In Patty Schemel’s new book Hit So Hard, the former Hole drummer reveals that it took 22 detoxes and 15 rehab stints before she finally got clean.
She told Billboard, “I made a point to talk about the experience as honestly and as gritty as it is. I was a drug addict in a band with crazy people, I was crazy, and it was chaos. It isn’t romantic — I didn’t have a hustle on the street. I didn’t belong out there, and everybody knew it. I describe [the cycle of] addiction and recovery like a hamster wheel — and what does it take to get you off? Deaths of friends? Suicide? The loss of everything important? Your family?”
She also discussed rebuilding her life after getting clean with Stereogum, “I guess they were things like when I got my job at the dog care facility. First of all: getting a job. And then getting up and going to work. A week of getting up and going to work and getting there on time… those things were little tiny pieces of gold that you can put in your pocket, then your pocket starts to fill up, and you just need to build that self-esteem.
I needed to [regain] that esteem from those kinds of things instead of being the best drummer or playing Reading Festival. It was that job, and that people trusted me to have the keys to a building [laughs] and it just sort of grew from there. I never had a moment in time as an adult or since I was 12 years old as a person that was clean and sober for a long amount of time. I started to figure out who I was, like, ‘I like knitting,’ you know?”
