Rebounder: Mackenzie Phillips on Wellness, Loss, and Love
(This article was first published in Long Island Woman magazine, Aug. 2017)
by David Lefkowitz
It’s hard to find a more cautionary tale about the evils of drugs and alcohol than the life of Mackenzie Phillips—a movie actress at 13, a TV star by 15, and a death-spiraling junkie for years after that. Add to that an alcoholic mother and a genius dad who squandered his wealth and talent, and you’ve got a recipe for a tragic waste of life.
Except that’s not the end of the story, of course. After her troubled years on One Day at a Time and seemingly innocuous stretch as a singer backing up her father, John Phillips, in the re-formed Mamas and the Papas, Mackenzie finally got clean and sober. Sporadic TV work followed, including three seasons of the Disney show, So Weird, and guest spots on Norman Lear’s current reboot of One Day. More importantly, the woman who spent so many years staring down drugs, alcohol, incest, and overdoses, now has a shocking day job: she’s a primary counselor at Breathe Life Healing Centers, a treatment facility for addicts seeking rehabilitation and recovery. Oh, and just to make us boomers feel ancient, she’s a 57-year-old mom of a 30-year-old musician.
In our phone chat following the publication of her second memoir, Hopeful Healing: Essays on Managing Recovery and Surviving Addiction, Phillips is direct, even blunt, but also prone to punctuate funny or ironic thoughts with a throaty laugh. Troubled TV teen Julie Cooper may seem like Mary Poppins compared to the actress who played her, but Mackenzie the survivor has earned the right to leaven grim reality with pragmatism and hope.
I guess the best possible question to start with is: how are you?
I have never been better. My life is very full and very beautiful. It’s full of purpose and service to others. Things are just amazingly good for me.
Which means that you’ve been sober for how long?
I find it so interesting that people equate length of sobriety with wellness. What I’ve found is that time doesn’t necessarily treat or heal this thing. I’ve been sober a long time. But I know people who’ve been sober a long time who aren’t well; they’re just sober.
Meaning?
They’re just not drinking. But there’s a journey, and it’s from sobriety to recovery. Being physically abstinent—there’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s beautiful, and I applaud it. But there’s a deeper experience to be had. It’s what you do on the day you’ve been given and not how long you’ve been doing it that I focus on. Especially working with my clients here where I’m sitting in my office. (laughs)
Do you remember the moment in your life when you went from sober to well?
I don’t think you can point out a certain day. It’s a gradual process. And then one day you just go, “Wow, I feel pretty good!” It’s not an epiphany moment. It’s more of a slow awareness that things are shifting and changing.
It’s one thing to heal yourself; it’s another to get a counseling certification and attain professional status. When did you feel truly qualified to do what you’re doing now?
There’s feeling you’re qualified, and then there’s, “Wait, you have to go to school!” I’ve always felt I’ve had some sort of ability to reach people, but there’s a confidence that comes from having the education to back it up. So when you walk into your office, close the door, and sit with your client, you know what you’re doing. Or I hope you know what you’re doing! (laughs)
So the training specifically helps with…?
Well, what pops into mind is that as a counselor, I get to sit and identify with people and help them through their recovery. That’s about 30 percent of it. There’s a great deal of documentation and paperwork and electronic medical-records charting that’s involved. You don’t really consider that when you’re romanticizing the idea of being a counselor. It was challenging at first but not anymore. I love it.
Although your first book, High on Arrival, dealt with the autobiographical details of your addiction years, Hopeful Healing is both about your recovery process and coping with the slow deterioration of your mom, who died during the writing. Was her dementia caused by, or at least exacerbated by, her alcoholism?
My mother was sober 18 years when she passed away. I’m not a doctor; I really don’t know.
The day she passed…what went through your mind?
