"I feel music is something that was given to me to make me happy, something to enjoy. All of us are so gifted in so many ways."

MY FAMILY

We were such a close and loving family. My mom and dad had a pretty cool marriage for 15 years. Then all of a sudden, my dad started gambling and drinking, and dating another woman, and ended up in jail. Our family got turned upside down, literally overnight. I was about 4.

WHEN I DISCOVERED ALCOHOL AND DRUGS

In 4th grade my stepsisters and brothers and I took some beer from our step dad and went outside and drank it outside the house. In 5th grade I started drinking more, doing coke and speed, anything that would be at any party. When I went out and partied and got really high or drunk, I would forget about who I felt like all the time: an outcast. I didn't get along with anybody, I didn't belong, I didn't like myself.

MY SISTER

My sister Sharon had started using when she was 16. When I was really young, like 11 or 12, I would go out to clubs and party with her and snort coke. I looked way older than my age. I finished growing when I was in 4th grade — and I'm 5'9". Sharon started shooting up heroin pretty much right away; she got AIDS from using. She died at the age of 32.


SKIPPING SCHOOL

I was very depressed, and I would make it to high school at about one o'clock in the afternoon. They expelled me, saying I couldn't skip the academic classes and just show up for music class. I really think I knew then I was an alcoholic, because from the get-go, I was drinking until I blacked out. Because I was and am a person who can be really over the top, insecure, and super-sensitive, bringing about self-destruction was, in a way, a painkiller.

RUNNING AWAY

I was in a relationship with a guy when I was 14. He was 24. I ran away with him to Brooklyn. He was physically abusive, and a big heroin addict. The first day I moved to New York, I started snorting heroin with him. I left him and came home, but he followed me back. I stayed in that relationship for 4 years. After that I got into another abusive relationship with a guy for 8 years. I think I felt I didn't deserve anything better.


MY FATHER

I had a lot of abandonment issues with my dad, and then with my step dad and his kids. I really bought the idea that I was no good. When I was drinking I could go into my own fantasyland and become somebody else. When my dad got out of jail, he wouldn't have anything to do with me. I wasn't allowed to call the house. When I got a deal with Atlantic, that was the first time my father came to a show. I didn't see him. I was really angry.

TOURING WITH THE BAND

I'd been using on and off with whatever drug was around, but always consistently alcohol. In 1996, when I went on tour for my first album, "Immortal," I switched my alcohol addiction to a food addiction: starving and purging, another form of destructive behavior. When that record was over, I started picking up again, then tried to get clean again. Then I went out on the road, and said, forget it, I'm just going to drink and ha

The cover for Beth's most recent album "Leave the Light On"

ve a good time. The success of "L.A. Song" (an adult top-40 hit from 1999's "Screamin' for My Supper" album)

absolutely terrified me. I had never had a success of that measure in my music before. I was trying to deal with it by getting myself as drunk as I could, every day. And by starving myself to death. Because I felt I had to be thin in order to make it. I ended up setting fire to our bus, and the band threatened to leave. I was basically told, " You have to stop drinking."

MY DEEPEST ADDICTION

I went to a doctor who gave me a choice of different non-narcotic drugs. I manipulated him into giving me Klonopin, pretending I didn't know what it was. Actually I had tried this anxiety medication before and it had gotten me really high. He put me on it, and immediately I did stop drinking. Because I didn't need to drink any more. I was getting high, and all of my anxiety and fears were being dispersed way better than what alcohol had done for me. So that was the ultimate worst thing — it was the thing that finally worked. I abused it to the hilt. Within a nine-month period, I went down to 98 lbs. I was so, so scary-looking. I was going on these shows, and I would walk out to the piano, and the audience would breathe in. You know, that murmur that runs through the house. I had become a full-on junkie. I wanted Klonopin and that's all I wanted. It just brought my whole life down very quickly.


It was a really hard process to get off Klonopin because I didn't want to. I'd found what worked. I'd found what made me really skinny, what made me not care, what made me not afraid. Nobody could hurt me with their judgments. If I made it, I made it. If I didn't make it, I didn't make it. I was fine as long as I had my Klonopin.

MY LAST TIME

It was never black and white, never like, oh, this is it. I went through three rehabs, four lock downs, and one jail, over a period of one-and-a-half years. Even though I was trying hard! Addiction — it's a mind-boggling disease. My Klonopin use got so bad the doctors refused to prescribe it to me. I started heaving and detoxing at home. I was totally like, "I'm not going into rehab! Hell, no!" Until one night, my boyfriend (he's my husband now) was taking care of me. He thought I was going to die that night, and so did I. He put his arms around me and he started crying. It was a major moment in just making me feel like someone really, really loved me, even in this place of total darkness. And it made me just want to go in for help.

ON THE ROAD TO RECOVERY

I went into Las Encinas in Pasadena. I was so sad and angry and lost. I didn't care about my life. I just knew I didn't want to die in Scott's house. At Las Encinas they gave me medications to keep me from seizing. My first day there, someone said, "It's going to get a lot harder before it gets better." I didn't understand why it's so hard for people to stay clean. For me, it was because once you begin to wake up after your drug stupor, you're left with all that shame and that feeling, What did I do to my life, to my family, my friends and to opportunity? I couldn't walk right and I had panic attacks. A counselor said, "It's the Klonopin. It's going to take your brain time to adjust back to normal. If you stay sober, you will get back to normal. But you have a lot of recovery work to do. Once you're an alcoholic addict, you're always an alcoholic addict."

I just didn't understand any of this, and I certainly didn't have any patience. I'd never grown up. I'd been using for so many years, I didn't know what else to do. The miracle that began happening, was that slowly I started wanting to get clean. But I was not healthy. I was trying to kill myself. My attempts took place at 27 and 28 years old. At 29 I started coming out of it. I began to heal myself by getting into 12-step recovery, praying, eating healthy, not doing any medication. I haven't done Klonopin or any other drugs since then, and January 6th, 2003 was my last time with booze.

WHAT WORKED FOR ME

My life today is a billion times better than when I was on Klonopin, and I think it's totally due to being a part of 12-step program: being with other people who are alcoholics and addicts, working with them. Realizing addiction is a disease. That there's nothing to feel guilty of. You wouldn't tell someone with cancer to be ashamed, and it's the same with this disease. Instead of looking at my life at the things I didn't get, I started looking at the things I did get. I'm healthy, I can sing and hear and see, and I can love and be loved, and I can learn and grow -- those are really God-given wonderful gifts. Counting my blessings, and giving thanks for them has been my number one tool of recovery.

MY MUSIC

During the really tough times, I stopped writing. I was embarrassed to even go to that piano. Then I started feeling like I had done so much talking to God, that it would be cool to go back and do a little writing. My album "Leave the Light On" to me is about getting to a point where I'm doing my damnedest to tell the truth. Whether people like me or don't like me, at least I know that I don't have to work so damn hard at being who I am. Because I'm just a human being who makes mistakes like everyone else. I feel music is something that was given to me to make me happy, something to enjoy. All of us are so gifted in so many ways. Maybe getting out there now and showing people what I really enjoy doing can inspire people to find the many gifts they have inside.

this article tok abt one of the need that human must need n tt is love, freedom, asethetic, security, self-esteem, spiritual, knowledge(not in order) so who is lack of this 7 need will be quite empty...some of e ppl noe this...but somehow they had overcome n live victorious! ha