Holy Shit, It took me forever to find this fucking site! What is it 2:30 in the morning, BLASTED!

I just finished reading the book earlier this evening (actually this morning). I hadn’t been this rapped up in a book since finishing the last Harry Potter. Yes, I can be a Harry Potter geek and love the Chili Peppers at the same time. Which is saying something because up until this last summer I busted my ass to get thru text books? Of which, aren’t too far off from the subject at hand. I’ve spent the last few years of my sobriety studying to be a CADC, Certified, Alcohol, and Drug Counselor. So Scar Tissue was of interest to me on many levels, I’m a fan and also a recovering addict. It took me a while to get thru the first 8-10ish chapters. I had to put it down and walk away. I turn my head at gory violence in movies, I don’t check out a car accident as I drive by, and I didn’t enjoy reading about someone suffering routinely because the pain was all to familiar. I’m going to be a drug counselor because it’s one of the things I know the most about, now street wise and text book wise. I’m 24 and I’ve spent literally half my life living in it. I believe God doesn’t give you knowledge like this for no reason.
I believe Anthony Kiedis understands this truth, probably more clearly than I do. Anybody who has a need to understand addiction should read this book. I start my internship in less than a week, and I wanted to read it to try and get my head into it. I thought about reading my old diaries and poems and shit I wrote when I was going thru all the bullshit I went thru in order to get back into the state of mind I used to be in. I’m glad to say I’ve lost touch with how my mind used to work then. Since it was way too fucking scary to read my own shit, I was afraid I’d get to jacked up in my own person hell, that I’d become too immersed in it and wouldn’t be able to help someone else authentically. I’ve dealt with my demons, but I didn’t feel the need to visit them and reminisce.
The book was a great and meaningful alternative. Totally easy read, it was like he was speaking directly to me in my language. The only disturbing part in that is there’s no actual dialogue and I found myself with this internal dialogue that wouldn’t quit. Kept me up at night. Kinda like now, Damn it. All in all it was a good thing, however I found myself feeling guilty reading Anthony’s sexual rendezvous as my husband’s looking at me like what the fuck are you smiling about. I’d stop reading for a bit, come back to it and be like Okay! Who’s naked now? It was also interesting for me to try and remember what Shows I had and hadn’t seen, whether I was fucked up watching, and was he all trashed. When I thought about it, the only show I made it to I was sober, and it was my first time going to a concert straight. I didn’t suck. Being sober, I mean, of course the show was awesome. June 2000, Raleigh NC. The first concert I ever bought tickets to I was 13…14? Lollapalooza in Chicago, Chili Peppers were on the venue and I had gotten grounded for sneaking on the train to go to the Taste of Chicago. My mom didn’t fuck around, if I hopped out a window while grounded to cause a ruckus she’d call the police and they’d bring my ass home. I was always pissed I missed that show.
ANYWAY, you’d think I was writing my biography. I think the book is an amazing example of what God can do with our lives once we realize He is in control and we choose to let Him direct our lives in order to do His will. Spend me prayers as I go forward with His plan for my life and try to help those still suffering. Some days I wonder whether I really want to enter that world of rehab again on the other end being the helper. I know as well as anyone it’s experience that changes the person. Maybe it’s vein to believe I’m different, but I swear I feel I was able to learn from other peoples experiences as well as my own. That’s how I was able to straighten out so young. I was arrested at seventeen with possession and after being hospitalized the second time with court mandated AA, and NA meetings, my ears started to open. I was listening to people from all walks of life tell their fucked up stories that maybe diverse, but all with a very common cycle and final destination. It’s sobriety, jail, or death. These are the inevitable ends, and the means to this end were always the same.
This is accurately portrayed in the book as well, especially the last chapter. I probably connected so well to this book because he and I are both working on finishing our 12th step passing on the information to the addict still suffering.
I don’t know if I could be a counselor forever, but my pipe dream is to open my own clinic. One that’s not so clinicy. My plan is to predominantly work with adolescents. I think a powerful way to reach their soul is by using all this media, T.V., Movies, Books, music that they’re bombarded with any way in order to reach them. For example, BLOW is one of the most amazing movies that depict addiction/ drug lifestyle. It takes you from the farms of Columbia to the euphoric good times before the shit hits the fan, to the lonely poetic man sitting in his jail sell. It also has great extra footage on the DVD educating you on what happens to the brain, and hearing interviews with George Jung himself.
He describes drug use as a lottery with the worst odds and everything to lose. Or something to that effect. After reading Scar Tissue I now have another resource of which I can use that I think people want to read. If anyone has the means, motive, and mojo to help me out in my quest for a clinic in the Chicago land area or feed back from this incredibly long book review please e-mail me at fletch33@comcast.net .

Thanks for devoting time to read this.

Shanti, JF

BACK

HOME