I went through this psychedelic Rolodex of what page works for this problem. I had no choice but to tell her what had happened and how I’d ended up here and what I was prepared to do about it, as long as I didn’t have to stop getting high at that moment. We drove to Waddle’s Park, and I put it all on her, the whole sordid story. I told her that I loved her from the bottom of my heart, and I’d do anything for her, and this was a serious fucking problem that I’d been through before, and there was no easy solution. I told her my plan to drive across the country and wean myself off the cocaine and heroin, so by the time I got to Michigan, I’d be clean. It was a temporary solution to an enormous and life-threatening problem, like putting a Band-Aid onto a severed jugular.
She was not having it. “Fuck you, fuck you, you motherfucker. Where’s my plane ticket? I’m going home. You’re an asshole, you’re a liar, you’re a scumbag.”
“Yeah, I’m all that stuff, but I still think you should stay. I’ve got my stuff, and by the time we get to Michigan, I’ll be done-zo,” I said.
Jaime told me that she’d had suspicions all along and that she had been telling my mom and Flea that maybe I was doing drugs again. Of all the dreadful, self-deprecating, self-loathing, isolated, fucked-up feelings that you get as a drug user, one of the worst is having your girlfriend conspire with your best friends and your family on your behalf. It’s the ultimate in humiliation, knowing that your best friend and your girlfriend are talking about you behind your back because you’re using. Then your family’s in on it, and you feel pathetic. You know they feel bad for you and want to help you, and it’s just like agghhh, stay away, don’t even bother. I don’t need your help, I don’t want your help. Don’t even talk to each other, please!
Finally, she agreed to take the trip with me. I don’t think she realized how disconcerting it would be for her to be in a car with me getting loaded every ten minutes until the stuff ran out. We left California and got to the desert, and I was having to make all these stops, not sure if I should be getting high in front of her or if I should hide it. I was getting more comfortable with the idea of her watching me get loaded, but it was still not my favorite thing in the world, because the physical act of ingesting the drugs is so ghoulish.
We kept driving and driving, and at one point I was too high to drive, so she took the wheel. We were listening to Nirvana Unplugged and Mazzy Star, and she was crying her eyes out. Then it was nighttime and we were in the mountains of Arizona. The road was slick and icy and dangerous, and out of nowhere, what looked like a gigantic super-elk, bigger than the whole car, leaped across the road. Jaime swerved to avoid it and we were fine, but I looked at the road sign and realized that the town was where my grandmother had driven off the road to her death. I took it as an omen, as if the spirit of that elk was saying to me, “Wake up, motherfucker, because you’re dying.”
That wasn’t the first time I had experienced interactions with spirits while I was doing drugs. One time during this era of relapsing, I came back to my house in the middle of the night, pockets full of drugs, ready to be the mad scientist. I was fiddling through my pockets to get my keys out when I heard this crazy scream. I figured it was somebody I knew who was on the balcony screaming at me like a crazy witch. But I didn’t see anybody. I stepped back from the house and said, “Hello? Anybody there?” Again I heard that horrifying scream. I looked up on the gable above my bedroom and saw a giant hawk sitting there, staring right down at me, screaming his lungs out in this tortured human voice.
I thought that this guy did not want me to do what I was doing. And if I didn’t stop it, I would probably die. This would happen periodically, once a month or so: There’d be a bird, sometimes an owl, screaming at me at the top of its lungs when I came home on these furious misadventures of drug use. When you’re using drugs, you’re driven by this mystical black energy, a force inside you that just won’t quit. And the weaker you get, the more you feed into that energy, and the more it fucks with you. When your spirit becomes dark and your lifestyle becomes dark, your existence is susceptible to infiltration by dark spirits. I’ve seen it so many times with addicts. You can see that they’re controlled by dark energy, the way they look, their appearance, their voice, their behavior, it’s not them.
