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By Root 1064 0

except in a band there is no formal boss. Just four or five outcasts who, in our case, had always used shitloads of drugs and alcohol to deal with life and its conflicts. So much drama started to swirl in and around the band that someone had to sort of take charge. It fell to me. This was, I believe, the first time any of us had entered a band partnership while married. Not that the wives posed any real problems, but there were twice as many opinions—and at times very, very strong ones. It was fine for now, just different.

We kicked off our first tour in May 2004, in St. Louis. Contraband entered the charts at number one upon its release in June.

Touring made it difficult to be rigorous about my workouts and meditation.

I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Then the same thing would happen the next day.

And I continued to get sick on tour, further limiting my time in the gym. I was tired and I was beat-up mentally—not from the shows themselves but from the constant background shit. We had a few weeks off in July after the U.S. leg before we were due in Europe. One night as I was trying to figure something out, Susan asked, “Why are you always the one who has to fix all the problems?”

The first week of August we flew to Denmark to begin a five-week leg through Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, and the UK, with some additional festival dates in Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Holland. At first, I made sure to get in a workout and meditation every morning. Sometimes I’d hit the gym several times a day just to clear my mind. But then I started getting to it less and less frequently.

Just too busy, I told myself. And besides, you’re strong now.

If so many people can depend on me—my family, the band—I must be dependable, I must be strong. Hell, I’m even keeping Scott’s shit together—I’m the man!

By the time we finished that leg, I was lucky to manage ten seconds of meditation at some point during the day.

The same pattern accompanied subsequent legs. We had been out on tour—with breaks here and there—for thirteen months by the time we arrived in Germany in June 2005, for a second European leg. Workouts and meditations dwindled again. Then I stopped altogether. Meanwhile the band started to show cracks. Being around drugs and booze had proved manageable; handling band business amid increasingly rancorous interpersonal drama, however, drove me fucking nuts.

I had a stash of Xanax pills for panic attacks. I had them in my backpack all the time for emergency use on flights. Though I had been able to really get a handle on my attacks in everyday life, I did still get uncomfortable when flying. It wasn’t the plane-could-go-down part of flying that freaked me out, it was the being-stuck-in-a-metal-tube-with-no-way-to-get-out part. For the most part, just knowing I had Xanax with me was sufficient to ward off any potential attack. I knew the drug worked quickly, so having that little bottle in my carry-on bag was enough to keep me panic-free on plane rides. Between 1994 and 2004, I had taken a quarter pill—you could cut them to avoid taking a full dose—on three occasions, always on an airplane. Except for those three occasions, I had always been able to go to my place, the calm safe house I knew from martial arts training.

One day in Essen, Germany, my shoulders and back were tense and my head was throbbing. I felt trapped. Trapped, like on a plane. As I sat in my hotel room, I reached into my backpack and took the Xanax bottle out of the side pocket of my bag.

I looked at the bottle for a few minutes, then opened it and shook one of the pills out onto the palm of my hand. I swallowed a Xanax pill sitting in a hotel room because everything seemed to be coming down on my shoulders.

Fuck.

It wasn’t for a flight. It was for “stress.”

This is shady.

I was worried.

Then the pill kicked in.

Mmmm.

Everything is fine.

I had a solution to the chaos I felt encroaching on me.

The next day, I took two pills. My high tolerance for drugs came right back.

By the third day, I was figuring out how to get hold of more pills. Lots more pills.