Epilogue: An Amends for Reddy James

In the summer of '97, during Raze's second album tour, when I was in what I thought to be the lowest depths of my addiction (though I would, over the course of the next decade and a half, continue to prove myself wrong), I often thought to myself, Life is good. We were playing stadiums around the world; my wife was pregnant with our daughter; and I was getting paid (handsomely) to do the thing I loved most with my closest friends in the world. I thought it over and over, like I was trying to cast a spell. Life is good, life is good, life is good.

But life in addiction is never good. It's not always bad, either—it's just not anything. Every feeling, positive or negative, is only a chemical deception, a chemical recoil. I often told myself, in those years, that I was living a "bigger life" than other people. My successes were so outlandish, and my failures and debasements were so torturous, so public, that I convinced myself I had "more life" under my belt than others—an egotistical delusion I used to soothe myself when I had yet again damaged my reputation or let somebody down. In reality, all that "life" I'd accrued was entirely flat. There was no depth to it, nothing in it to explore.

I knew I was lucky, but no matter how well the world treated me, I never felt like I belonged to it. I was tormented by the suspicion that I wasn't "really there" and that life wasn't really happening to me, at least not the way it seemed to be happening to other people. Other people, I imagined, experienced life with a sense of enduring meaning, experiencing feelings like pleasure, triumph, and love, whereas I only ever seemed to feel anger about how unthinking and sheep-like those people were and how cruel our world could be, or how cruel we could be to each other even when we loved each other, or maybe especially then—and underneath it, I was angry at myself for being so abnormal that I'd scared off everyone I'd ever loved, including both my parents before the age of ten.

Drugs helped alleviate the pain of disconnection, but they didn't actually bring me into the world. I seeped down through the earth's face like rain, soared above it like Icarus, tore over it like fire—but I never entered it as I was, feet on the ground, at my right size.

Since getting sober twelve years ago, I've taken every imaginable route to healing with the hope of living a right-sized life, trying to quiet that lifelong feeling of dis-ease. I've studied Freud and Jung and the attachment theorists; done years of IFS with my therapist; worked the steps like a zealot; gone on fasts and silent retreats; done sunrise yoga on the beach; recommitted myself to music; eaten only greens, or only meat; given away everything I owned; looked for God in church and temple and nature and the people I met. For all that seeking, the most useful thing I've learned to do is be honest. These days, I am 100% honest about who I am, what I've done, and what I feel, and I seek out people who do the same. Shared vulnerability is the fastest, most tried-and-true way to feel like a real member of the human race. But no matter what I do, there will always be a part of me that feels like I don't belong to this world, like I am fundamentally alone and rejected—like even the hills and trees, if they could know me, would turn away their soft green faces. The challenge is not to make that feeling go away by any means necessary—that was the kind of thinking that hooked me on drugs in the first place. The challenge is to live with it.

One of the hardest parts of sobriety is, after however-many years of living in a fog, turning a lucid eye toward everything you've lost in the meantime. I've lost so many friends and loved ones, some to their own drug abuse, some because they couldn't deal with mine. I've lost even my memories of them. So many amazing experiences—playing our first stadium, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, getting married, the birth of my daughter—I remember only hazily, as though through a film.

What I remember best is Reddy.

Images of that time, those teenage years before drugs fundamentally changed my body and mind, when Reddy came like a medic to pull me from the profoundness of my hurt, come before me with so much color: Reddy's muddy green Reeboks on his father's dashboard; the wood paneling of his bedroom; his basement's mildewy smell; smoking weed under trees in his backyard while it rained; the pain in my hands playing his strat for the first time; jumping trains to San Francisco where our souls took shape listening to Dead Kennedys, sleeping in the homes of strangers from the punk scene, entering that structureless family. Those years with him were my real childhood. The first 14 years of my life were full of adult experiences and adult challenges. With Reddy, I could finally play.