I remember when Hillel died and I was just getting clean, I had a dream lying in my bed next to Ione. It was one of those horribly vivid half-awake, half-asleep dreams. All of this terrifying energy came flying into my bedroom along the top of my ceiling. There were demons and goblins and ghouls and creatures, a full-assortment platter of scary motherfuckers. I could tell that they were coming to fuck with me, to say, “Okay, we did our job on your friend, now we’ve come for you.” At first I was like “I’m not having it, you guys, you came to the wrong house.” As I was putting up this psychic fight, the granddaddy of all dark forces, this vast dark angel, came flying in and encompassed the entire ceiling of my room. But I wasn’t open to them. “No, no, no. Be gone. Bye-bye.” That was the beginning of my getting clean.
I noted the message from the elk, and we drove on and found a motel. I kept getting high in the room, and Jaime was beside herself. A lot of her pain and suffering were coming to the surface. She took a bath and locked herself in the bathroom and stayed in there for three hours. I was getting loaded and doing an art project with reflective letters I’d bought at some truck stop, and periodically knocking on the door, saying, “Jaime, are you all right?” After a while, I started to worry. When she finally opened the door, I saw that she had taken a razor blade and carved an “A” into her arm. That whole episode was scary, and even though I was loaded, I was starting to come to grips with the fact that I had created a lot of pain and suffering around me, not just within me.
The next day we got up and drove into Flagstaff. Neither of us had really slept. I kept getting high. Jaime was sad and pissed off and confused and tortured by all of this, so I went into a Native American arts-and-crafts jewelry store and bought a couple of matching rings. In my mind, it was a promise-to-get-better-and-be-together ring. I think she may have taken it as an engagement ring, but I was desperate and lost and grasping for straws. Deep down inside, I loved this girl a lot, and I wanted nothing other than to be with her, but I couldn’t stop using.
We got back in the car and drove to the end of New Mexico and checked in to a motel. I was down to my last balloon of heroin, and we’d been gone only two days. The coke had long since run out, but I was more concerned about having enough heroin to get through the next few days. Still, I announced, “This is it. This is the last time I’m going to be getting high.” She was so sick of the whole drama. I got every last grain of that stuff into my body and didn’t even get high. I tried to sleep that night, and the next day I awoke to the fucking hell that is heroin withdrawal. I was shaking and feverish, and we still had a long way to go. Jaime became the one and only driver, a tiny, beautiful blond princess behind the wheel of this huge truck. I pushed the seat back, got on the floor, crawled inside a sleeping bag, drank a whole bottle of NyQuil, and went into a raging dope kick, sweating and shaking and fainting, just out of it. And Jaime kept driving. She drove for hours and hours and hours while I was in this fever inside of this sleeping bag. She drove straight through to Michigan. Once again, I was home for the holidays with a raging heroin habit.
Chapter 12
Over the Wall
It was hard to hide my drug problem when I got to my mom’s house. For one, I looked like a walking skeleton. Besides, Jaime had already voiced her suspicions about my drug use to my mom, who then had talked to my dad.
“Anthony was having stomach problems when I was out there for the Stones shows in October,” Blackie told my mom. “He had to go out in the middle of the night and get Pepto-Bismol.”
“Hello! What are you talking about?” Peggy said. “He’s using.”
Blackie always seemed to be in denial about my drug use. It was probably too painful for him to deal with, so he carried on as if eve
rything was okay.
Now the cat was out of the bag. I settled into the comfort of being home. I knew I had to start going to meetings and eating lots and lots of food. I was okay with the idea of not getting high, but again I didn’t recognize how serious my problem was. The measures I was taking to deal with it were light in the loafers. It’s a good start to go to a meeting and get the truth on the table, but it’s another thing to think that’s going to work. You have to go back in full force and work the twelve steps and do the whole nine yards, you can’t just show up and be a spectator and expect to receive recovery through osmosis. I was dabbling.
