Drug Trip

Image credit: Elizabeth Wurtzel Photograph by Gail Albert Halaban

She makes her 7:45 a.m. flight to Los Angeles the next morning, despite traveling with a passport that incorrectly identifies her as ''Elizabeth Murtzel.'' At the USC campus bookstore, her most ardent fans await. Alana, 21, gives Wurtzel a Tiffany bag with a present and a note inside thanking her for her strength. ''To understand that someone else went through the same stuff you went through and is doing okay now,'' says Liz, 19, ''that's like an excellent thing to see.'' And Daniel, a 22-year-old senior, encourages her to ''write about your feelings for 100 books as far as I care. If it's helping you and it's interesting to read, that's pretty much the only two things you can offer.''

And her book is helpful, she promises. Way more than other memoirs about addiction like Caroline Knapp's ''Drinking: A Love Story.'' ''This woman thinks the worst thing she did was fall over with a kid in her arms?'' she exclaims at Dutton's, another Los Angeles bookstore. ''I mean, she hasn't drunk enough. She needs to start doing some serious drugs and feel what it's like to be really f---ed up. I felt nauseated reading this book that was taken seriously about being an addict or a drunk.''

At every appearance, she's asked about the movie adaptation of ''Prozac Nation'' that hits theaters in May. Christina Ricci plays Elizabeth, and Anne Heche, who just published her own memoir, ''Call Me Crazy,'' stars as her psychiatrist. ''I think it's a very good movie,'' she says, ''but it's very, very depressing. It has no humor in it.... It's directed by a guy who's Danish, it was written by an Irish screenwriter, all the people at the helm were men, and no one involved in it was Jewish. That's so weird to me because I'm so Jewish.'' In private she'll curse the ''f---ing Irish hack screenwriter who thinks he can write like me. There are better writers than me but there's nobody who writes like me better than me.''

And that's what really irks her. She thinks ''More, Now, Again'' is a really well-written book, despite what the critics say. ''If people have a problem with it, it's about something else,'' she says later, during a coffee break. ''I've had enough. I'm moving to England or I'm quitting. They win. After seeing what Dave Eggers gets away with, I just feel like this is sexism.... I spent all my time when I was writing about music for The New Yorker listening to people say I got my job for reasons other than why I got my job. There's just an element of this that isn't fair.... I feel all of this ends up being vindicated by readers and, you know, there's just elements of -- gosh, if we want to get to Fred Segal, we really have to go.''

''I'm sorry I'm late,'' she tells the crowd at the Santa Monica Barnes & Noble that evening, ''but I got stuck at Fred Segal.'' Murmurs of understanding ripple through the well-heeled crowd. She thinks she'll read from the chapter about her shoplifting arrest, in honor of her two new (purchased) necklaces and the recent travails of her favorite whipping girl, Winona Ryder, who faces embarrassing charges for allegedly slipping $4,760 worth of merchandise into her bag. ''If she asked me,'' she says, preening, ''I would tell her she should just say she needs to get help, she's had a hard time making the transition from teen star to 30-year-old adult, and everyone should leave her alone.... I sort of feel sorry for her, as sorry as I could possibly feel for someone I find really annoying.... I could really go on about all the things about her that annoy me, but that's just bad, bad manners.''