There is a pill for everything –
February 1, 2020 – Later that day, finally loaded on 15 Vicodins, Peres met boxing champ Mike Tyson to discuss an upcoming story. Sweat-soaked and “swaying back and forth,” Peres made it outside and vomited on the street where a town car waited for him. Things turned extra-scary in 2003, when his girlfriend — nicknamed Chickpea, for the lie he told about meeting her in a supermarket aisle instead of through an escort service — couldn’t wake him for two minutes. “You weren’t breathing,” she told him. “I thought you were dead!”
Even that was not enough to scare him straight. By 2004 his addiction had spiked to the point that 7.5 milligram tablets of extra-strength Vicodin failed to stave off withdrawal. So he graduated to purer, more potent 15 milligram tabs of Roxicodone. But soon after landing in Los Angeles for a business trip, he found himself out of drugs.
Sitting in his room at L’Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills, Peres spent the day frantically seeking a doctor who would provide a prescription, to no avail. That night, he was jonesing hard at a party for his magazine when a rock star saved him with some OxyContin that they snorted together. Later, Peres nearly got his legs busted trying to score heroin on Skid Row.
