“I grew up on a reservation because my father was Cherokee....

“I grew up on a reservation because my father was Cherokee. The only thing he believed in was destroying things. When I was five years old, he sat me down on the couch and said: ‘You’re going to become a man the same way I did.’ First he made me smoke a Camel unfiltered cigarette. Then he gave me a shot of ‘corn stalk hooch.’ It’s liquor made from the silky stuff at the top of corn. Most adults can’t handle it, let alone a kid. It took me a whole day to finish. Every time I threw it up, he’d pour another one. My mistake was that I kept trying to smoke the cigarette first. You’ve got to drink the liquor first so it numbs your throat.”