In an interview with GQ, Aerosmith’s legendary singer Steven Tyler talked about the world of drugs and he revealed what he learned from using them.
He said:
“Well, we would do cocaine to go up, quaaludes to come down. We would drink and then snort some coke until we thought we were straight. But that’s not true – you’re just drunk and coked out…
“You have a shot of Jack Daniel’s and you play Madison Square Garden and you get offstage and you go clubbing with Jimmy Page – come on!
“After two encores in Madison Square Garden, you don’t go and play shuffleboard. Or Yahtzee, you know? You go and rock the fuck out. You’ve done something that you never thought you could, and you actually think that you are a super-being…
“It was more or less the thing to do, back then as well. I don’t think there were any bands that even knew what sober was.”
But:
“[Drugs] absolutely work for a while. But then things go wrong. You become addicted, it’s something you do all the time, and suddenly it starts influencing your greatness.
“What happens with using is: It works in the beginning, but it doesn’t work in the end. It takes you down. There’s nothing but jail, insanity, or death.
“I was just an angry fuck when I got high. And holding on to anger is like grabbing on to a hot coal with the intent of throwing it to someone else. You’re the one that gets burned.
“The experiences I had, and that learning process, was something I cherish forever. It’s like looking for Alice and chasing the rabbit down the hole. Your thinking is around everything that you witnessed in Wonderland.
“It’s not a bad thing – if you can write about it and make sense about it with music, then you’re golden. But that got taken away from me. I’d get so high that I couldn’t be creative anymore.
“But these moments, I don’t regret them. It was the greatest time. I’m just happy I survived, crawled out of the hole.”
See more News