Hit So Hard: A Memoir
Written and Narrated By: Patty Schemel
Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
An awesome trip down Memory Lane, an honest depiction of Addiction… and about 6-hours way toooo long…
Here’s the deal, see. You start off this Life being all about your family of origin. But theeeeen, ya start seeing yourself, start wondering who you are, and ya start listening to music to bond with peer-folk. The Goths, the Kickers, the Metal Heads, you know, right (For me, it was the laaaate Punk Scene with “Suicidal Tendencies” inspiring my clothes)?
But then you get older, but you’re still fitting yourself into society, and that whole Dating Thing with the ever-spoken: Soooo, what kind of music do you listen to…? is all you ever hear when meeting, saaaay, a totally HOT whomever.
And for me, in my early 20s? Grunge, baby! GRUNGE! Never was a “Hole” fan, but a Memoir by drummer Patty Schemel? That leans heavily into her battles with addiction? On SALE, for freak’s sake?! I’m THERE!
And so now I’m here, writing my review, wondering exACTly what I felt about 8 of the looooongest hours of my freaking LIFE!!!
First, Huzzah for a look at a successful WOMAN! rockstar as she battled the highs and lows of fame and addiction. Now onto the audiobook itself…
It opens with the very cleeeear message that there was a Big A** Tree that Patty couldn’t help falling sooo Not Far From. Her parents were both alcoholics, and her childhood was one big AA meeting. She grew up hearing Their Stories, of how Out of Control both parents were. Of the AA Philosophy.
But her first sip of alcohol came at age 12, and it was a slippery slope downwards from there. ImMEDiately she feels a sense of peace with that gulp, and while she does have music and a burgeoning talent with playing the drums like the rockstar she’ll become, she also has that inborn need to replicate the high, the peace that drinking brought her.
Music is her life, however, and in Seattle she runs into (This is her pre-Hole era) Kurt Cobain who right away thinks of her when his wife Courtney Love’s band needs a drummer. Cobain waits with bated breath as she auditions… and gets the job. Then the story becomes about the drama of Love, the drugs, the vulnerability and staggering self-consciousness and depression of Cobain, and drugs drugs rock ‘n’ roll, Frances Bean (Love and Cobain’s infant daughter who all smoke around) and more drugs.
Tho’ Patty is musically satisfied with the gigs and recording, with the creativity, she has an inner drive to further devolve as she straddles drug addiction and promiscuity. Always in a long-term relationship (And she Came Out in “Rolling Stone” magazine), she just haaaappens to wallow in little Flings On The Side.
The best parts of the book are when the Long-Underwear ‘Neath Tattered T-shirts Sporting Me were titillated by Patty’s depictions of the early Grunge scene, the Who’s Who, the gigs, the fans. NOT so titillating were the ever-increasing discussions of her How-Tos of Addiction. I mean, I get it: She’s FIERCELY honest of just how low she fell (Think: Larceny, Prostitution, Homelessness), and she totally shows that Addiction is verrrry much an Equal Opportunity illness (She grew up with a bit of privilege, but with devastating needs such as she developed, oh how quickly privilege went by the wayside). It’s just that, in her honesty, it can be construed that she’s penned a: This Is How You Smoke Crack missive. I don’t think that was her intention by ANY stretch of the imagination, she suffered mightily, -but- she gets reeeeally descriptive, and at the risk of TMI, I’ve been verrrry close to her state, but for the Grace of God and what have you, and I think Hit So Hard might be a big-patoot Trigger for some.
Further, her degradation goes on for hoooooours! With brief forays of sobriety botched, ooooodles of stints in rehab thrown away, drug-fueled escapades such as smuggling heroin and crack into foreign countries, and a brother who was Always Always There For Her, with food so she could just eat something this week, or of things she could pawn. Uhm, Sibling Love and Care at its Finest, but oooooh that Co-Dependency is sooo NOT the AA/AlAnon Philosophy.
To add to this Bacchanalian Brouhaha is the fact that Patty narrates this herself. Uhm, her dry wit comes through cuz… dude! she speaks in a monotone for the most part. Only when she whines about how much DRAMA! Courtney Love came with (And boy! did she ever) does her voice rise for a bit. And then it’s curiously low-key once again when she’s describing Hissy Fits she herself threw during rehearsals or recording with other bands.
Lots and lots and LOTS o’ Drama! here, so, tho’ I’m thrilled she’s been sober and in a stable (And MONOGAMOUS relationship… finally!!!), there’s really nothing about how she managed, what was the linchpin, her absolute turnaround. It’s all about the drugs, the cheating, the tantrums, the How To shoot up/smoke crack. The filth and chaos of disease. Very very little on the hope for a better future, or any future at all.
And so?
Good if you wanna find your own story as an addict who’s fallen time and time (And time!) again. Trigger Warning if you’re new in sobriety. By no means uplifting as her sobriety and stable relationship are afterthoughts. And jeeeez such a reminder:
Mental illness kills. Addiction is deadly.
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