I was starting to come to grips with the fact that I had created a lot of pain and suffering around me, not just within me.

It is difficult to recognize true love, the one which you feel for the other person, when for years the girls, even more than one per night, after concerts would sneak in our beds and were willing to do everything - group sex also - just to stay with Anthony Kiedis and the Red Hot.

She wasn't about to go down that road herself, which was a testament to her spiritual awakening and her commitment to sanity. It was a real blessing that she didn't follow me, because oftentimes, people go out together and one comes back and the other doesn't. Or both of them never do.

I stopped hating and started just being. My whole life, I had been the most defensive person you'd meet, unable to tolerate any criticism. But now I started listening and being.

Personally, I am stuck with one foot in the past and one foot in the present.

...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.

She was probably the girl I loved the most of all my girlfriends, but also the toughest one to make things work out with. If I had put that much effort into any of my other relationships, I'd be married with five kids now.