Holly Madison reveals hell with Hugh Hefner in Playboy Mansion

Holly Madison's Playboy Hell: How Hugh Hefner tried to ply me with drugs, berate my appearance and why I haven't spoken to the 'creepy' octogenarian in four years Holly, 35, claims:

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• Hugh Hefner offered her a Quaalude when they met in 2001
• She became one of Hefner's seven official girlfriends later that year
• Describes life at the Playboy Mansion as a 'living hell' in new book
• Says rooms were stocked with 'Johnson's Baby Oil, Vaseline and Kleenex'

She was Holly Sue Cullen back then, a girl from a small town in Alaska, and she’d come to Los Angeles to get famous. How, exactly, she didn’t know, but not long after arriving, she was spotted by a friend of Hugh Hefner’s and invited to a party at the Playboy Mansion.

She was 22-years-old, a uni dropout who’d picked up extra shifts at Hooters to make ends meet. Soon she’d become Holly Madison, one of the most ­famous Playmates ever.

“I felt like Playboy represented a key to the glamorous life — that it would be a stepping stone,” Madison told The New York Post. “Everyone just made the Playmates sound like a fun little sorority.”

In 2000, Hugh Hefner and the Playboy empire already seemed like a toothless relic. Yet as Madison writes in her new book, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and

Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, life behind the mansion walls was darker than she could have imagined.

“I had this image in my mind of being this liberated woman who was really adventurous,” Madison says. “I was not as sophisticated as I thought I was.”

Hef’s bedroom

After that first invite, Madison became a regular at the mansion, and when one of Hef’s seven girlfriends left, Madison saw her chance. She asked Hef if she could tag along the next time he took his Playmates clubbing in LA — something he did twice a week.

He was happy to oblige.

That first night was devastating. Madison was told by an ­alpha Playmate named Vicky to stick close to Hef. So, back in the VIP room, behind velvet ropes and security guards, this gaggle of 20-something girls drank and danced and fawned all over an old man who was hard of hearing and had no rhythm.

“‘Oh my God,’ I thought, genuinely mortified for him,” she writes. “Had no one told him how silly he looked? I felt a bit sorry for him dancing around like the punch line to a bad joke. Back then, he seemed like such a sweet man to me, and this felt unnecessarily cruel.”

Then Hef approached her, bent over and opening one hand to reveal a bunch of pills nestled in an old tissue.

“Would you like a Quaalude?” he asked.

Madison was mortified. “No thanks,” she said. “I don’t do drugs.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Hef said. “Usually I don’t approve of drugs, but you know, in the ’70s they used to call these pills ‘thigh openers.’ ”

Not so happy family ... Hugh Hefner with girlfriends Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson in 2008.

Looking back, she writes, that was the moment she should have left, never to return: “It doesn’t get much creepier than that.”

But it does. Madison drank the night away, mixing vodka and champagne, in part because she knew what was coming: Even though the Playmates insisted that they didn’t actually have sex with Hef, she didn’t believe them.

“I knew when I accepted the invitation to go out with them that I was getting into something racy,” Madison says today. “Even though I knew these girls probably had sex with him, it seemed very humorous and light.”

In the limo, on the way home, one of the girls leaned over to Madison and told her that after a night spent clubbing, all of the girls were expected to party with Hef in his bedroom. Madison was broke and about to be evicted from her apartment, and she felt like she had no choice — being one of Hef’s girlfriends, having the chance to live with him at the mansion, all hinged on what she did next.

Star power... Melissa Taylor, television personality and model Holly Madison, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Crystal Harris and Anna Berglund in 2009. 

So she went with it, following the girls up the enormous staircase. First, they all washed their feet in the bathroom, and then changed, per Hefner’s puzzling preference, into matching flannel pink PJs. Madison was led into Hef’s bedroom, and here the illusion of glamour and decadence fell apart.

“As Tina led me into the bedroom, I stumbled over and weaved through massive piles of junk covering the floor,” she writes. “Ceiling-high piles of videotapes, stuffed animals, art and gifts littered the room. It was like an episode of Hoarders.”

The room was dark, illuminated only by the glow of porn playing on two huge TVs.

“The girlfriends, in various stages of undress, were sitting in a semicircle at the edge of the bed — some kneeling, some standing, some lying down,” she writes. “I sat myself on the edge of the bed — unsure of what to do next. I leaned into Vicky ... ‘Maybe if I hide behind her,’ I thought, ‘I’ll go unnoticed for the night.’ ”

Living nightmare: Holly Madison (right) poses with fellow bunny Sheila Levell and Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion May 6, 2003 in Holmby Hills, California