This Is My Memoir

Get a sneak preview of Paris’ memoir as you are the first to listen to an exclusive clip from the audio book.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Paris. Hey everyone, it's Paris. I'm so excited
that my new book is coming out this week on
March fourteenth. It's taken all my courage to share these
intensely private experiences and thoughts, but I know the potential

(00:25):
positive impact. It's worth it. I hope you read the
book and walk away feeling empowered, knowing your voice and
story matters to me and to the world. As a
thank you for being such incredible and loyal fans, I
wanted to share an exclusive clip from my audio book,
and now here's the prologue from Paris the memoir This
is Paris prologue. Doctor Edward Halliwell, author have Driven to Distraction,

(00:57):
says the ADHD brain is like a Ferrari with bicycle breaks, powerful,
difficult to control. My ADHD makes me lose my phone,
but it also makes me who I am. So if
I'm going to love my life, I have to love
my ADHD, and I do love my life. It's June
twenty twenty two and I'm having one of the best

(01:18):
weeks ever. My friend Christina Aguilera, my neighbor, invited me
to be one of her top secret special guests at
La Pride, and as my crew moved my DJ equipment
out the door, I was so nervous and excited. I
left the house without my shoes and showed up at
a backstage trailer and a tank shirt, Flora jack pants
and socks, which was even more embarrassing when I accidentally

(01:40):
went into the wrong dressing room. Some backup dancers were
in there getting dressed and screamed for joy when they
saw me, so selfiees obviously, I always try to do
it myself, like hold the person's camera so it's angled down,
which is important if you're tall, because it's so unflattering
when the angle is up your nostrils or the person's
hands are shaking because they're may be nervous and a

(02:00):
bit shy, which I totally relate to. So I did
that with loves It, loves It, sliving and all the things,
and then off I went in my socks doing this
thing my husband Carter calls the unicorn trout, not fully running,
more graceful than galloping, and less like skipping than dancing.
I have a hard time going slow. So then I'm

(02:23):
there at Pride with Christina and about thirty thousand other people,
all decked out in rainbows and sparkles, dancing, laughing, hugging,
having the best time during my set, which came right
after Kim Petris, who sang at our wedding last year,
this beautiful ballad version of stars are blind and then
can't help falling in love as Carter and I walked
down the aisle, which is why that song brought tears

(02:45):
to my eyes last week at Britney Spear's wedding, when
our gorgeous angel Princess Pride emerged after all those nightmare
years and floated down the aisle in Versachi because Versacchi
please with that iconic Elvis Presley song, which has been
sung at millions of weddings in Vegas, where my grandfather
Baron Hilton started the whole Vegas residency trend by having

(03:06):
Elvis at the Las Vegas Hilton International back in nineteen
sixty nine, paving the way for Brittany and so many
other groundbreaking performers to flourish in that format. A perfect
example of how one person's creative vision sparks a cascade
of genius that goes on and on into the future.
Another perfect example, my great grandfather Conrad Hilton. Wait, where

(03:28):
was I pride? This crowd? Oh my god, energy, love, light,
unbreakable spirit. I'm behind the board. It's like piloting a
spaceship full of the coolest people in the galaxy. My
set is structured around iconic music like Toxic, alongside a
sick beat breaker remix of Genie and a Bottle by

(03:49):
Extina Queen of the Night, plus a lot of other
dope originals and remixes which I should put up on
the podcast or YouTube because this set is so much fun.
Note to self, fake playlist for this book. I was
so hyper focused on my set. Note to self, add
Ultrinata to playlist. It didn't even hit me until I
was halfway through that I had left my phone on

(04:10):
the counter in the trailer where I took the selfies
with a half dress backup dancers. Fuck. I'm trying not
to say fuck all the time. I don't want to
wear it out because it's such a good word for
so many occasions noun, verb, job description, fill in the blank.
Fuck saves the day, so fuck because I feel naked
without my phone and I'm super paranoid about someone getting

(04:31):
a hold of it and blasting the contents all over
the internet, which just happened more than once. So thank
god for kaide best friends Guardian Angel, who went and
located the stray phone after I killed my set, and
then we all went to the after party Christina and
I hosted at the Soho House Downtown. Now I'm home
with my loves, Diamond Baby, Slivington, crypto Ether, and Harzukubitch.

