Anthony Kiedis - Scar Tissue

Im sitting on the couch in the living room of my house in the Hollywood Hills. Its a clear, crisp January day, and from my vantage point, I can see the beautiful expanse known as the San Fernando Valley. When I was younger, I subscribed to the conventional wisdom, shared by everyone who lived on the Hollywood side of the hills, that the Valley was a place where the losers who couldnt make it in Hollywood went to disappear. But the longer Ive lived here, the more Ive come to appreciate the Valley as a soulful and quieter side of the Los Angeles experience. Now I cant wait to wake up and look out on those majestic mountain ranges topped with snow.

But the doorbell interrupts my reverie. A few minutes later, a beautiful young woman enters the living room, carrying an exquisite leather case. She opens it and begins to set up her equipment. Her preparations complete, she dons sterile rubber gloves and then sits next to me on the couch.

Her elegant large glass syringe is handcrafted in Italy. Its attached to a spaghetti-shaped piece of plastic that contains a small micro-filter so no impurities will pass into my bloodstream. The needle is a brand-new, completely sterilized microfine butterfly variant.

Today my friend has misplaced her normal medical tourniquet, so she pulls off her pink fishnet stocking and uses it to tie off my right arm. She dabs at my exposed vein with an alcohol swab, then hits the vein with the needle. My blood comes oozing up into the spaghetti-shaped tube, and then she slowly pushes the contents of the syringe into my bloodstream.

I immediately feel the familiar weight in the center of my chest, so I just lie back and relax. I used to let her inject me four times in one sitting, but now Im down to two syringes full. After shes refilled the syringe and given me my second shot, she withdraws the needle, opens a sterile cotton swab, and applies pressure to my puncture wound for at least a minute to avoid bruising or marking on my arms. Ive never had any tracks from her ministrations. Finally, she takes a little piece of medical tape and attaches the cotton to my arm.

Then we sit and talk about sobriety.

Three years ago, there might have been China White heroin in that syringe. For years and years, I filled syringes and injected myself with cocaine, speed, Black Tar heroin, Persian heroin, and once even LSD. But today I get my injections from my beautiful nurse, whose name is Sat Hari. And the substance that she injects into my bloodstream is ozone, a wonderful-smelling gas that has been used legally in Europe for years to treat everything from strokes to cancer.

Im taking ozone intravenously because somewhere along the line, I contracted hepatitis C from my drug experimentation. When I found out that I had it, sometime in the early 90 s, I immediately researched the topic and found a herbal regimen that would cleanse my liver and eradicate the hepatitis. And it worked. My doctor was shocked when my second blood test came up negative. So the ozone is a preventative step to make sure that pesky hep C virus stays away.

It took years and years of experience and introspection and insight to get to the point where I could stick a needle into my arm to remove toxins from my system as opposed to introducing them. But I dont regret any of my youthful indiscretions. I spent most of my life looking for the quick fix and the deep kick. I shot drugs under freeway off-ramps with Mexican gangbangers and in thousand-dollar-a-day hotel suites. Now I sip vitamin-infused water and seek out wild, as opposed to farm-raised, salmon.

For twenty years now, Ive been able to channel my love for music and writing, and tap into the universal slipstream of creativity and spirituality, while writing and performing our own unique sonic stew with my brothers, both present and departed, in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This is my account of those times, as well as the story of how a kid who was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, migrated to Hollywood and found more than he could handle at the end of the rainbow. This is my story, scar tissue and all.

Id been shooting coke for three days straight with my Mexican drug dealer, Mario, when I remembered the Arizona show. By then, my band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, had one album out, and we were about to go to Michigan to record our second album, but first, Lindy, our manager, had booked us a gig in a steakhouse disco in Arizona. The promoter was a fan of ours and he was going to pay us more than we were worth and we all needed the money, so we agreed to play.

Except I was a wreck. I usually was whenever I went downtown and hooked up with Mario. Mario was an amazing character. He was a slender, wiry, and wily Mexican who looked like a slightly larger, stronger version of Gandhi. He wore big glasses, so he didnt look vicious or imposing, but whenever we shot coke or heroin, hed make his confessions: I had to hurt somebody. Im an enforcer for the Mexican mafia. I get these calls and dont even want to know the details, I just do my job, put the person out of commission and get paid. You never knew if anything he said was true.

Mario lived in an old, eight-story brick tenement downtown, sharing his squalid apartment with his ancient mother, who would sit in the corner of this itty-bitty living room, silently watching Mexican soap operas. Every now and then, thered be outbursts of bickering in Spanish, and Id ask him if we should be doing drugs therehe had a giant pile of drugs and syringes and spoons and tourniquets right on the kitchen table. Dont worry. She cant see or hear, she doesnt know what were doing, hed reassure me. So Id shoot speedballs with granny in the next room.

Mario wasnt actually a retail drug dealer, he was a conduit to the wholesalers, so youd get incredible bang for your buck, but then youd have to share your drugs with him. Which we were doing that day in his tiny kitchen. Marios brother had just gotten out of prison and he was right there with us, sitting on the floor and screaming each time that he tried and failed to find a working vein in his leg. It was the first time that Id ever seen someone who had run out of useful real estate in his arms and was reduced to poking a leg to fix.

We kept this up for days, even panhandling at one point to get some more money for coke. But now it was four-thirty in the morning and I realized we had to play that night. Okay, time to buy some dope, because I need to drive to Arizona today and I dont feel so good, I decided.

So Mario and I got into my cheesy little hunk-of-junk green Studebaker Lark and drove to a scarier, deeper, darker, less friendly part of the downtown ghetto than we were already in, a street that you just didnt even want to be on, except the prices here were the best. We parked and then walked a few blocks until we got to a run-down old building.

Trust me, you dont want to go in, Mario told me. Anything can happen inside there and its not going to be good, so just give me the money and Ill get the stuff.

Part of me was going, Jesus Christ, I dont want to get ripped off right now. He hasnt done it before, but I wouldnt put anything past him. But the other, larger part of me just wanted that heroin, so I pulled out the last $ 40 that I had stashed away and gave it to him and he disappeared into the building.

Id been up shooting coke for so many days straight that I was hallucinating, in a strange limbo between consciousness and sleep. All I could think was that I really needed him to come out of that building with my drugs. I took off my prized possession, my vintage leather jacket. Years earlier, Flea and I had spent all our money on these matching leather jackets, and this jacket had become like a house to me. It stored my money and my keys and, in a little nifty secret pocket, my syringes.