It was difficult. I was sad, but there was also a sense of “it’s time.” Things happen in God’s time and not mine. Her world had gotten very, very small. She still knew who I was; it’s not like she was in a deep, deep state of dementia. Just a couple of weeks before she passed away, she turned 80. My son Shane and I took her to brunch. She had her favorite: eggs benedict. It was really beautiful, and I gave her a little diamond peace sign which I’m wearing around my neck right now. I thought a lot about what a great mom she was, and how she was Bob McNamara’s personal secretary at the Pentagon, and she was a single mother when it wasn’t cool being a single mother, and how much I loved her and how grateful I was for her, how we had so many years being sober sisters together. I just felt full of love and sadness and appreciation and devastation. All at the same time.
People who have to care for others in that state often do it out of love, but duty and guilt invariably get mixed into those feelings. Was your experience like that?
The book has a whole chapter that talks about the difference between guilt and obligation. How hard it is when you have a parent who’s failing and slipping into their own little world. It becomes, “Oh my God, I have to go. I don’t wanna go, but I have to go. I want my mommy. But I’m now my mommy’s mommy.” So a lot of people feel shame and guilt around that stuff, but it’s just normal.
My mom was just the most adorable little old lady you could possibly imagine, but there were moments when she was very mean. That is also something that happens with dementia: the turn. One moment, she’s loving, and the next she’s furious because the TV remote isn’t working.
Heck I’m like that. But seriously, in the difficult moments, do you draw on the happier ones?
I draw on my love for my mother.
Having seen your mom through this illness, did that spur you on to prepare your son for a just-in-case scenario down the road? Have you laid out your proverbial “Five Wishes?”
I don’t have any of those things in place, although I probably should. My mom went into assisted living ten years ago. She had very-difficult-to-control diabetes, COPD, and early dementia. She just couldn’t take care of herself. And I said to Shane, “Dude, you’re just gonna have to put me in a home.” And he said, “I will never put you in a home.” I said, “But I’m not your responsibility.” He’s just so loving and kind, so bright and level-headed. And he’s like, “Nope. You’re staying home with me forever.” I said, “That might change, son. God knows with the twists and turns of fate what can happen.”
But with mom, more than anything, I didn’t think about myself. After my mom passed away, I thought about all of the things, the actual material things that you can hold in your hand. The things my brother Jeffrey and I had to sort through. It made me realize that when I die, I don’t want Shane to have to be like, “Oh God, this drawer is full of stuff.” You know, the boxes. That was the hardest thing. She had 18 pairs of broken reading glasses and one pair that worked, you know? (laughs) It made me think, “What am I leaving for Shane to clean up?”
Do you think you’ll get empty-nest syndrome when he’s ready to leave home?
He’s already left once, and then he came back. The world is different now than it was when I was younger. A lot of 25-30-somethings are living at home. When he decides to individuate and do his thing, I’d probably sell the house—`cause I don’t need the big, giant house for just me. But I had empty nest once, and I managed to survive it, so I imagine I could survive it again.
One other thing you had to survive was a surprising backlash over the revelations in your first book. Foremost was the recollection of passing out, waking up in a hotel-room bed, and finding your father on top of you, raping you. An on/off sexual relationship ensued for a decade, during which he paid for you to abort what he assumed was his baby. Rather than sympathy, members of your family who read this actually gave you grief.
I didn’t expect the backlash, and I was very naïve about that. But I also didn’t expect the support—the army of women and men who are survivors of sexual abuse who have come forward. I don’t regret it at all. I mean, maybe in a personal way I do, but in a more altruistic way, for the greater good, I opened up a national dialogue about something not generally spoken about. So for that, I’m very grateful.
As for my family, that was a very tough six or seven years there for me. And, I’m sure, for them. But we are reunited, and it feels so good! I’m in a very loving family situation with my siblings, and it’s really nice.
In retrospect, how do you feel about your father?
Gosh. There’s no one word. I could not give you one word.
Rancor? Disgust?
It’s a heavy thing, but if I was still carrying that anger and fury and devastation around with me today, how could I possibly be well and happy and grounded? I see what happened. It helps me understand the power of drugs and alcohol and the power of untreated mental illness. It makes me understand that he was troubled, a tortured man, and I have compassion for that. That doesn’t mean I give him a full pass for what he did. Absolutely not. But I’m at peace with my forgiving him before he died. I’m at peace with revealing everything so openly. I’m at peace with the fact that my sisters and some people in my life couldn’t be in a relationship with me for a long time. And I’m at peace with the fact that that’s not happening anymore and that we’re all together again.
