A Very Brady Confession

For most of my life people have expected me to be perfect. That's because I played the role of Marcia Brady—a pretty girl from a flawless family—from 1969 to 1974. She was perky, well-balanced and above all, always happy. It was an image I portrayed on screen from the age of 12 until I turned 17, but one I'd battle to overcome the rest of my life.

To start with, my family was not the Brady Bunch. In the early '70s, my older brother was battling a heroin addiction and my father was having an affair, both of which devastated my family. I also have a younger brother who is mentally impaired, so that proved another challenge. And, as strange as it sounds, the whole time I was working on "The Brady Bunch" I thought I had syphilis. You see, my mother was born with it, and I knew it could be passed from generation to generation. In fact, my grandmother died of it. So I thought I was going to go insane and die in an institution like my grandmother. When I was doing those crying scenes in the show, that's what I was thinking about. In retrospect, I see that my depression started way back in my teenage years.

Things only got worse when "The Brady Bunch" stopped filming in 1974. The following year I got involved with a boyfriend who took me up to the house of this cocaine dealer—one of the biggest dealers in L.A. At the house, there was this table with a mountain of cocaine on it. I was 18 and had no idea what it was or how to do it, but everyone there said, "Don't worry, just watch us. Now here, take a toot." I did, but didn't feel anything. Then I took another one, and that was it. I was addicted for the next five years and would do anything to get my hands on the drug. I got naked for a drug dealer so he could videotape me. And I also had sex with a dealer to get more cocaine. They loved the fact that I was hanging out with them because I was Marcia Brady, and apparently that was good for their image and business.

Everywhere I went, people still identified me by the role I played as a teen. The association made it impossible to just be me and made it really hard to get the kind of parts I wanted. For instance, I was up for a role in "Midnight Express," which I almost got, but then was turned away because of the "Marcia connection." Here I was, wanting to play heroin addicts and hookers—all characters I related to—yet I was doing "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island." It may sound funny, but I was lucky, too: despite the fact that I was doing drugs at all the hottest clubs in L.A., there were no paparazzi at the time, so I was never publicly humiliated or busted (I can't even imagine how that would have played out now).

I guess I didn't really need to be outed in the gossip rags, though, because I did a fine job of hitting rock bottom on my own. When I was filming "The Brady Brides," a 1981 series Eve Plumb and I worked on, I was supposed to be at Paramount Studios film-testing one of my "husbands." But where was I? Locked up in my apartment, doing cocaine and playing solitaire in my closet. My agent, Sandy Bressler (who works with Jack Nicholson), had to break my apartment door down to get in. He tore off my clothes, threw me in the shower, then loaded me in the car and said, "Maureen, we're going to get you help." The first therapist I ended up with was the late Dr. Eugene Landy, the psychologist who eventually surrendered his license in California due to a controversial relationship with Beach Boy Brian Wilson. He was not a good man. He put me on so many drugs I didn't know if I was coming or going.

Jerry Houser, who played my husband on "The Brady Brides," took me to church one day. It was an amazing thing for me. I totally reconnected with God. This is where I met my husband, Michael—it was love at first sight. I started praying that if God was really there, he would come into my life, because I felt totally dead spiritually. It was the start of me getting clean.