And I could finally fight. I fought with Reddy like I'd never fought with anybody, and we both loved it. In the early Raze days, those intimate nights at Mabuhay Gardens, we developed this little Abbott and Costello routine before we played "Ceiling Prayer." We were hardly 17 then. Reddy would look at me and ask:

Then he'd charge me, growling, "You idiot!… I oughta!..." and grip me by the shirt. I'd grip him back. Then we'd fight, right there on stage. The intensity of the fight depended on our moods. Some nights it was all in good fun, but if we really were pissed at each other (which we often were, and for the dumbest reasons imaginable) we'd get into it. On one occasion, Reddy punched me so hard I spit blood into the audience. Another time, we took out Wally's crash symbol. We'd end up locked together like rams, sneering, teeth to teeth, and it was from that position, sweaty heads pressed together hard enough to hurt, that we'd start the battling, back-and-forth riffs of "Ceiling Prayer." Somewhere behind us, Petyr and Wally would drop in. They could have been on another planet for all I knew. That song was always about Reddy and I, everything we felt for each other and didn't know how to get out.

As I got older, I would come to miss those fights at the Mab. Over time our anger would mature, taking on a permanent shape, one that we couldn't seem to break out of no matter how hard we tried, but back then, we were never really angry. I mean, I was definitely angry—I was pissed. After everything I'd experienced as a kid—my parents' drug-fueled dysfunction, bouncing around as a ward of the state—landing at 14 in my uncle's rigid, religious home in the rural quiet of Northern California was a death sentence for my spirit. I had no language for my hurt, no outlet for my fury. Instead, I got my hands on weed and quaaludes, sought affection from slimy adults, got into fights, got suspended, filled my life with all manner of bad news, staring out at the Northern California farmland with nothing left inside me but desperation.

Then, like that, Reddy came bounding out of the fields. I needed him so badly then, it was like my heart had willed him from the grasses.

So, yes, I was angry—but not at you, Reddy.

I remember seeing you for the first time. You were bumbling around my uncle's pastures like an idiot. What were you doing out there? He sent me with his gun to get rid of you. He thought you were a vagrant. "Hey!" I shouted, trying to sound scary, trying to get you to run off. You just waved your hand high above your head as if we'd been looking for each other.

You came into my life, which had nothing to hold it in, and you held it in. Thank you for that. I was going nowhere, fast. Just when I was scheduled to crash-land into the dirt, you descended upon me with that stringy smile and a beat-up stratocaster and gave me direction.

And then we went somewhere, fast. We met at 14; by 21, we were on an international tour. It would have been a lot to handle for anybody, but especially for me. I didn't know how to handle it. I was terrified to lose it. I couldn't let myself feel any of it, so I numbed out every way to Sunday.

I'm sorry for the jealous, destructive person I became. I accused you of taking over the band, of intentionally discrediting me. Now, I see that I discredited myself through my drug abuse. I was the last guy you'd want to strike a deal with, the last guy you'd want to rely on for anything. I'm sorry for every rehearsal I missed and every performance I delayed. I'm sorry for the threat I posed to your livelihood, your reputation, your other relationships, your physical safety. I'm sorry for all the times I made you afraid, including the times I made you afraid for me.

I'm sorry for a million little things. I'm sorry about your car. I'm sorry for some really big things, too. I'm sorry about Wally. I should have been there. I just couldn't handle it. I felt too responsible. If you held me responsible—and I understand, now, if you did—I just wasn't ready to see the blame on your face.

I want you to know that, when I remember you, I don't remember the screaming matches or the betrayals or the day you finally sailed out of my storm for good. I just remember playing with you at the Mab. Those early years, when we were a powder keg that hadn't yet exploded, when I walked through the world knowing I had somebody to hold me in… man, they were great. I never knew how to tell you what you meant to me, though I'm sure you felt it. I'm sure you felt how desperately I clung to you. I'm sure my intensity was frightening at times. But you were never scared of me. That was special. I'd scared off everybody else.

I don't want anything. I just want you to know I'm sorry. Reddy, do you forgive me?