But we had a lovely Christmas. I tricked out my mom’s house with a hot tub. My sister Julie had started dating a guy named Steve Simmons, and we were all so happy that she’d met a guy who dug her and treated her well that we spoiled them with lavish gifts. Especially when you’re coming off a long drug run and you’ve been distant from your family, you feel obligated to make up for it with deluxe material goods.
Jaime was even able to relax a bit. The shock and horror started to subside, and I wasn’t getting high, so I got a little bit of my sex drive back, and things got more joyful. She began to look ahead to a brighter future for us. When our relationship was working, it was tons of fun, because we were best friends and we laughed about everything. Jaime had a way of defusing my seriousness and was a great companion. How wonderful was it to be in love with a sexy, sweet girl who also loved basketball?
On Christmas Eve we drove the Bronco over to Blackie’s. I had arranged for a giant ribbon to be placed over this rocking truck. Blackie answered the door, grumbling that we were late, and I told him to come out and see his present. He was befuddled, so I threw the keys in his hand and he got nervous. Then he stepped down the path from his front door to the driveway, and he saw that perfect Michigan winter car, and my poor dad seized up. He looked at the car and looked at the keys and said, “No! No! That can’t be,” trying to hold back the tears. It was really touching.
Christmas morning belonged to Mom. It was her time of the year; the whole house was done up in Christmas fashion. She had the old-school stockings hanging above the fireplace, with a stocking for Jaime, of course. There was the classic golden retriever, and the snow was falling outside, and my sister Jenny, the baby angel of the family, was into all of it. It was a magical time.
I came down at seven-thirty in the morning and started the fire. Under that towering tree, there were more presents than should be allowed by law. The first thing we did was go for the stockings, which had twenty individually wrapped gifts from my mother, things she had amassed all year long.
Then we opened the presents. My job was to deliver them, and people were getting jewelry and fine suits and sweaters and electronic stuff and blah, blah, blah. Steve Simmons had walked into an idyllic situation, because the love and generosity were flowing. The dog had a ribbon around his head, the fire was blazing, various delectable foodstuffs were constantly coming out of the oven, Johnny Mathis and Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were on the stereo. So this crazy guy Steve, who was the new love of my sister’s life, stopped everything and said, “I just want to take a minute to say that this has been the best Christmas of my life. You’ve all been incredibly generous and given me so much . . .” We were thinking, “Yeah, he’s right. I guess we really have lavished stuff on this guy.” And he continued, “But I’m not quite done asking you for something.”
The room got silent. “Geez, what more does this guy want?” He said, “I’m going to have to take this moment to ask for your daughter and sister’s hand in marriage.” He reached over to Julie and said, “Julie, with the support of this family in this room, will you marry me?” Everyone started crying. I couldn’t believe this guy was busting this incredible proposal right there in front of the whole family. It was the ultimate capper to the morning, and Julie accepted.
After a few days, it was time to fly to Pennsylvania. Jaime was thrilled to give her dad the F-150 truck, which was a badge of honor in his community. Jaime’s parents were liberal enough to let us sleep in her old bedroom, with them down the hall. I felt so awkward about having sex with her in that house. She was a go-getter fireplug, and she’d rip off my clothes and throw me down on the bed, and I’d be whispering, “I can hear them in the kitchen. We can’t make too much noise.” She didn’t care, she just wanted to be loved.
From Pennsylvania we flew down to the Caribbean for some R&R. I had called my travel agent and asked her for the most pristine spot on the islands. It was an exorbitant amount of money per week, but with everything that I’d been through the past six months, I didn’t care. I wanted to go to the warmest, most beautiful, most relaxing place I could find. Lying in the sun and swimming and eating and exploring and having sex were my idea of getting healthy, and it worked. We had a little house right on the beach, with no television or telephone to distract us, just hundreds of acres of tropical paradise. I needed that. Even after a week of gorging myself on lobsters and grilled fish and gobs of dessert and being Mr. Exercise Guy, my clothes were still falling off me. But eventually, I got my strength back.
