Free Fall: Two Decades of Rock 'n' Roll and Addiction, 1979-1999

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First of a two-book series, Free Fall is a true-life musical memoir; not about how one gets better, but how one gets sick and doesn't notice. The astonishing account of escaping addiction and rebuilding a life is shared in the second book of this series, Falling Up.

In Free Fall, a grieving child becomes a legally emancipated teenage runaway and pursues a rock and roll dream and gets close. Ideas of meaning and identity, formed by a bewildered boy soothed only by books, an AM/FM radio, a flimsy record player, and a guitar would ultimately lead a grown man into brokenness. It would just take 20 years of rock 'n' roll adventure; one that was frequently brave. And doomed from the start.

Free Fall is driven by a piece of bad luck: There were reasons to believe.

Included are 21 original song lyrics, all written and recorded during the same time period, andeach with its own writer's note. All produced by an intermittently homeless man hurtling towards end-stage addiction. The songs may be downloaded separately at www.bradleytsmith.net. By broadening the reader to listener, the music conspires with the book to reveal the unsaid.

The music spans from lush ballads to wall-of-sound rockers, to a movie soundtrack pitch, a Christmas song, and a "lost demo" from a dusty cassette.

There is no need to read the book in order. The chapters in Free Fall are short, with the introductory sections seeking to illuminate some of the cultural, biological, psychological, and philosophical intersections that can conspire to propel addiction. Simple, bullet point suggestions to help those who suffer are included; often containing sensible metaphors to help untangle addiction's maddening complexities. Chapter One, "Living for a Song" opens the story.

Hard questions drive: How does an innocent child end up in a box on the streets When does one "decide" to become a songwriter - or a painter, dancer, actor, or poet What cultural and historical conditions shape this call What beliefs sustain such perilous allegiance to this identity How can songs this good go nowhere
Why was the near-lethal use of alcohol and drugs logical and defensible

Questions like these center Free Fall within a larger ether, and the story no longer seems so reckless. Similar intersections confound the seekers, the dare-to-dreamers, the wounded, and the disconnected everywhere. People are meaning-making creatures; all of us are compelled to make sense of our experience, to seek connection and pursue vague longings, and when we falter, to seek again, to learn as we go how to soothe our wounds and apprehensions. In the absence of connection, we create surrogate relationships, however harmful or illusory. These substitutes are a rational response to barrenness: anything but nothing again.

While a cautionary account of the extraordinary risks to literally living for a song, Free Fall is also an inadvertent love letter to the songs of the late-Sixties and Seventies, to vinyl records and their precious liner notes, and to the pre-internet era of broadcast radio's last golden age, when deejays were the arbiters of cool. When the sparse, transient lifestyle of a musical troubadour still held a shred of dignity within a larger, fading myth.

Free Fall introduces a nine-year-old boy and his first drink at the funeral of his beloved mother, dead at 33. Nobody noticed the drunk child. Well-meaning adults, distracted by their own disarrays, could not see. The boy began to seek something specific: a way to become so valuable he could never be abandoned again. At 17, the teenage runaway and daily drinker was well on his way to a rock 'n' roll disaster. Free Fall closes with a crushing brokenness and a murmur of the divine.

Browse the songs and their backstories, find a lyric that strikes your muse, or simply pick a chapter title that provokes. However you may begin, consider the sheer audacity of it all.

A man can cover a lot of airspace in free fall.

Reviews

- "Poetic, gritty, intelligent, painful, sad and intense; brilliantly evoking a tortuous evolution from the unconscious to the conscious. So helpful to see this tenacious learning, loving, and insistence upon music amongst all the suffering." Shannon W.

- "I usually tear through books, but I find Free Fall a book to be slowly savored and reflected upon. It calls to me on so many levels." Susan F.

- "It's a roller coaster - lots of action and emotion after an insightful introduction. Shearon B.

- "Smith's book provokes reflection on the significance of suffering. A story of loss, betrayal and victimization; of generosity, "benevolent synchronicity" and resilience, his prose style is both immediate and detached, lyrical and matter of fact. Now an esteemed psychotherapist, he has written a work of "affective empathy," offering hope to persons with substance use disorders and practical guidance to those who love them. Margaret T-S.

- "This insightful and psychologically complex book provides an extraordinary glimpse into the mind and experiences of an intellectually and artistically gifted person, and his dismaying descent into addiction. And that music! It could be considered something of a miracle that Smith is alive to be able to share this profoundly moving story." Ivan H.

- "Some stories need to be told. This is one of them. From chaos comes clarity and depth rarely found on the printed page. Smith has achieved a remarkable feat: artfully combining educational and psychological theory on addiction and human development with a profound backstory. A powerful book!" Jane K.

- "There are not enough words to express how I felt reading Free Fall. There has been a lot of addiction in my family. Going through her "Red Giant," my stepsister ended up taking her own life. My father also died from related causes. I didn't really understand their struggles until I read the first 30 pages. Society told me it was their fault, and this never felt right to me." Erin K.

Author Bio

Bradley Thomas Smith is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and a Licensed Advanced Alcohol and Other Drug Counselor at a university in Los Angeles, where he also teaches. There he is the Director of The Center for Collegiate Recovery, guiding initiatives for prevention, early intervention, and harm reduction for substance use disorders in emerging adults. His work includes community mental health education, research, and social justice advocacy.

Bradley is also a psychotherapist in private practice and the bandleader of the classic rock musical group "Leo Clarus" - The Clear Lion. He is twenty-four years sober.