The Life And Times Of A ChairSniffa

The Life And Times Of A Chairsniffa(3)

I Was A Druggie

When I was in year 8 I loved Guns'n'Roses!

It was at a time when all my mates were into Nirvana and SoundGarden and they all said to me "HairMetal is Over! Get with the times!" but I was "Nah Grunge sucks! Give me Gunners any day!"

Thats ironic cause now I have a huge respect for grunge, and wish I got into them back then.

Anyway I thought Slash (guitarist of Gunners) was so cool smoking cigarettes in his posters with a bottle of Jack Daniels so I started smoking cigarettes.

Well I was a good drummer as a kid too, and could rock it out for ages.

I guess I loved to bang.

And so I joined my first band at the ripe old age of 16 (not including the school rock band of course in which I rocked!)

But anyway I think thats why I was never really bullied in school. I knew all the cool muso's in school and in town and was playing at the pubs even. So even though I technically was far from cool at school, cause I hung out with the muso's I must have been cool.

Those muso's did drugs, and they thought I was cool so that may have saved me from the ire of the bullies.

But that was also my access to drugs.

At first it was just pot, dope, weed, dak, whatever you want to call it.

My mum was sad when she found out and said it would grow into further addictions but I didn't take notice.

All this is interlinked by the way with my parents divorce at around that time but thats a whole different story.

I was rebelling.

I hated authority figures as they had let me down as a kid.

So I started taking more drugs.

Trips. Then ecstasy. By 20 I was doing speed. Crystal meth. By about 22, at the turn of the century, I was doing heroin. Sharing needles and stuff.

It was full blown by that stage.

I was in a semi successful western australian band going up and down the coast of WA and yer I was using all that money on drugs.

To pay for a debt I had with the bikies I allowed them to take my expensive drum kit. A drum kit my dad brought for me. I was hooked bigtime and realised when I lost those drums I need to quit somehow.

Then the vocalist took all the band money we made on a tour we did and blew it all on coke. I don't mean the drink either. That was the end of the band then and with no band and no drums the dream ended there.

I had to get a job.

So I got a seven to four job with an arbor company (treework) which led to me getting a job on the council in Port Hedland doing work there.

All my money was still going on drugs though.

My relationships with women went down and so did my confidence and I was really a wreck and had to reclaim my life somehow.

I had to leave Port Hedland.

My hometown.

I wanted to go to Melbourne as that was where my brother lived and was doing ok as a musician over there. As he called himself, a guitar slut for hire.

But the lady I was with didn't want to go to Melbourne so I stayed in Hedland and quit the hard drugs but still was regularly doing dope and stuff.

When we split up not long after that I packed my bags and went to Melbourne.

And hooked up with ex muso's I knew from western australia and still did dope and occasionally ecstasy but yer I was hard on the dope. It really made me low in confidence and so I decided to quit the whole music scene altogether and concentrate on getting a job. Two years ago I started back at work as a tree climber. But my back is really stuffed from doing it and plus carrying drums to and from cars and vans during gigs..... my back screamed for a break. I guess about a year ago I had an incident with the chainsaw after a hard night on the alcohol and it shook me up. The chainsaw cut back and almost took off my head cause I wasn't concentrating. And then I almost killed myself when I went to work stoned one day and almost crashed the work truck!

I knew then it was time to shape up or ship out.

So I went back to Port Hedland for two weeks and that cleaned me up to see old friends and go to Broome with mum and my brother.

Eight months now and I have been free of all drugs except cigarettes. Thats the hardest one to give up!

But from it all I can truly say I wasted ten years of my life on that crap. Tens of thousands, I think I figured out maybe 300 grand ended up going on drugs! It was an expensive waste of money.

And a lesson learned the hard way.

So now I am reformed I find I can never be judgemental on other druggies even though I want to be.

I was them once but thankfully was never caught by the police or got in official trouble for it, but yer if you think you know the ChairSniffa as a nice guy and cheery kinda bloke if you met me three or four years ago you would have thought otherwise.

Indeed you may have been disgusted if you saw me walk past you in the streets.

I wish I could reclaim those ten years and be 19 again, but in a way I have gone through something that has made me a stronger and better person for it I reckon. Now I know what to say if my child I will be having in April or May goes down that path. I have experienced the worst of it and came out wiser.

Not to say that all musicians are druggies.

Like my older brother said to me, to make it in the cutthroat music world you have to be clean. The druggies are the ones who don't ever make it. He said "Once you make your first ten million bucks, then you can take all the drugs you want" lol! But to make it, to be a professional, you don't do drugs.

Obviously all my life I have only been exposed to the amatuers in the music business. Plus I should have had the guts to say no. If I had have said no way back then I wouldn't have gone through 300 grand with nothing to show for it.

As a postscript Slash doesn't drink anymore. Indeed in a recent interview he said he recently drove his wife back from a function where she got drunk not him, and he reckons thats weird how the tables have turned. Not sure if he still smokes though. Having never seen any pictures of him with a fag hanging out of his mouth I dunno maybe he has.

Dunno what I'd say to him if I met the bloke. But I wonder how many other kids he influenced to go down that path. Just from pictures.

Oh well.

He is still a legend.