He told the story, adding that he met “three kings” who helped him out that night. One was a gas station attendant who offered Tom water and $20. Two, an Uber driver who brought him back to Hollywood. And three, the bartender at his usual bar who gave Tom a place to stay and a shoulder to cry on.
“All of a sudden, the frustration burst out of me,” he wrote. “I was, I realize now, completely sober for the first time in ages and I had an overwhelming sense of clarity and anger. I started screaming at God, at the sky, at everyone and no one, full of fury for what had happened to me, for the situation in which I found myself. I yelled, full-lung, at the sky and the ocean. I yelled until I’d let it all out, and I couldn’t yell anymore.”
Tom also shared heartbreaking words his lawyer told him. “My lawyer, whom I’d barely ever met face to face, spoke with quiet honesty,” he wrote. “‘Tom,’ he said, ‘I don’t know you very well, but you seem like a nice guy. All I want to tell you is that this is the seventeenth intervention I’ve been to in my career. Eleven of them are now dead. Don’t be the twelfth.’”