THE DAYS OF WINE & NOSES

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Christian Slater

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Some just want to party like it's 1975. According to sources, one top record exec regularly throws two-day-long bashes at a private estate, where guests report that the "drugs are laid out like food. Coke is piled up, with rolled-up $50 and $100 bills." A West L.A. drug counselor who specializes in treating celebs says the number of her cocaine-addicted patients has jumped 10 percent in the last year alone. Others say the scene has changed a little bit. Says one studio exec: "The difference today is that at least they are going to the bathroom. Before, they would've done the lines on the table in front of everyone."

Not surprisingly, the Hollywood grapevine is bursting with stories about performers who have taken up cocaine, mostly those under 35 who are too young to recall Hollywood's last coke epidemic (a time when the drug was so widely used it was rumored to be factored into film budgets). The stories feature everyone from a Grammy-winning singer and her mate to an Oscar-winning actor whom an LAPD narc, off duty and on his way home, says he spotted buying rock cocaine recently at the corner of Western and Hollywood boulevards. One young movie actor recently wrote a check for $1,000 worth of cocaine and made the notation that it was for "ballet lessons."

Cocaine may be back, but heroin and glass (a clear, smokable form of crystal meth) are floating around too. The suits "snort cocaine; the artists shoot heroin," says a producer. "Put them in the same room, and it's one big speedball."

Speedballs, of course, killed both John Belushi and River Phoenix. And while toxicological tests on Farley haven't been released yet, a stripper who allegedly was with him just before he died claims he'd been using cocaine and heroin. Even if tests prove Farley used the same drugs that killed Belushi and Phoenix, many are skeptical that anything will jolt Hollywood into ever just saying no. "Most of the people I know also knew River; 20 to 30 percent of them are still high," says one independent producer. "It's follow the leaders—even in death."

—Dana Kennedy, with additional reporting by Judy Brennan, Heidi Siegmund Cuda, and Frank Swertlow