Art Alexakis is lead singer for the band Everclear.

when i was fifteen (written in my 44th year)
when i was fifteen, i was living in my hometown of santa monica, california in a one-bedroom apartment with my mother. i slept on a foldout couch and i hid my cigarettes and marijuana in the planter box outside my front door. three years earlier, we were living in a housing project five miles away in culver city where, inside of six months, my brother george died of a drug overdose at the age of 21, my 15-year-old girlfriend committed suicide (i was 12), my mother was diagnosed with cancer for the first time (she recently died of lung cancer) and i was arrested for burglary, vandalism, and being under the influence, spent some time in a juvenile detention center, and was shipped off to roseburg, oregon. when i returned to california about the time of my 14th birthday, my mother decided it was in my best interest to move back to upscale santa monica, and i attended the same jr. high school that my brother and sisters had attended some years earlier. i was the youngest of five children, so as the baby of the family (and the only son left), i was told it was my job to NOT do drugs, NOT to get in trouble with the law, not to be sexually active, and by no means to turn out like my big brother, who i of course idolized and wanted to be just like. so, instead of honoring my mother's wishes, i became REALLY good at lying to her, and i did exactly what i wanted to do.

by the time i was fifteen, i had this down to an art form. i would tell my mom that i was taking a city bus to go see a movie, then i would take the five dollars she gave me and i would buy alcohol and speed, get in my older friends’ car and go to parties that i had no business being at ...

i would tell my mom i was doing odd jobs for the nice 25-year-old man who lived in the front apartment, when actually i was dealing pot and LSD for him in exchange for heroin and cocaine that i would shoot up in my mom's bedroom before she came home from work. my mom always wondered why i was so skinny but had no appetite for dinner ...

i would tell my very religious mother that i was going to a nearby church on sunday mornings, then i would take the money she gave me for the collection plate, go across the street to the liquor store, buy cigarettes and steal beer and alcohol, and then i would sneak back to the apartment building adjacent to ours, where i would party and have sex with the 19-year-old college student whose parents were also out at church. i loved sundays ... sundays meant getting high and having sex!

when i was fifteen, i was jumped and beat up on new year's day by a group of boys from a neighboring town, whose ringleader was a 17-year-old boy who had a problem with me sleeping with his girlfriend and taking his money and drugs from her ... so my friends and i stole a gun from my alcoholic stepfather and went looking for this kid. i fully intended to shoot him (only in the leg, of course) but the girl in question called the police, they caught and arrested me for the third time in three years, this time for possessing a stolen firearm. the detective told my mother that since i was a repeat offender i was going to be sent to juvenile detention for at least a year unless i was sent out of state ... so i was shipped off to texas to live with my father (whom i had seen once in ten years), where i promptly gravitated to the same kind of friends, so this cycle of lying, drugs and self-destructive behavior continued ...

this cycle continued in one form or another (i kicked hard drugs in 1984, and i got sober in 1989) up until a couple years ago when my lying and my sexual addiction cost me my third wife and many of my friends.
when i was fifteen, i dreamed of being a rock star because i felt that if i was famous, i would be accepted and liked and popular for a change. i was a weird kid who had been abused and abandoned, i grew up in a family (and neighborhood) that was full of anger and resentment. i hated my reality, so i learned to create my own reality through lies and the escape of self-medicating with drugs, alcohol and sex.

when i finally achieved success in my 30's, i had been clean and sober for ten years, but i still hadn't learned how to like and love and accept myself, until i met an amazing man by the name of Dennis Maclure, a therapist who had dealt with many of the same issues in his own life that i was going through in mine. i had finally met someone i could allow to call me on my own crap ... while he didn't ever buy into my games and self delusions, he believed in me and what i could achieve and what i could become. and even though i'm in my 40's and dennis is in his 60's (sorry, dennis!), i feel like he has helped me become more of an adult through his patience and honesty, sense of humor, and plain old compassion.

i wish that when i was fifteen, i’d had a role model like dennis in my life, but all i can do now is try to be one for someone else, not just my 13-year-old daughter, but for anyone who comes into contact with me or my words, because like it or not, we are ALL role models ... and our actions and words can break someone down or help to make them whole.