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Holly Madison: Hugh Hefner Offered Me Drugs, Tried to Buy Me in His Will

Holly Madison on the cover of UsWeekly
Excerpts from Holly Madison's memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole, can be found in this week's issue of Us Weekly.

Turns out, the Playboy Mansion’s not all fluffy tails and fun parties. In Holly Madison’s shocking new tell-all memoir, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, the former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, now 35, details the years of verbal and emotional abuse she endured while living with Hef in the Playboy Mansion. 

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The exclusive excerpts, which are featured in the cover story for the new issue of Us Weekly, include Madison’s recollection of the first time she met Hef 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. 

Holly Madison Down The Rabbit Hole Cover

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After she declined the drugs, “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.’

“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. 

She ended up spending that night at the Mansion and moved in several weeks later. Though she wrote that there were constantly changing alliances between the girls in the house, Madison later discovered that there was one person controlling them all. 

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“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 thankfully never signed a non-disclosure agreement, allowing her to leave no stone unturned when penning her memoir. In the sections released to Us, Madison recounts Hefner’s painful emotional abuse she endured when she deigned to get a haircut or wear red lipstick. 

holly and hugh
Hugh Hefner and Holly Madison in 2002.

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When she finally had had enough and decided to move out, the Playboy Enterprises founder tried one last tactic to get her to stay — putting her in his will. 

“It was there, in black and white,” she wrote. “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. 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.” 

Madison has been married to her current husband Pasquale Rotella since 2013, and the pair share daughter Rainbow, 2. Madison wants her little girl to read her book one day. 

“I want her to understand why I made the choices I made,” Madison told Us. “And hopefully learn from them and not make stupid mistakes herself.” Click here to see more photos of Holly and her family.

For more excerpts from Madison’s tell-all, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on stands now!

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