Maer Roshan - Courtney Comes Clean: The High Life and Dark Depths of Musics Most Controversial Icon

COURTNEY LOVE certainly isnt the only musician to struggle with drugs and alcohol. But her substance use has always been central to her mythology. Perhaps only Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones comes close to surpassing her in this regard. (Keith Richards, she once complained, has taken more drugs than I could ever imagine. But for some reason he comes off like a badass while Im described as some kind of skank.)

Love claims that she was first exposed to drugs in her early childhood, when she was fed LSD by her hippie father, an occasional roadie for the Grateful Dead. Her mother, Linda Carroll, now a therapist in Oregon, wrote in her memoir, Her Mothers Daughter: A Memoir of the Mother I Never Knew and of My Daughter, Courtney Love, that Courtneys early childhood behavior was intractable and filled with rage. Carroll says that from an early age her daughter mounted attacks against her and her younger siblings. In an attempt to quell her daughters furor, she sent Courtney to her first psychiatrist when she was just two years old. Over the next few years a succession of psychiatrists put her on a daily diet of antidepressants. Love claims that her early exposure to those medications set her up for a lifelong addiction. She says that she has spent just three months since her second birthday without taking a drug or a pill.

Though they enjoyed a brief reconciliation over a decade ago, Carroll has not spoken to her daughter for nine years. So when I phoned her last November she was understandably reluctant to talk to me. But after reading my interview with Courtney, she grudgingly relented.

Ive tried my best but Im not the perfect mother, she told me. Courtney has always painted me as this neglectful parent. But Im not the person that she portrays me to be. When she was young Id react to her volatility by distancing myself. Sometimes she really scared me. She interpreted my behavior as coldness. But the truth is I didnt know what to do. I love her very much, but Courtney was never a typical child. Her problems were beyond me.

Even when shes sober, spending time with Courtney Love is an intense experience. But when shes under the influence, shes giddy and high-spirited at one moment and then needy, hostile, or paranoid the next. When she first joined the Seattle music scene in the late eighties, drugs were readily available. Courtney was not immune. The first time someone passed me a line of coke I felt like a superstar, she recalls. But drugs never seemed to blunt her drive or sideline her as they did so many of her peers.

Since then she has gone on to indulge in benzodiazepines, cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin. She has reportedly been in and out of a half dozen rehabs in the past fifteen years. When we met up last summer she had put the hard drugs behind her, but she still relies on a pharmacopeia of prescription pills to modulate her moods. I think of myself as sober, she says, though she admits that her daily regimen of uppers and downers would not pass muster at an AA meeting. When youre used to heroin and cocaine, a few pills doesnt seem like the end of the world. As they say in AA, its about progress, not perfection.

I asked her if she thought of herself as a role model to other people suffering with addictions. She responded with a shrug. Ive never claimed to be anyones role model, she said. Im not Mother Teresa. All Im trying to do is stay alive.

I think a lot of people will be surprised to hear you speak so candidly about drugs. What made you decide to speak to me?

I dont know. I like what you are doing [with The Fix]. And theres a larger point I want to make. Ive been maligned as this drug freak for most of my life, and Im getting sick of it. Thats not the way I live anymore. Obviously, Ive had a lot of issues, but that was years ago! Since then, Ive worked really hard to get myself together, but for some reason Ive been a punch line.

I try to work a good program. I dont do smack. I dont do crack anymore. Ive never even tried Special K or Ecstasy. Ive been tempted, but every time Ive wanted to try X, I was talked out of it. I did do MDMA a very long time agoIve always been an early adopter. But for some reason, I still cant escape this stigma. Even people like Kelly Osbourne feel free to fuck with me. A few nights ago, when she appeared on Fashion Police with Joan Rivers, she even called me a crackhead!

Did she say that you were a crackhead or that you looked like a crackhead?

No. She said that I was a crackhead! Thats what my sister told me, anyway. I didnt see the show. But were talking about fucking Kelly Osbourne, you know? Shes been sober for how long? Less than a year?

The only reason that bitch got to dance with the stars is because Ive saved her life twice, once with CPR and another time with CPR and violenceby which I mean I had to poke her furiously in certain places to wake her up from her coma.

So how did you resolve the Kelly Osbourne emergency?

After Kim Stewart called, I rushed over to help hershe was lying unconscious in the bathroom at Rod Stewarts house. I reached into her massive boobs and pulled out a tennis ball filled with a substantial amount of blow and eighty milligrams of Oxy. I tried to flush everything down the toilet. But there was a person there who begged me to keep the drugs so we could use them later. I was like, No, the drugs must be flushed! The West Hollywood sheriff is outside.