Gambling With Fate

I was still doing a lot of business to generate the funds needed to keep up the momentum of the recording sessions...I had come to appreciate the importance of momentum to my creative process. I worked best when I was focused and relentless. When I wasn't...self-doubt became my enemy. And so I did what I needed to...to keep the money coming in...and the momentum up. I was still using a lot of drugs, and because of that, I sometimes would only see what I chose to see. I was channeling most of my energy and funds into this project, and I saw the whole drug dealing thing as a means to an end. I was ready to leave that part of my life behind, but it was the only way I knew to generate the funds needed to finish this project. But the truth was, it was also full-blown addiction, and that I didn't see. I believe today that my drug problem was becoming more and more obvious to everyone but me...and the consequences to my life were appearing with greater frequency, but I dismissed those consequences as bad luck...or as the fault of others. Whether those perceptions were real or imagined wasn't relevant to me...because to me, if I perceived it...it was true. Finishing this album was the only thing I was really thinking about. I had been doing business so efficiently, and without any serious interference from the law for so long, that I think I almost forgot what I was doing was illegal. I started to slack off on my very rigid rules concerning how I conducted my business...the very rules that had kept me safe for so long...and the need to generate funds quickly had me taking chances that once I wouldn't have considered. I forgot that I had recorded a song about drug dealing that was largely autobiographical, which had, in effect, laid out what I did in my "spare time" for all the world to see...and although it hadn't made it to airwaves due to the lyrics, I had performed it many times before thousands of people. I forgot that not everyone would be OK with that. I really only saw that I desperately wanted out of the drug business...and that the success of this musical project was my ticket out...but that ticket would have to be purchased with money from the drug business. It was a Catch-22, and I really was gambling with fate...I was "letting it ride" and going for broke....