And at the top, he was still doing a pretty good job—like, he was still playing all the notes and remembering all the words to the songs—but as the night went on, he just started to do whatever drugs people would throw up there. Like, someone would throw a little baggie of coke, and Chris would do that, and then like, someone would throw up some pills and Chris would do that. And, like, me and Trick and the rest of the band were just standing there watching all this like: What the fuck are we even supposed to do, you know? I mean, we couldn’t stop the show or pull the plug or whatever, because there would’ve been a riot in the auditorium, so we just watched this crazy shit unfolding. And at a certain point, like, people started throwing up drugs that Chris didn’t even recognize. Chris would look at the baggie and stop the song and speak into the mic, like: What’s this one called? And the person who threw it up would yell “Animal Brains” or whatever, and Chris would do it. And Chris picked up this one baggie, and when he looked at it, he got this smile on his face like: I know what THIS one is. But he spoke into the mic anyway, and he said: What’s this one? And some crazy person out in the crowd was like: HEROIN! And Chris just, like, smiled this crazy smile and then put it away in his pocket.

And, that’s the only time in my life when I’ve ever had to issue a formal apology where, like, I actually meant it, you know? I’ve had to apologize for some pretty stupid shit over the years, but after that show in Portland, I WANTED to issue an apology. It was like, I was the one who called my publicist and was like: What the fuck should we do here, you know? You can imagine how horrified some of these parents were who brought their kids to this show. I had no idea a human being could even take so many drugs.

And so the next day, we had like, a big conference, like, a big sit-down with Shari and Bobby and the rest of the managers and the publicists, and we were all just like: Chris, this shit can’t happen again. This was completely insane. And Chris was just, like, laughing, like: Of course, of course, I was just having a little fun. Just keeping Portland on their toes. Like, he was acting totally fucking crazy. I bet he was probably drunk at that meeting.

And so over the next couple shows, Chris started getting more and more hammered before each time we’d go out there, and sometimes he’d clearly be on something, you know? Like, sometimes he’d be all coked up, and sometimes he’d be sort of zonked out and eventually, like, Trick and I both decided to call Chris’s wife, because, I mean, we weren’t even sure if she knew what was going on with him, you know, and so we were both just sort of like, this is out of our depth. We need to bring in the big guns. And so we called up Deborah and we were like: Yo, Debbie, Chris is out of control, you gotta come down here.