<p><i><br>''I was twenty-six years old and an associate <b>beauty editor</b> at Lucky, one of the <b>top fashion magazines</b> in America. That¿s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was a <b>drug addict</b>, for one. <b>A pillhead</b>. I was also an <b>alcoholic-in-training</b> who guzzled warm Veuve Clicquot after work alone in my boss¿s office with the door closed; a conniving and manipulative <b>uptown doctor-shopper</b>; a salami-and-provolone-puking <b>bulimic</b> who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, </i><i>wobbly, wildly <b>hallucination-prone insomniac</b>; a tweaky self-mutilator; a slutty and self-loathing<b> downtown party girl</b>; and ¿ perhaps most of all ¿ a lonely weirdo. <b>But, you know, I had access to some really fantastic self-tanner.</b>''</i><br><br>By the age of 15, Cat Marnell longed to work in the glamorous world of women''s magazines - but was a