Scar Tissue

I’m back with a BOOK REPORT!

I just finished reading “Scar Tissue,” Anthony Kiedis’ raw retelling of his crazy life and rise to fame.

If you aren’t sure who Anthony Kiedis is, he is the lead singer of the band The Red Hot Chili Peppers and one hell of a singer/ performer!

This book however is not by any means glamorous, as Kiedis shares an honest retelling of a life full of substance abuse, rock bottoms and relapses.

At just 14 years old Kiedis tried heroin for the first time, and though he would not become addicted right away, this early exposure would foreshadow over 2 decades of drug abuse.

The story follows the lead singer’s journey from this 14-year-old kid running around LA and going to nightclubs, to being the lead singer of one of the most recognized bands of a generation. Unfortunately, Kiedis would find himself in almost constant turmoil even in the band’s prime, battling cycles of relapse and bad decisions.

As I finished the last chapter of the book, which consisted mostly of the time frame I knew the band from ie Californication to By the Way and onward. I really started connecting with a few consistent messages.

The most important message was that we are all human and we all have addictive and cyclical tendencies. After reading this book and reflecting on my own life, I felt compassion for the man and his story.

I even recognized some similarities in my cravings for certain aspects of my life and my aversion to others. Often it is the emotional highs and lows that we seek or run away from that hurt us and unfortunately with the addition of drugs everything just magnifies.

So when you look at it in this way someone’s addiction to food is no different than someone’s addiction to alcohol. Just like a scrolling addiction is not that much different than someone’s addiction to heroin. LOL TELL ME I’M WRONG! We all have a predisposition to become addicted to something.

We all just want to “feel good” and avoid “feeling bad” which leads us to either chase the highs, avoid the crash back to our lows or just stay in neutral for fear of feeling at all.

I can honestly say I have chased after things I have wanted without balance and I can absolutely say I have avoided having certain feelings altogether. Neither of these has worked in the long term because you can’t control everything and because as they say, you can’t have sunshine without rain.

Now thankfully I didn’t do heroin at 14 LOL, but to wrap things up here is my point.

Emotions are unavoidable, and getting better at processing them is challenging, but all of us feel the same things, and no matter what your personal experience is you are not as crazy as you might feel, you are not a bad person and you are not alone!

Truthfully we are all in this together, we are all human.

This is why we should not judge too harshly when someone fails or falls down, since we may find ourselves there in the future. Nor should we judge ourselves too harshly if we do indeed find ourselves there. It is and always will be about how we react to the problems we face in life. How we pick ourselves up always matters more than how we fall.

So always remember to share your experiences because just like Anthony, a good comeback story can save others from the same hardship and who knows it could even go on to sell 15 million copies worldwide if you can find the right melody for it :)

*Californication was Anthony’s first sober album and it sold 15 million copies

I hope a few of you pick up Scar Tissue and enjoy it, thanks for reading today’s AHA💡Moment!