In a way, yes, because our lives were turned upside down in a few months. But you have to remember that we had worked long and hard for that, and I can tell you that some months, when I was struggling to make ends meet to pay a pittance of rent, I didn't think that success was "coming too fast". But when it happened to us, it was like a tidal wave. And it totally destroyed me.
Okay, I was already in bad shape before that, because I was doing drugs and drinking a lot. Even in Indiana, I had gotten into glue sniffing and speed early on... I was smoking pot at lunchtime. Anyway, I was already struggling with this by the time I was 15 years old, long before I was in Guns N' Roses. So you can just imagine how excessive it got ten years later, when I became successful: cocaine, heroin, you name it, I had to do it. All this combined with fame and money turned out to be a particularly nasty mix. At one point, we opened for Aerosmith (in 1988 - Ed.). Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were my childhood heroes and I was really honored to be around these great musicians. I had already met Tyler in 1984/85 in L.A. when I was a young and inexperienced guitar player. I started to do what he did, to really get high. Hey, I thought it was "normal", I thought all artists lived like that. And the fact that I was living in Los Angeles at the time, even more so in Hollywood, didn't help to get myself together and out of that whole trip. So what could be more normal than waking up in the morning and doing a some coke? Again, it seemed "normal" to us.