Speaking of parents, you had surrogate ones, of a sort, for a few years when you were on One Day at a Time. Alas, both Bonnie Franklin and Pat Harrington have now passed. Any thoughts or recollections?
Bonnie was one of the funniest, raunchiest women. She had a great sense of humor and a potty mouth, which I completely identify with. She was so loving to me even when I didn’t understand, like back in the early days on the show. She was setting boundaries with me—and I didn’t know what that felt like. Which I can, in retrospect, really appreciate. And I was able to thank her and love her. For many, many years after One Day at a Time was over, we remained close. So the day that I got the email saying she’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I just could not believe what I was reading. She mothered me in a very specific kind of way, and she was like a second mom to me. I loved her tremendously.
And Pat Harrington?
Oh my God, I loved that guy. He was so funny. I learned so much from him about timing, what’s funny and what isn’t funny. A wonderful man. A great dad—he had all these beautiful children. Just a good guy.
I interviewed Valerie Bertinelli a couple of months ago for Long Island Woman. She admitted that she experimented with drugs during the Van Halen years but was too much of a control freak to do more than dabble. Considering the turmoil you caused on the set back then, I assume you and she must have had friction. Ancient history?
It’s a good relationship, and we get along great. It wasn’t always that way. I didn’t blame her for anything, and I don’t know if she blamed me or not. I just loved her from afar until she was ready to be in a relationship with me again. When she was, we have been close ever since. There’s an open and loving line of communication between us. She has her cooking show, which I’ve guested on almost every season that it’s been on the air. Her husband Tom and I are friends, too.
Val and I are only six months apart in age, so there’s a time of the year when we’re both the same age. When April 23rd comes around every year, I know she’s caught up with me at least for the next six months. I always text her, and we laugh about it.
Last question: For so many years, you lived as an addicted person. Does that stay with you, and you just channel your addictions into healthier pursuits?
I don’t have to be addicted to anything. I’m not addicted to anything. (laughs) Here’s the deal. What I want people to understand is that addiction is a brain disorder; it’s not a moral failing. I think people get that really mixed up. Am I addicted to anything? No. I’m very low-key. I’m very easygoing, though I might get a little anxious here and there. But I love my job, I love my work, I love to write. It’s all very balanced, I guess.
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MACK SNACKS
What books have you been reading?
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware — a mystery-whodunnit kind of thing, which I really enjoyed. Then a novel by Kevin Kwan called Crazy Rich Asians. It’s hilarious.
Songs on your playlist?
I really like a song called I am Light by India Arie. And the good old Rolling Stones. Exile on Main Street is one of my favorite albums of all time, so I listen to that a lot.
Did you really have sex with Mick Jagger while your father was fixing you both tuna fish sandwiches?
That’s completely true. It is a dubious distinction having slept with Mick Jagger because I was one of many. Still, it gave me a great story.
Tuna aside, your favorite meal?
I like Mexican food. Veggie tacos. Also, my son and I like to make a vegetarian shepherd’s pie. Morningstar Farms makes a meat substitute that crumbles like ground beef.
Do you have a favorite vacation spot?
I love a place in Desert Hot Springs California called Two Bunch Palms, where I’ve been going since I was fourteen. It’s rich with California history and has underground mineral hot springs that come up. Just a beautiful, beautiful place.
How do you unwind from work?
I love my dogs. I have four rescues: two pugs and two Chihuahuas. I love to read. I love to swim. That’s the kind of stuff that I do.
Have you been dating?
No. I’m in a fantastic relationship with myself. I think I found “the one!” (hearty laugh)
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BYLINE:
David Lefkowitz is an adjunct professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado. He also co-publishes Performing Arts Insider (TotalTheater.com) and hosts Dave’s Gone By (davesgoneby.com) on UNC Radio. His comedy, Blind Date, was recently staged in Chennai, India.
The Collected Writings of... David Lefkowitz 