I was a little self-centered gutter punk in the early 1980s and all I wanted to do was diss everybody.
I don’t worry about new young bands. The bounty of life is infinite and so is music and so are opportunities.
I’m very aware of the chemistry. It’s something you can’t take for granted. I’m very thankful for it and I recognise the power of its reality in all of our lives. Some people don’t and it’s a mistake not to because people throw away god-given special chemistry that’s very rare, very hard to find.
I’ve wanted to feel pleasure to the point of insanity. They call it getting high, because it’s wanting to know that higher level, that godlike level. You want to touch the heavens, you want to feel glory and euphoria, but the trick is it takes work. You can’t buy it, you can’t get it on a street corner, you can’t steal it or inject it or shove it up your ass, you have to earn it.
The good news is that by the second year, those cravings were about as half as frequent, and by the third year, half as much again. I’m still a little bent, a little crooked, but all things crooked, I can’t complain. After all those years of all kinds of abuse and crashing into trees at eighty miles an hour and jumping off buildings and living through overdoses and liver disease, I feel better now than I did ten years ago. I might have some scar tissue, but that’s alright, I’m still making progress.
And we used “I love you” like an apology for the things we couldn’t give each other.
She was a source of love and comfort and friendship and companionship and like-mindedness without any of the difficulties of a girlfriend.
But it seems clear to me that on some level, spirits choose their parents, because these potential parents possess certain traits and values that the soon-to-be child needs to assimilate during his or her lifetime.
He’s your best friend, he’s with you day and night, he falls in love, see you next year.
And when you’re eighteen years old, it doesn’t take that much provoking to get you to a place where you can’t stop yourself.
It was all tragic information because it wasn’t me, but I definitely didn’t lose interest and move on.
That was how we wanted to play, majestic and chaotic.
I wanted to be the best at whatever it was that was in front of me.
When you’re at odds with yourself, it’s hard to create. Sometimes the writing process is as easy as opening up the window and letting in the breeze. And sometimes it’s like chiseling away at a block of granite with a pencil.
I was withering away, mentally, spiritually, physically, creatively- everything was fading out.
The horribly ironic cosmic trick of drug addiction is that drugs are a lot of fun when you first start using them, but by the time the consequences manifest themselves, you’re no longer in a position to say, “Whoa, gotta stop that.” You’ve lost that ability, and you’ve created this pattern of conditioning and reinforcement. It’s never something for nothing when drugs are involved.
The stage was microscopic. I could have reached out in either direction and touched Hillel or Flea. We didn’t even get a proper introduction, but people started to take notice as we were plugging in. All the anticipation of the moment hit me, and I instinctively knew that the miracle of manipulating energy and tapping into an infinite source of power and harnessing it in a small space with your friends was what I had been put on this earth to do.
I instinctively knew that the miracle of manipulating energy and tapping into an infinite source of power and harnessing it in a small space with your friends was what I had been put on this earth to do.
But I was stuck in my Groundhog year, waking up every morning to the same gray reality of copping to feel right. I went on another horrible heroin run with Kim and stopped being productive. I was withering away, mentally, spiritually, physically, creatively – everything was fading out. Sometimes doing heroin was nice and dreamy and euphoric and carefree, almost romantic-feeling. In reality, I was dying and couldn’t quite see that from being so deep in my own forest.
I was on my way into a liquor store to buy some paraphernalia, but I was so full of toxins that I had to casually stroll over and vomit into the gutter. As I vomited, I looked down and spotted those three intact balloons full of heroin. “Yeah! Free drugs. I hit the jackpot!” I thought, and fished out the balloons and saved myself a trip downtown.
The minute you get out of your self-centered mind-set, you’re instantly freed of your own pain.