started to read

After months of waiting for the right time to start "The Heroin Diaries" by Nikki Sixx, I just jumped in. I figured there wasn't ever going to be a good time and since it is put together in way that you can read one page or one entry, its easy to pick up and put down. If you can do it, that is. I've already read about 50 pages since I started yesterday and its the most amazing book I've just about seen. I've never seen a memoir like it. Filled with pages as black as the heroin that held Nikki hostage for so long, and saturated with red spatter like oxygenated blood.

Addiction sucks. Its something I know too much of all too well. Hurt by my own excesses but hurt more by those in my family. Growing up with one addict was unbearable. Living with two full-blown addicts was my hell on earth. Not one day went by that I didn't hide in my room from alcohol, yelling, disappointment, the thud of drunks falling down the stairs in the middle of the night and not having a normal life where I could have the company of friends in my own house. The worst part about addiction is that when its over, it never is really over. Its an hourly, daily, weekly struggle to keep going in the face of one's demons, past, inadequacies or whatever weakness. Even when you're clean and sober, the past is still the past and sometimes, that's the most difficult part to recover from. Not the drugs, not the alcohol. Healing the wounds caused by actions, words, non-actions, words not spoken... That's the trick.

Nikki says that his book is meant to help anyone brave enough to pick it up and walk through his hell, even if its just one person. I can't imagine having that much courage to stand naked with my entire soul bared for the whole world to see. But isn't that the strangest? Its okay for someone in their addiction to shoot drugs with dirty needles, get so drunk that you puke in front of strangers, get beligerent and disrespect others after too much whiskey, but being honest and speaking of one's shortfalls with respect to drugs and alcohol, well, that's just too much. Its all backwards in this society.

Telling people to fuck off, this is me, take it or leave it. You don't have to be fucked up to party and have fun. What could be more rock and roll than that?