(04:52):
The og Chuahua. Shout out to Harrjugubitch. She's twenty two
years old. Multiply that by seven dog years. She's literally
one hundred and fifty four. She sleeps twenty three hours
a day and looks like Gizmo from Grumlins. But she's
still here living her best life. I know one night
I'll come home to find she's fallen asleep forever. I'm
so scared of that night, and I hate that random

(05:14):
intrusive thought. Intrusive thoughts are my nemesis, cutting through my joy,
even when I've been part of an epic event with
people who lift me higher than high, and my husband
is up in bed waiting patiently for me to take
my bath and do my skincare routine, which he knows
I never shortcut from the time my sister and I
were little girls, our mom instilled in us the value

(05:35):
of skincare. I always feel her with me in the
soothing ritual. Skincare, if you're doing it right, means claiming
a moment of tenderness in an abrasive world. You remove
the mask, your brave face, your funny face, you're enforce
her face, you're hard candy coating, and you see yourself
cleansed and replenished, and it's like, okay, I'm good. You

(05:57):
feel everything so keenly when you've washed your face like
a newborn feels that first sting of fresh air. Kim
Kardashian and I were making ftata in French toast coated
with frosty flakes for breakfast one morning, and she said,
I don't know anyone who parties as hard as you
do and looks as good as you do. Skincare, Seriously,
if you take nothing else for my story, receive this.

(06:19):
Skincare is sacred. Most women who did coke back in
the nineteen nineties look beat by the mid odds. That
was a strong deterrent for me. I won't say I
never tried it, but I wasn't about to sacrifice my
complexion for it. Same as cigarettes, you may as well
hit yourself in the face with a shovel. These days.
My only bad habit is spray tanning. My sister Nikki

(06:40):
can't stand it, but I'm kind of addicted Otherwise. Carter
and I are big on wellness in skincare. We always
say Forever's not long enough. Taking care of ourselves is
something we do for each other out of love. We
want our good life to last. After I put the
ftata in the oven and said a cute little penguin,
timer Kim said, now is the twelve minutes when we clean?

(07:00):
Clean as you go is the rule. My only role
is skincare. Sunscreen is my eleventh commandment. You may be
wondering what does this all have to do with ADHD. Nothing, also,
everything and anything all at once. ADHD is exhausting and exhilarating,
and it's how God made me, so it must be right.
Carter doesn't fully grasp what it means to be ADHD,

(07:22):
but he's the first and only man in my life
who made an effort to understand. Early in our relationship,
he spent a lot of time and energy researching ADHD,
which is the most authentically loving thing any man has
ever done for me. Most people sighed, drum their fingers
and let me know how insanely frustrating it is to
be sucked into this endless spin cycle of my life.
Carter rolls with it. Where most people see a dumpster fire,

(07:45):
Carter sees burning man. He gets frustrated, for sure, but
he's not trying to dprogram me. Carter is a venture capitalist.
M thirteen, the company he founded with his brother Courtney,
is known for engaging with unicorns. Startups valued it more
than a billion dollars. Like Rothy's Ring and Daily Harvest,
Carter is a unicorn whisperer. He's sentimental and forward thinking,

(08:07):
and he likes to be the boss, but he has
a light touch. If we're in an eleven eleven media
board meeting talking about a contract and I go off
on a tangent about a better tool for impromptu IG videos,
and how the tool could be styled, manufactured and marketed
in a really fun, accessible way, and I could promote
them via cross promotional content, And what if the knob
was like a little otter or sloth or kangaroo. Carter

(08:29):
leans to whisper in my ear babe, not in a
mean way, just to bring me back to center. A
while back, I was featured in The Disruptors, a documentary
about extraordinary people with ADHD, including will I Am, Julian Michaels,
Justin Timberlake, the founders of Jet Blue and Ikea, Steve Madden,
Simone Biles, Adam Levine, Terry Bradshaw, astronaut Scott Kelly Channing Tatum.

