Celebrity rehab, a legendary sex tape and two dope-fiends' desperate efforts to pull themselves out of their downwardly spiraling lives is the subject of hipster pulp novelist Tony O’Neill’s latest novel Sick City.

The Queens-based writer jumps from the heroin-drenched plot of his new book to rumored Marilyn Monroe blowjob videos with a frenetic energy that seems fueled by 100 cups of coffee—strong coffee. His checkered past includes several years as a drug addict on the streets of Los Angeles, a short stint in the Brian Jonestown Massacre and as an author of two other novels, Digging the Vein and Down and Out on Murder Mile.

His latest tells the story of two addicts who stumble upon a fabled sex tape of an orgy between Sharon Tate, Steve McQueen, Mama Cass and Yul Brenner and their struggle to sell the tape and break free of their rapidly disintegrating lives. It's written with the same grit-filled prose of the old Black Mask writers from the 1940s and '50s.

He talked with New York Press recently before a reading at Powell’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon.

New York Press: How did the idea for Sick City germinate?

Tony O'Neill: I had an idea of writing this book with two characters who stumble on a get rich quick scheme but are so fucking high all of the time that they eventually screw it up. I wanted the characters to be likable and for the reader to want them to succeed but also to realize that the characters were going to shoot themselves in the foot.

Rehab and addiction permeate the novel. Jeffrey and Randal have been in and out of rehab a number of times and they invariably backslide into old habits.

I had written two novels that were thinly-veiled autobiography, and I knew that I wanted to explore pure addiction in this novel. It really came from a bunch of things that were on my mind at the time and one of those things was drug-related reality television. I wanted to do something that satirized that a bit.

And so you created Dr. Mike, a character who bares a striking resemblance to Dr. Drew Pinsky, the host of Celebrity Rehab...

I’m sure that my agent would want me to be very insistent that I say that the character’s not based on Dr. Drew.

He looks like him down to the razor sharp part in his hair. What is it about Dr. Drew that gets under your skin?

Well, every time that a celebrity died for a while, there was Dr. Drew on the television saying, ‘They weren’t my patient but…’ And then he would go on to pathologize this person even though he’d never treated them or knew what was going on. I just thought he was very cynical.

You also go after the AA 12-step style of rehab treatment.

I don’t believe in powerless addiction. I realized that when I was trying to straighten myself out. My life had more important purposes than being a washed-out junkie. I had a daughter on the way. I was going to be a father. I was in love with someone and was at the start of a new relationship. Instead of letting my addiction take control, I decided to empower myself and admit that I did have will power, that I did have control over myself.

Did you always want to be a writer?

I always had this idea that I wanted to be a writer. I dropped out of school at 18 because I joined a band. Really, I didn’t have a strong voice or reason for writing at that point. It was my experiences as a heroin addict that gave me material to write about. When I started writing my first book, I had spent the last few years living on the street and I had this fear that I would amount to nothing and that my child wouldn’t respect me. Fear was a great motivator to get me started.

The crux of the story revolves around a mythical sex tape of Sharon Tate in an orgy that one of the junkies finds. It’s kind of the Holy Grail of sex tapes. Is that based on anything you heard when you lived in L.A.?

There is a Hollywood urban legend that the Sharon Tate sex tape exists and that members of the LAPD took the tape from the crime scene after she was murdered and they would arrange screenings at cop bars and watch it among themselves.

Do you consider that distasteful using that as a prop considering what happened to her?

Anybody who reads the book knows that this is obviously fictional. I’m using the idea of the iconic image of Sharon Tate. She’s a stand-in for Hollywood and how that town chews people up and spits them out.

So L.A. is Sick City?

To survive in Hollywood you can’t be too nice and you can’t be too honest or otherwise you get eaten alive.

Do you ever feel that old familiar itch to slip into your old life?

There are certain things that I don’t want to do anymore. I stay away from hard drugs. I know when I’m about to go down a dark path and I steer clear of it.

You’ve lived in New York the last couple of years. Will you ever set a novel here?

I’m halfway through a novel loosely based on Chet Baker in New York during the 1970s when he was playing in a broken-down old jazz club in Times Square. New York is very striking and it's bound to affect how you think and how you write. I’ll get around to it eventually. I just have a lot of L.A. stuff to get through first.

What would you do if you weren’t writing?

I don’t have a Plan B. I have to keep writing for my sanity and sense of self.