The Lost Boy
On leaving the Chili Peppers, Frusciante embarked on the ‘adventure’ that he still believes held the key to his ultimate spiritual and creative salvation.
Unfortunately, it also came perilously close to killig him.
“When I was in the band I’d take heroin every now and then, but it wasn’t a problem,” he deadpans without a trace of irony. “But when I left the band I was still terribly sad. All of the thoughts in my head had resolved into something that I was calling the will to death. Everything made me miserable, so I made the decision one day that I was gonna be on heroin and cocaine all the time, because when I was on them was the only time I was happy. So I figured there was no disadvantage in it and nobody could talk me out of it.
“During that period of time I had a lot of communication with what you might call ghosts in many different forms. It was such a fun time, I definitely got something in return for all the belief that I’d had in those things before I ever saw them for real.”
Did you know, or even care, how much damage you were doing to yourself physically?
“No, I’d totally lost balance in that way,” John shrugs casually, “It was all about what I felt mentally. I did get through it really well, and I attribute that to my not caring and not feeling bad about it. I felt I was doing something good and healthy for myself and I didn’t care if people said it was unhealthy. Most other junkies that I knew felt really guilty about it, but I always felt that I was doing something good.”
Frusciante’s idea of what’s good and healthy is very much at odds with conventional thinking. Toward the end of his spiritual quest his abject descent into narcotic oblivion had left him a shadow of his former self. He’d lost the majority of his front teeth, the ruined tattoos on his arms were peppered with countless ascess scars - the result of incautious mainlining - his hair was falling out and his shredded fingernails caked with dried blood. He seemed utterly beyond help. But suddenly, and without warning, he returned from the brink of death to check himself into hospital in January ‘98.
When he finally sought help, was it because he felt a sense of completion - that his six-year adventure had come to its logical conclusion?
“Yeah, when I finally stopped for good three years ago, I felt very sure of myself and I knew it was the right time. Voices in my head had been counting me down ever since I started, at the beginning they said, ‘You can go on drugs for six years now’. And two years before I quit I remember a voice in my head saying, ‘You can still do drugs for another two years and then you’re gonna quit’.
“At the point where I stopped I knew that if I kept doing them I was gonna die. I probably had like three months. That was what the voice in my head was saying, and I also knew that a lot of these spirits were truly on my side and wanted me to stop at that point. They’d always been in favour of me doing it, and suddenly, they all wanted me to stop. So I had no dount in my mind that I was doing the right thing.”
Was there ever a point where you honestly didn’t care if you lived or died?
“Yeah, I still don’t really care, but I have a great will to live because of what I think I’m doing by living here. I think I’m taking care of things in other dimensions by being here. I see this three-dimensional world as a bridge between the fourth and fifth and fifth dimensions. Ever since I realised that the spirits were the ones responsible for the music that was coming out of me, I’ve dedicated my life to doing what they want me to do: the ones who are on my side, the ones who are my friends. Also, for a long time, I had to dedicate myself to fighting the ones who weren’t my friends. I don’t have to do that any more, because I’ve got friendly spirits protecting me.”
Following Frusciante’s Lazarus-like return from the brink of death, his erswhile colleague Flea wasted little time in asking him to rejoin the band following Dave Navarro’s departure in April ‘98.
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