(08:53):
The list goes on and on. The Disruptors also features
doctor Holliwell and other psychologists and neurologists who advanced the
science of ADHD. The message of the film really flies
in the face of the misconceptions and stigma. The structure
and function of the ADHD brain are a throwback to
a time when you had to be a badass to survive,
fine food and procreate visual cue. Raquel Welch is the

(09:16):
iconic cavewoman queen in one million years BC, the fronolobe,
home of impulse control, concentration, and inhibition, is smaller because
the primitive badass had to react on instinct without fear.
Neural pathways don't connect or mature at the same rate
because it was more important for the primitive badass queen
to be better at picking berries and killing sabretooth tigers

(09:39):
than she was at reading novels. Dopamine and nora adrenaline,
powerful chemicals that regulate sleep and facilitate communication between brain cells,
were on a slow drip because she had to wake
up and the snap of a twig. I like five
percent of children and two and a half percent of adults,
I'm a primitive badass in a world of contemporary thinkers,

(09:59):
a world it wants obedience and conformity. Even if we
wanted to be the orderly people our loved ones wanted
us to be, we don't have it in us. We
must embrace who we are or die trying to be
someone else. The benefits of ADHD include creativity, resilience, and
the ability to brainstorm. I'm good at damage to control
because I'm constantly losing things, showing up late, and pissing

(10:21):
people off. I'm good at multitasking because I'm not hardwired
to concentrate on one thing for a big block of time.
Because my attention span is limited, I don't see time
as linear. The ADHD brain processes past, present, and future
as a spirograph of interconnected events, which gives me a
certain spidy sense about fashion, trends and technology. It's easy
to follow my bliss because my bliss is whatever interests

(10:43):
me at any given moment. My brain chemistry craves, sensory input, sounds, images, puzzles, art, motion, experiences,
everything that triggers adrenaline or endorphins. That's all as necessary
as oxygen for the ADHD brain. I don't just love fun,
I need fun. Fun is my jet fuel. The primary

(11:04):
disadvantage of ADHD is that people around you are often inconvenienced, weirder, doubt,
or hurt by your behavior, so you're constantly getting judged
and punished, which makes you feel like shit. Suicidal ideation
is high in people with ADHD. Self loathing and self
medication or endemic. If the rest of the world says
you're obnoxious or stupid or just not braining right. Loving

(11:25):
yourself is an act of rebellion, which is beautiful but exhausting,
especially when you're a little kid. With that needy little
kid always inside of you, your life becomes an epic
quest for love or whatever feels like love in the moment.
I was never medicated as a kid, never tested for ADHD.
As far as I know. Even if you have the
most wonderful, loving parents in the world, and I do,

(11:47):
diagnosis doesn't always happen early, especially for girls who are
good at hiding the symptoms. Treatment of ADHD has traditionally
focused on squashing undesirable behavior. In the nineteen eighties, people
had just started talking about being hyper or being on
the spectrum. No one ever said, relax, little girl, there
are many different kinds of intelligence. Instead, people told me

(12:09):
I was dumb, brady, careless, ungrateful, or not applying myself,
and none of that was true. I had to be
creative and work hard to fit in, but I'm naturally
creative and hardworking, so I was in it every day,
grinding away, trying to fit in, until I grew strong
enough to say fuck fitting in, which is what I
intend to teach my children from the beginning, no matter

(12:29):
what their neurodevelopmental profile happens to be As an adult,
I've been medication fluid. When I was in my early twenties,
a doctor explained what was wrong with me and put
me on Adderall that was a love hate relationship that
went on for about twenty years. Me and adderall until
Carter and I met with doctor Halliwell. Doctor Holliwell said,
I've been trying to explain to people since nineteen eighty

(12:52):
one that this condition, if you use it properly as
an asset composed of qualities you can't buy and can't teach.
It's stigma that holds back. Stigma plus ignorance a lethal combination.
I felt that lightning bowl you feel when someone speaks
a hard truth that you've always known but never heard
anyone say out loud. Our kryptonite is boredom, said doctor Halliwell.

