Holly Madison in tell-all memoir: Hugh Hefner offered me drugs, played mind games and bribed me with will

Holly Madison has revealed some shocking details about Hugh Hefner and her past experience in the Playboy mansion.


In excerpts from her new tell-all memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, 35-year-old Madison disclosed how Hefner, 89, had offered her drugs, played mind games and bribed her with money to stay under his roof many years ago, Us Weekly reported.

Madison, a former Holly's World and The Girls Next Door star, first met Hefner in August 2001.

"'Would you like a Quaalude?' Hef asked, leaning toward me with a bunch of large horse pills in his hands, held together by a crumpled tissue," Madison wrote in her memoir, according to Us, adding that she declined the drug that offers a sedative-hypnotic effect similar to the buzz of alcohol.

"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 reportedly wrote that she still wants to scream "pause" and "freeze-frame that moment" in her life.

"I want to grab that young girl, shake her back into reality and scream, 'What the hell are you thinking?'" Madison continued.

Madison, however, still spent that night in the mansion and moved in as one of Hefner's Playboy bunnies a few weeks later. The former reality TV star reportedly wrote that the dynamic between the girls in the house was always changing in that friends would team up or turn against each other at the drop of a dime.

But the women weren't the root of their own problems. According to Us, Madison admitted Hefner was pulling the strings as a master puppeteer.

"I learned Hef was the manipulator and that he pitted us against one another," she 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."


Madison never signed a non-disclosure agreement with Hefner, so she's not afraid to share her past struggles with the world. After much emotional abuse -- including demands to get haircuts or wear red lipstick -- Madison finally put her foot down and chose to move out.

However, Hefner was reportedly desperate for Madison to stay, so he went as far as to put her in his will.

"It was there, in black and white. 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)," Madison wrote in the memoir.

"At the time, it was more money than I'd ever know what to do with... But I didn't want it. 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."

Since then, Madison, who had also competed on Dancing with the Stars' eighth season, has settled into a new, happy life. She wed her current husband Pasquale Rotella and also welcomed a daughter Rainbow, now two-years-old, in 2013.


Although her tell-all memoir is seemingly graphic and sexually explicit, Madison insisted she'd like her daughter to read it one day when she's old enough.

"I want her to understand why I made the choices I made," Madison told Us directly. "And hopefully learn from them and not make stupid mistakes herself."






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski