All I had on was a pair of whitey-tighties and my leather motorcycle jacket—the one with the chrome stars on the shoulders.

No shoes.

I was standing at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, half naked, digging through my pockets for cigarettes... or maybe an instruction manual explaining my name, address, and purpose for standing there dressed like a confused male stripper.

A police cruiser rolled up beside me.

I panicked.

Not because of the police.

Because I realized something far more disturbing:

I don't wear whitey-tighties.

The officer rolled down his window and asked, in a calm and deeply unimpressed voice,

"Where are your pants?"

I said,

"Yeah, I know. I wear boxers, man. I've never liked whitey-tighties. Too restrictive, you know?"

He cut me off.

"That's not what I asked you. Where... are... your pants?"

This is usually the moment my brain decides to flee the scene.

But just as he's running toward the exit, I stick my foot out and trip him.

Down goes Brain.

Bad move.

Now I've got a pissed-off brain flopping around like a rabid penguin trying to escape out the back door while I'm left operating the controls.

So I try to answer the officer myself.

"Well, he can't get out now," I told him. "I just put him down."

The officer stepped out of the cruiser.

"Turn around and put your hands behind your back."

I looked at him seriously.

"Officer... these aren't my underwear. And I think I've got a show to play somewhere around here."

That was my emergency default sentence.

I had basically spray-painted it on the inside of my skull for situations exactly like this:

Wake up. No memory. Wearing strange underwear. Law enforcement asking questions.

Response: "I think I have a show around here somewhere."

This had happened so many times in the '90s that by the time we signed our second deal, part of my contract required me to wear a leg monitor so the crew could locate me whenever I wandered off half naked and spiritually disconnected from reality.

Then the cop squinted at me and asked:

"Why do you have that thing drawn on your face?"

Lightning cracked across my memory.

Everything came rushing back.

My brain shoved me out of his chair at the control panel and grabbed the intercom:

"Media Storage, this is Brain. Roll back tapes to approximately 0200 hours. I'm gonna need a speed-reference replay of all stupid behavior."

"Roger that, Brain. Loading footage now."

There I was.

Sitting on a couch at some party, attempting to drink an entire pitcher of beer by fitting the opening of the pitcher over my mouth like a python swallowing a goat.

No luck.

Eighty ounces of beer went straight into my lap.

Someone offered me dry underwear.

I changed.

Twenty minutes later, I was unconscious.

Then came my drummer with a Sharpie marker and revenge on his mind.

The officer suddenly looked at me and yelled:

"Holy shit! You do have a show tonight! I've got tickets!"

I looked him dead in the eyes, then asked:

"Can you get me in?"

Two minutes later I was in the backseat of a police car heading to my own concert.

One cop said to the other:

"You seriously bought tickets to see this guy?"

My new heavily armed friend grinned.

"Hell yeah."

That's about the moment the doughnut pie and three shots of tequila abandoned ship.

I leaned forward and threw up directly into the floorboard of the cruiser.

The officer in front of me sighed.

"Well… he just puked in the floorboard."

My new best friend behind the wheel smiled and replied:

"Totally badass."

They pulled up to the venue.

There was my drummer standing at the loading dock, signing the top half of some brunette with the same Sharpie he'd used to draw that obscene treasure map on my face.

The police car rolled to a stop.

The officer climbed out, hitched up his gun belt, and came around to my side with a slow kind of pride, like he was escorting some fallen king before a crowd that never showed up.

I stepped out and looked past the talking heads amazed at my arrival. I took a deep breath and thought:

I made it.

Thirteen hours later, I arrived at the local hospital unconscious.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I heard was the doctor saying:

"Your blood sugar is 800. You should be in a coma."

I yawned and shrugged.

"Yeah? Well, I feel okay. What happened—did I fall off the stage again?"

He didn't laugh.

"What's blood sugar anyway?" I asked. "You mean blood alcohol?"

"No."

"You have Type 2 diabetes."

"Huh," I said. "I wonder where I caught that?"

"Can you give me a shot or something?" I asked.

The doctor looked at me like I'd just asked for the keys to his Porsche.

"It's not an STD," he said. "But yes—you're getting a shot. Actually… you're going to be getting quite a few."

At the time, I had no idea what a blood sugar reading of 800 meant.

A normal blood sugar is around 100. At 180, your body starts complaining. At 300, things start breaking. At 500, you're in trouble.

At 800?

You're not "fine" anymore.

Your blood turns thick like syrup, crawling through a body that's already giving up. Organs start shutting down. "Lights out" stops being a metaphor.

It's scheduled.

And I'm sitting there nodding like I understand this stuff while my brain quietly makes an exit.

Because instead of processing what the doctor said, I land on one conclusion:

It was the blonde in Kansas City. That's where I caught this.

Yeah. I didn't know how diabetes worked yet.

Sex, drugs, and… diabetes.

What a trip.

To understand where my head was at back then, you have to understand this:

At that point in my life, I thought I was living the dream.

The rock 'n' roll dream.

Touring nonstop. Playing loud. Moving fast with no brakes, no plans, and no interest in either.

Every night followed the same routine:

Play the show. Chase the high. Destroy the body. Repeat.

And the diet? Doughnuts. Candy. Soda. Alcohol as a digestive aid. If it came wrapped in plastic or cardboard, I ate it.

Diabetes? What the hell was that, really? Who cared?

"Long-term health"? That sounded like something that came with real life — right up there with retirement plans and emotional stability.

That was a problem for Future Me.

I already knew that guy wasn't gonna be happy with me. But that was his problem. Not mine. …until it was.

Because the body keeps score — and eventually, it collects.

In my case, it sent diabetes.

Exhaustion. A thirst that wouldn't quit. Couldn't hold my water, felt like my kidneys were moving out and demanding their deposit back.

No warning. No dignity.

Just me, realizing something was very wrong while trying to pretend it wasn't.

That's how I ended up in a hospital bed — my fantasy cracked open, and reality burning through the tequila haze like a laser.

And let me tell you, life on the road wasn't glamorous. It just looked good from far away.

Up close, it was chaos with better lighting.

Stages, hotels, tour bus hell, greasy diners, stinky feet. Oh yeah, and toilets were always an issue.

But I wasn't doing it for longevity. I was doing it for the high.

That spike in adrenaline when the crowd erupts and everything else disappears.

High voltage. Ego. Noise. Electrifying.

At some point you stop noticing you're destroying yourself because it just feels like momentum.

I was standing up in my seat, head stuck out of the window, 300 mph, and going nowhere. But real fast.

Untouchable.

That feeling never really leaves you.

Even now, when I hear a crowd react, something in my brain still flips.

No hesitation. Fists up.

"THANK YOU VERY MUCH! WE LOVE YOU!"

Doesn't matter where I am.

A few months ago, I was in Best Buy with my wife.

Normal day. Nothing happening.

A football game came on and the crowd exploded.

And just like that, I was back on stage.

Arms up. Full volume.

"HELL YEAH! YOU WANT ANOTHER ONE SEATTLE? SHOW ME YOUR TITS!"

Silence.

My wife was gone instantly — vanished like she'd trained for this exact scenario.

I just stood there, while strangers looked at me like I'd just come back from some war they didn't know about.

After years of this sort of thing, my wife programmed an escape plan into my brain. The second a situation starts going sideways, and Brain hits the Panic button, I head for the nearest exit.

She's already waiting outside at the curb, engine running, passenger door open, ready for a rapid extraction.