Now it was time to face the music back in L.A. It was difficult coming face-to-face with Flea again, but I’d much rather see him knowing that I’ve changed the direction of my compass toward sobriety than to run into him when I’m loaded or when the compass is stuck on “Stupid.” When push came to shove, Flea was incredibly supportive of me. I came back with some shame and embarrassment and regret for having disappointed the whole operation, but we’d been through it so many times that it had become customary. Flea is the type of friend who can be off doing his own thing, but when the shit hits the fan, he’ll be there for me. At moments like this, he’s nonjudgmental and accepting of the chaos. I don’t feel like “Oh shit, now I have to go get an earful. This guy’s gonna condemn me.” He’s like “Dude, I’m really sorry you had to go through that. I’m glad that you’re alive, and let’s go party,” meaning let’s go write music.
Dave stayed sober through all my troubles. He understood the mechanics of alcoholism, so he was incredibly supportive. He was probably hurting over the experience and bumming out on it, but he never once subjected me to any negativity because of my behavior. It was uncanny how loving and forgiving and tolerant they were all willing to be.
Now that I was back on my feet, our first priority was finishing the album. So we booked the studio for the end of January, and right before that, Flea and I took a trip to Taos, New Mexico, to write and play music and figure out the rest of the album. We rented an authentic adobe villa, and I holed up in my bedroom and wrote. Then Flea would take out his acoustic bass or a guitar, and we’d work on the song together. We were there only four or five days, but each day we finished a new song.
Flea had stepped up to the plate in my absence, even contributing lyrics to the album. He wrote the bulk of the lyrics to “Transcending,” which was his tribute to River. “Pea” was his attempt at flying his humble flag. But he also wrote the intro to “Deep Kick” and the vocal melodies to the verses for “My Friends” and “Tearjerker.” He was supplying me with a lot more information than I’d been used to receiving, but I was open to it, and it was a necessity, because I’d been so disengaged from the creative process.
Taos was productive and fun. We even went up to the mountain one day and skied through a blizzard. There’s a peculiar thing that happens every time you get clean. You go through this sensation of rebirth. There’s something intoxicating about the process of the comeback, and that becomes an element in the whole cycle of addiction. Once you’ve beaten yourself down with cocaine and heroin, and you manage to stop and walk out of the muck, you begin to get your mind and body strong and reconnect with your spirit. The oppressive feeling of being a slave to the drugs is still in your mind, so by comparison, you feel phenomenal. You’re happy to be alive, smelling the air and seeing the beauty around you and being able to fuck again. You have a choice of what to do. So you ex
perience this jolt of joy that you’re not where you came from, and that in and of itself is a tricky thing to stop doing. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that every time you get clean, you’ll have this great new feeling.
Cut to: a year later, when you’ve forgotten how bad it was and you don’t have that pink-cloud sensation of being newly sober. When I look back, I see why these vicious cycles can develop in someone who’s been sober for a long time and then relapses and doesn’t want to stay out there using, doesn’t want to die, but isn’t taking the full measures to get well again. There’s a concept in recovery that says “Half-measures avail us nothing.” When you have a disease, you can’t take half the process of getting well and think you’re going to get half well; you do half the process of getting well, you’re not going to get well at all, and you’ll go back to where you came from. Without a thorough transformation, you’re the same guy, and the same guy does the same shit. I kept half-measuring it, thinking I was going to at least get something out of this deal, and I kept getting nothing out of it.
We went back in the studio, and by the end of February, I had knocked out my vocals. We’d gone from getting nothing done for months to shazam! finishing the vocals. After I completed my last vocal, I was so jazzed about being done that I thought, “You might have to go get high.” It was the same celebratory cognition that I’d had with Hillel after Uplift Mofo. I was a fucking broken tape. I had to rush into the bathroom at the recording studio right after this idea, because the thought of going downtown and copping was making my bowels churn in anticipation of getting high. Then I said good-bye, told everyone I’d see them in a week or so, and bolted for the darkness of downtown to start up the unstoppable chain of madness one more time.
Scar Tissue Page 36