You instinctively know that nothing will ever be the same, and you have to carry that knowledge around with you like a huge weight. The next time you see your girl, you can’t look her straight in the eyes the same way you did for all those years.

Music itself was color-blind but the media and the radio stations segregate it based on their perceptions of the artists.

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.

Now I can look back and say I actually like the upbringing I had and my father was very attentive and a great educator.

We've just learned how to balance ourselves a little better so that we're happier way more of the time than not, and, you know, being happy is a radical and desirable act if you ask me.

My father rebelled ferociously against his conservative upbringing where his father physically abused him.

...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.