Holly Madison Says Hugh Hefner Offered Her Quaalude In Tell-All Memoir

Holly Madison opens up about the more sordid realities of living under the roof of the Playboy Mansion with Hugh Hefner in her new tell-all memoir Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny.

Holly Madison’s Tell-All on Hugh Hefner

According to Madison’s memoir, the first time she met the notorious Hefner he asked her, “Would you like a Quaalude?” Madison declined. “Hef did not miss a beat: ‘Okay, that’s good,’ he said, nonchalantly. ‘Usually, I don’t approve of drugs, but you know, in the ‘70s they used to call these pills thigh openers,'” Madison recounted in a memoir excerpt released to Us Weekly.

“I want to scream ‘PAUSE!’ and freeze-frame that moment of my life. I want to grab that young girl, shake her back into reality and scream, ‘What the hell are you thinking?’” Madison continued.

Despite the obvious red flag, Madison stuck around the Playboy Mansion and moved in several weeks after her troubling first encounter with Hefner. As one of his many girlfriends, Madison soon realized that part of Hefner’s M.O. was causing a certain degree of insecurity and animosity among the young women.

“I learned Hef was the manipulator and that he pitted us against one another,” Maidson noted. “I realized I wasn’t treated well. I’m done being afraid of people. I don’t have any loyalty to Hef. I haven’t talked to him in four years, so there’s no reason to reach out now. Besides, it’s the truth.”

Eventually, Madison decided that the advantages of being one of Hefner’s girlfriends were no longer worth the emotional abuse she was suffering. Hefner, in an attempt to keep her as one of his Playboy Bunnies, made a last-ditch effort to woo her. His tactic was putting her into his will.

“The will stated that $3,000,000 would be bestowed to Holly Madison at the time of his death (provided I still lived in the Mansion). At the time, it was more money than I’d ever know what to do with… But I didn’t want it,” Madison wrote. “I actually pitied him for stooping to that level. I couldn’t help but be offended. Did he really think he could buy me? I put the folder back on the bed just as I had found it and never breathed a word of it.”

Down the Rabbit Hole will be released in hardcover June 23.