into heroin addiction and
dragged her along with him. He was
also involved with another woman,
and the author's account is a
painful re-enactment of her youthful
abasement. From partying scene to
junkie desperation to psychiatrist's
office, jail and rehab, Forsberg
Weiland battled her demons, learning
with some surprise that she suffered
from bipolar disorder. Having two
children with Scott turned her
around, though her marriage crumbled
when he didn't change. Weiland's
forthright, resilient can-do spirit
injects this sad story with a
healthy moral." (Dec.)
—Publishers Weekly
About the Author:
Mary Forsberg Weiland
lives with her two children in Los
Angeles, where she is studying for
her certification in drug and
alcohol counseling, with a focus on
co-occurring disorders. This is her
first book.
A former editor at Esquire,
Lear’s, and Good
Housekeeping magazines,
Larkin Warren was a contributing
writer to Addiction: Why Can’t
They Just Stop?, the companion
book HBO’s documentary of same name.
