Maureen McCormick: Here’s The Story Of A Spazzed-Out Druggie

Looking back, the world fell in love with Marcia Brady because of her adorable hollow eyes and her wholesome trembling hyperactive paranoia.

That’s the reason why everyone’s favourite episodes of The Brady Bunch is the one where Marcia Brady plumbs the squalid depths of addiction thanks to her years growing up in an abusive family, trading sex for drugs and being forced to deal with unwanted pregnancies. And that episode where Marcia Brady gets hammered on Quaaludes in Sammy Davis Jr’s house? Oh Marcia Marcia Marcia.

Wait, they’re not episodes of The Brady Bunch at all - they’re excerpts from Maureen McCormick’s new book, Here’s The Story: Surviving Marcia Brady And Finding My True Voice. You might think that Maureen McCormick has reached a new pitiful low by detailing her battles with depression and drug addiction in a book for cash, but you’re wrong - she’s nowhere near the pitiful low benchmark set by her participation in A Very Brady Christmas.

If we ever have children, the first thing we’re going to do is shove them into ill-fitting careers as childstars. Really, it’s the best thing for them. Admittedly they’ll grow up with a sort of low self-esteem Pavlovian conditioning that’ll equate attention with love, making them spiral off into the dark realms of joyless sex and drug addiction by their early teens. But they’ll thank us later when their careers dry up and they can get an easy second income by detailing what a shitty childhood they had in a series of books.

Honestly, everyone’s at it. Screech from Saved By The Bell has a book coming out, it can only be a matter of time before Gary Coleman releases a book called What’chu Talkin’ ‘Bout: Cries For Help From An Angry Midget and now Marcia Brady actress Maureen McCormick has had a go too.

Previously the two most exciting things to ever happen to anyone from The Brady Bunch were a) when Bobby lost control of his car in The Brady 500 and ended up paralysed from the waist down and b) when Florence Henderson lost her dog and got a bit sad about it.

But that’s nothing, because Maureen McCormick today publishes Here’s The Story: Surviving Marcia Brady And Finding My True Voice, her attempt to make all Brady Bunch fans so depressed and guilty by association that they end up losing all will to live. In the book, Maureen McCormick reveals fun little anecdotes about the time she developed a long-term addiction to cocaine and Quaaludes, the time she spent most of her adult life getting treated for depression, the times she debased herself by swapping sex for drugs and her hilarious unwanted pregnancy. E! Online has details:

“As a teenager, I had no idea that few people are everything they present to the outside world,” McCormick, now 52, writes in the book, excerpts of which were released today. “Yet there I was, hiding the reality of my life behind the unreal perfection of Marcia Brady. No one suspected the fear that gnawed at me even as I lent my voice to the chorus of Bradys singing ‘It’s a Sunshine Day.’”

Well that’s Christmas sorted, then. Everyone we know is getting a copy of Maureen McCormick’s book. That way, by Boxing Day teatime, everyone will be so inert and desolate that they won’t notice that we’ve eaten all the sausage rolls and have stolen their Xboxes. Result.

Let’s hope that Maureen McCormick’s book acts as a valuable warning to the new generation of tween stars rising up in America at the moment. The lesson it teaches is plain to see - make sure you do as many drugs and have as much meaningless sex as possible right now, otherwise you’ll never get that publishing deal in 30 years’ time.