Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

We'll have these people hang out with us while we're doing our touring, and talk to them and let them speak their piece to the world.

I never really thought in terms of the concept of being a rock star - being around people like that just seemed like normal day-in-the-life stuff to me. Those were just the surroundings I grew up in.

I knew there was never anyone to blame when people get into drugs. They're always responsible for their own behavior, and it's not the dealer, it's not the friend, it's not the bad influence, it's not the childhood.

That's a spiritual lifestyle, being willing to admit that you don't know everything and that you were wrong about some things. It's about making a list of all the people you've harmed, either emotionally or physically or financially, and going back and making amends. That's a spiritual lifestyle. It's not a fluffy ethereal concept.

I'm an artist and I get very attached to my own little ditties.

...for the first time in my life, a voice went off in my head:'You have no power over what happens in your life. Drugs dictate exactly what you're going to do. You've taken your hands off the steering wheel, and you're going wherever the drug world takes you.' That had never changed. The feeling would well up inside of me, and no matter how much I loved my girl or my band or my friends or my family, when that siren song 'Go get high now' started playing in my head, I was off.