Acid for the Children: A Memoir

by Flea

The greatest fault of humankind belongs to those who think their view of what’s real is the only truth.

seeing others hold hands in a circle, from my separate place. My earliest memories are rooted in an underlying sense that something’s wrong with me, that everyone else is clued into a group consciousness from which I’m excluded. Like something in me is broken. As time passes I become more comfortable with this strange sense of being apart, but it never leaves, and on occasion, I go through phases of intense and debilitating anxiety.

Gnarly fucking panic attacks. Perhaps it is a form of self-loathing, that I’m often unable to find comfort in community.

Am I the only one who’s fucked up like this? Can ...

suburban white-bread neighborhood,

Pain was something to be grateful for, not to be pursued, but inordinately valuable.

I had no idea what the future was like but I knew I didn’t want to wear shoes.

Peace and love, dude. The world is cruel enough as it is. Everything that is not love is cowardice.

The universe gives us the ones we need. And the ones we deserve.

I’d been averse to alcohol since I vomited all over myself that night at the Rainbow with the Kiedis crew, but now I started to love it. The more I drank, the smarter and handsomer I became.

But the intangible spiritual effect the mountains had on me was transformative. All my worries were put into perspective by the enormity of the natural world.

In the years to come, during all-night coked-out blab-fests, even during our most soul-baring moments, I always kinda knew we were full of shit, our brains just looking for a vehicle to get all that chaotic coke energy out; a dog-chasing-its-tail way of emoting that never came to anything real.

The night before Christmas and all through the house Not a creature was stirring ’Cept for a two hits of acid takin’ Eric Dolphy listenin’ motherfucker who had joyously gotten on a wild rant and wouldn’t shut the fuck up and let anyone sleep.

Ain’t no getting high without the comedown.

You’ll feel like an empty shell, in horror of your very existence.

Rest assured you are doing permanent damage to your physiology.

When I was crawling around on the floor looking for rocks of crack and accidentally smoked rat poison, that seemed like the proper thing to do. If a drug maniac screams in the forest and he doesn’t hear his own insane screaming, is he still a drug maniac?

I swear to you, if he went to hell he could convince Beelzebub to let him out, and if he went through heaven’s gates he might convince the little baby Jesus to let him go enjoy a quick little afternoon in hell to get his ya-yas out, as long as he promised to be back by dinnertime.

It’s a fool who is seduced by that which feels good, nothing but a simple fool.

But if punk rock means never having to say you’re sorry, in the long run that makes me no punk rocker.

Let your hurt be the source of the greatest compassion, the deepest love and understanding. You can do anything. Walk through it, don’t numb or hide.