Katie McConnell
Mr. Groneman
Profile
October 10, 2013
A Red Hot Chili Peppers Use and Abuse Being one of the most famous rock stars in the world sounds like it would be all fun and games, right? For Anthony Kiedis it was a never ending roller coaster ride of fun, drugs, sex, fame, and also tragedy. Living the typical “rock star” lifestyle, Kiedis hit some of the highest and lowest points of his time. Many of those highs and lows involved Anthony being high, whether it be from marijuana, lsd, cocaine, heroin, or any other experimental drug he used. Struggling to keep himself together as he went on many unnecessary binges, Kiedis and his band the Red Hot Chili Peppers still managed to come out on top at the end of the rock n’ roll age of the twentieth century. If I were to paint a picture of Anthony’s personality, it would have to have many psychedelic characteristics, for he is very out-there compared to what is classified as normal. He is an artist with a completely original style, not only in his appearance but also in his song writing. In his prime time of the late 80’s into the early 90’s, he fits the description of a young, athletic body typed yet grungy looking California punk. Mo-hawks were styled, one tattoo turned into another, waves off the coast line were being surfed, and his overall attitude toward the world was rebellious with a “not giving a fuck” attitude. Kiedis simply did what he wanted, when he wanted, and ignored authority completely.
Being the young out-law he was, Anthony got introduced to many drugs and foolishly tried whatever he could get his hands on. At the young age of 12, Anthony’s father John (Blackie Dammett) introduced him to marijuana while sitting in the kitchen of his house in Los Angeles. A series of Polaroid pictures of this event were published in Kiedis’s autobiography “Scar Tissue.” He comments, “For me, this group of four black-and-white snapshots is nothing short of monumental in my tiny life. It’s me smoking pot for the first time. My dad was taking the pictures and I was handing the joint to a pretty girl who was about to take her top off. I had only been in L.A. for a day or two and was on my way to doing almost everything imaginable in that kitchen” (Scar Tissue, pg 276). Marijuana acted as a gate way drug for young Kiedis, for as he grew older he found hard drugs to be his escape from reality. The rebel teen that Anthony became was strongly influenced by his father and the people John hung around with. Smoking pot led to experimenting with cocaine at the age of 13. Kiedis expresses that the feeling it gave him comparable to seeing God, but the high was gone like a flash. He continued to do line after line to keep the high going. One time while with a woman named Connie, a friend of his fathers, they wound up at a cocaine dealers house in Malibu. Kiedis snorted what he thought was a line of coke, but ended up being a line of China White heroin. He loved it. He got and incredible high that didn’t give him the jitters or teeth clenching that snorting cocaine did. But, because Anthony was not around it often enough as a teen, he did not pursue the use of it until later on in his adult life. Getting introduced to drugs was only one small part of this artist’s life in California. The Red Hot Chili Peppers band was formed from Anthony himself and three of his closest friends in 1983. At this time Kiedis was twenty-one years old. Once the band got started there was no stopping them. The music they wrote was something out of a dream. I brand new sound was born. Anthony was the lead singer and wrote all the lyrics. While writing lyrics, Kiedis had inspiration all around him. Girls, drugs, friends, and emotions were all subjects of this mans stories. I believe that his drug use reflected most in his work. In May of 2011, I got the chance to attend a concert put on by the band at the U.S. Band Arena in Cincinnati, Ohio. Throughout the performance I noticed some details that seemed as drug references. For example, while they performed song from the album “I’m with you,” there was something interesting being projected onto the stage wall behind them. Pills. And lots of them. A constant flow of pills came flowing out of a prescription bottle. Now if that doesn’t scream drug use, what else would? The art for that particular album also reflects his pill usage, for the cover is a pill with a fly landed on it. The pill had written on it, “I’m with you,” that albums name. Eventually, while still early on in band years, Kiedis dug himself a hold he couldn’t climb out of on his own. He had used drugs to their full extend. He even made friends with someone who was involved with the Mexican mafia. This man could help Anthony get his hands on the cheapest drugs in California, imported straight from Mexico. It was a dream come true for Kiedis, but little did he know how this would contribute to writing some of the best songs his generation would ever hear. Because he started using cocaine and heroin so often, the artist would find himself on many drug binges, abandoning his band mates at times so he could find the right high. This was important to Kiedis. After a few years of binging and partying, the band members felt that he was no use if he wasn’t going to come to rehearsal ready with new material to share. They got sick of his drug use and tried to help him but Anthony was already stuck in a downward spiral. He states, “Once I stole my mother’s car and crashed it after driving around crazily at 140km/h, but neither that traumatic brain injury made me realize that I was smashing my brain with heroine.” (Anthony Kiedis Interview). Eventually his use of drugs got his kicked out of the band for a short while, until he seemed to get back on his feet again, and realize there are more important things to him than centering himself on things that made him get high. Only a few positive things came from that down spiral he took down binge lane. One, he met and lived with the girl of his dreams. Two, his experiences gave him new ideas to write about, and three; Kiedis learned some valuable life lessons. The girl he lived with and dated at the time only made his addiction worse, for they would drug up together. She was just as bad as Kiedis at the time. His drug use and fame shaped him into the man he is today. What completely stopped his drug use was a tragic event that changed Anthony’s life forever. That event was the death of his band mate Hillel Slovak, who dies of a heroin overdose in 1988. (Rosen). This opened up Kiedis’s eyes and made him realize what a stupid thing heroin, and any other hard drug, was. He attended rehab to kick the habit of his drug abuse quickly, not only for himself but in honor of Slovak. Later on in his career, Kiedis found out that he had contracted hepatitis C somewhere along the lines of his drug experimentations. Finding that out for him, like any else, was tragic and life changing. The last thing he wanted was for some nurse to come to him every day and put a different kind of drug into his bloodstream to prevent him from dying. “For years and years, I filled syringes and injected myself with cocaine, speed, Black Tar heroin, Persian heroin, and once even LSD. But today I get my injections from my beautiful nurse, whose name is Sat Hari. And the substance that she injects into my blood system is ozone, a wonderful-smelling gas that has been used legally in Europe for years to treat everything from strokes to cancer,” states Kiedis (Scar Tissue, pg 2) . Anthony’s past decisions will always be remembered for he has scared himself. The drug use of this artist was put into his work multiple times, and takes part credibility to his fame and fortune. Who would have thought that his experimentations and abuse would lead him to the famous and still strong musician that he is now.

Citations
Kiedis, Anthony., and Sloman, Larry. Scar Tissue. New Yor; Hyperion, 2004. Print.
“Anthony Kiedis Interview in Flair Magazine Italy March 2012.” stadium-arcadium.com. Red Hot Chili Peppers News, 2012. Web. 2 October. 2013.
Rosen, Craig. “Remembering Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Guitarist Hillel Slovak on the 25th Anniversary of his Death.” music.yahoo.com. June 4, 2013. Web. 4 October. 2013.