(13:14):
If stimulation doesn't occur, we create it. We self medicate
with adrenaline. ADHD can be a well spring of creative energy,
but creative energy's evil twin is a troublemaking compulsion. Want
some adrenaline, do everything the hard way, get into train
wreck relationships. There are a million ways to screw yourself
over for the sake of adrenaline. My imagination is infinite,

(13:37):
but it takes me to dark places as easily as
it takes me toward the light. Doctor Halliwell calls it
the demon that snake that slivers into everything, telling you
that if it's bad, you deserve it, and if it's good,
it won't last. Of course, the demon is a liar,
But try telling that to my brain when it's craving
a big bucket of deep fried anxiety. Your greatest asset

(13:57):
is your worst enemy, said doctor holliwell, and my brain said, fuck.
Tell me, Paris, how is your self esteem? I'm good
at pretending, I said. He said. That's common among people
who live with ADHD, not people who suffer from ADHD,
not people afflicted with ADHD, people who live with ADHD.

(14:21):
Some of us have discovered that ADHD is our superpower.
I wish the A stood for ass kicking. I wish
the D stood for dope and drive. I wish the
H suggested. Hell. Yes, I'm not bragging or complaining about it,
just telling you this is my brain. It has a
lot to do with how this whole book thing is
going to play out. Because I love run on sentences
and dashes and sentence fragments. I'm probably going to jump

(14:44):
around a lot while I tell the story. The spirograph
of time, It's all connected. I've avoid talking about some
of these issues for decades. I'm an issue avoiding machine.
I learned from the best my parents, Nikki says, Mom
and dad the king and Queen of sweeping things under
the rug. There is a hierarchy, and these are the

(15:05):
rules of my family. If you don't talk about a thing,
it's not a problem. If you hide how deeply something
hurt you, it didn't happen. If you pretend not to
notice how deeply you hurt someone else, you don't have
to feel bad about it. Of course, that's bullshit, and
what makes it even crazier it's not good business. I
come from a family of brilliant business people. How can

(15:27):
you be so bad at emotional economics? Relationships, professional and
personal are transactional, give and take for better or worse.
You invest hoping for a good return, but there's always risk.
I love my mom, and I know she loves me.
Still we've put each other through hell and can't squeeze
out more than a few words on certain topics. It's

(15:47):
going to be hard for her to read this book
and won't be surprised if she puts it on a
shelf for a while or forever. And that's okay. I'm
trying to take ownership of some intense personal things. I've
never been able to talk about things I've said and done,
things that have been said and done to me. I
have a hard time trusting, and I don't easily share
my private thoughts. I'm super protective of my family and

(16:10):
my brand, the businesswoman who grew out of a party
girl and the party girl who still lives inside the businesswoman.
So it scares me to think about what a lot
of people will say. But it's time. There are so
many young women who need to hear this story. I
don't want them to learn from my mistakes. I want
them to stop hating themselves from mistakes of their own.
I want them to laugh and see that they do

(16:31):
have a voice and their own brand of intelligence and
girl fuck fitting in. Thanks for listening to This is Paris.
We love hearing from you, so leave us a review,
Send an email to Paris at iHeartRadio dot com, Leave
a voicemail at eight three three eighty seven Paris, and
follow us at This is Paris podcast by dabs, Follow
Paris at Paris Hilton, and follow Hunter March, host of

(16:54):
Ease Knightly Bob at Hunter March