From The Harder They Fall
"There's a whole bunch of alcoholics on both sides of my family, but they function in the sense that everybody kept their jobs. There were no divorces, except for my grandmother, but she's not an alcoholic. She was just a wild child like I was. Our alcoholics all kept their jobs and stayed married....
"The Airplane became famous as the original psychedelic band, but personally, I was more of a drinker. Anything that was around and easy I took--marijuana was very easy to score, but alcohol was my drug of choice. That's the genetic deal going on, where I'm an addict in the sense that anything I like I'm all over. Like flies on shit! And sometimes that works out fine. Right now I'm a painter. That's how I make my living and pay the mortgage....
"In 1970, when I became pregnant with China, I wasn't conscious of addiction. My life was all just sex, drugs and rock and roll. But I'm not a moron, so I knew that what you put into your face goes into your body, and part of your body is what's living in there--the child....
"Life is now fine. My daughter is sober. China came in a couple of weeks after me. Into the same rehab. My sponsor was amused. She had never seen a mother-daughter combination in the same rehab....
"I always felt very close to the story of Alice in Wonderland for a real good reason. If you remember what happened to her, she came from a very straight-laced Episcopalian Republican background, and at some point between twelve and twenty-four--mine at about eighteen or so--you go down the rabbit hole."
Excerpted from:
The Harder They Fall, by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill. Center City, MN: Hazelden.
Photo Credit: Donna E. Natale Planas/Miami Herald
