Just Ripping the band-aid off, so don't be alarmed.

I've made some bad decisions in my life, but I found a way back. Find out how...

On top of the world, to the depths of hell and back.

Join me in my journey from the "Two Martini Lunch" to the raunchiest dens of the drug addicted.

In my world, I wore a suit during the day, thinking about when I would get my next fix, and mingled with drug dealers and users, often bringing myself closer to death with each poke of the arm at night.

Let's plunge right in...

I was not going to put this information in the book. But I had to face the fact that had I of not

Had these events happened in my life, I would not be the person I am today, nor would I have written any poetry or drawn pictures.

It took the State of Texas to slow me down and save myself. Everything happens for a reason, right? And my daughter, Renee, convinced me that bringing these events to light was key to shaping my life and making me who I am today, and that they should not be omitted.

Who has the time to write and draw? The last 25 years, I was busy rebuilding my

life and joining society by being successful and in a position to retire. Chasing drugs and

making a living was a 24/7 job, and the ending was not paramount to me.

I started and progressed with drugs in the early 60s. The Vietnam War was kicking off at a

record pace, and you either were drafted, enlisted, or were a longhair living the "Peace and

Love" generation. I was about 23. A textbook case for psychedelics and marijuana, then

Timothy Leary's "Orange Sunshine" LSD 25. pure on a sugar cube. Mushrooms and Peyote

led me to living on a commune on the Calif. Coast North of San Diego.

Never satisfied, the hard drugs were next with heroin and cocaine. It led up to living in squalor in run-down tenement houses in Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, L.A., and Atlanta, Georgia. Always on the hunt for new and fertile grounds for my addiction. I followed the underground tom-toms to get to the best drugs that were available.

That all ended up with my having to get on the first Methadone program that the federal government. started in 1969 (I was in Dallas, TX) at the time for my addiction, and was issued a card that showed me as the 15th addict to be accepted. That was a big turning point in my life, but it just substituted my heroin addiction with alcohol, which started at 15 years of age. There is a page in the book showing my mother's run-down home. She was instrumental in finding Gov. funding for the first methadone program in St. Petersburg, Florida, and started a methadone program in St. Petersburg called P.A.R. It still exists today, helping heroin addicts. She was instrumental in securing matching funds through her political connections, which started the program because of me. Go figure.

This was my second incarceration in TDC. Texas Dept. of Corrections. As you can see, I was

sentenced in 95 and paroled in 99. Three years and 7 months. The first time was for

methamphetamine possession and manufacturing. It was also a ten-year sentence, but at that time in the mid-eighties, the prisons were full of inmates from the cocaine and "crack

epidemic" that was truly explosive, and the time spent on a ten-year sentence was what I

ended up doing: 1 1/2 years on parole. See, the more wrongdoers there are, the less time. (Smiley).

The first part of the album takes you through the "Dark Side" of my life in my poems and

pictures. Heavy on blaming the world but lacking in blaming the source. Me.

It tells a tale of the first time in my life when I actually missed someone. Poems about the gals in my life while I was busy "doing my thing."

At the time, I did not know this piece of paper would shape my life the way it did.

I was graced by my mother, became the persona of "Papa Smurf," and survived it all.

-Peter