This is not a test. This is reality world wide.
Hey guys what’s up this is Erik Johnson, we are going to review Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and Hot Dog Flavored Water their third studio album, released in the year 2000.
Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water
So when I was about 27 years old I’m going to talk about my craziness with that album. Drinking, drugging, almost dying, hanging out with some crazy homeless people, and we’re gonna dive into that.
So, chocolate starfish was an incredibly powerful album, hate him or love him Fred Durst was just incredible, West Boreland was the crunchiest ever, and I had a lot of great memories with that album, a lot of bad memories, that’s when alcohol turned against me – we’ll get into that.
So, when I was 25, I just got back from Job Corps, I was sober in Job Corps for nine months. I trained on tugboats on the Columbia River in Oregon.
I went to Job Corps because I wanted to work on tugboats but it was really to get away from the small town where I grew up, and alcohol was getting out of control.
I actually got arrested before going to Job Corps for domestic violence – it was a pretty bad time.
So I went to Job Corps, and I was sober the whole time, had a great time, learned about AA and did some reach out work, helping schizophrenics and stuff, and helping them to get sober.
But when I came back, here’s the thing: I quit Job Corps because I didn’t want to be a grease monkey for a living. I wanted to be an artist still, I wanted to write the best American novel.
So I quit Job Corps and moved back to the small town where I had that trouble with the law and drinking was there and all that stuff, but I was sober for a couple of months when I moved back.
My parents and I had just made amends, so they’re like you’re not going to be homeless, we’re going to set you up in a small trailer on our commercial property.
So I’m living in this 15 foot trailer, I’m in really good shape from Job Corps, and sober nine months – I got my brain back, you know the wits about me. I’m feeling very optimistic about my life.
One day, this guy was walking on my road past my trailer and I was very curious who he was. He had two dogs and he had these water containers and was going to fill them up at my business, not my parents business but the next door business.
It was kind of weird, you know he was wearing flannel even though it was a hot summer day, and he had frizzy gray hair. I finally introduced myself to him and his name was Shawn.
He was like yeah come over some time and hang out. So I was still sober and I had no idea what he was about, but I wanted to write the next great American novel and he seemed very interesting, to say the least. He was definitely on SSI, and he was about 10 years older than me.
So I decided to go over there, and when I went over there I discovered that he lived in a trailer and there were all these other trailers and it was kind of like in this crater in the earth.
There were like four trailers, and so I went down there and I talked to him and I discovered that he lives with four other guys, and they all seem different.
They’re all pretty much on Social Security Disability, crazy money, and I’m like this is it! I’m gonna document these guys because they’re nuts, and I’m going to write the next One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, these guys seem really crazy.
So eventually, I gave in, I was like, I need to be like these guys to really get involved, I can’t just come over here sober when they’re drinking so I’m going to just drink.
I started drinking with them and it was a blast. It was July and it was August. It was warm out there, having fires every day, we would just burn trash and plastic and make these huge bonfires and throw empties into the forest and yell up at the sky.
Shawn would just get nuts when he drank and he would pretend that he was a Satan worshiper, and yell up at the sky and say Damian, you know and do these funny things.
His roommates were basically crazy and this other guy, his name was Weasel. He was an ex hobo from Haight Ashbury, and he had a huge pock nose, and he was deaf. So he would sit around the fire and he would yell “This is great!” Just bringing over beer just made his day.
So I’m only like 27 years old. I got out of Job Corps when I was 25, but hotdog flavored water was released when I was 27. So I’ve been home for a couple years when that album hit.
I was just like, Guys, you got to listen to this, and I finally got a car, saved up some money and got a Honda Prelude and we used to drive around listening and drinking and driving to hot dog flavored water, and it was awesome.
At this time I also got a PA system and upgraded from the 15 foot trailer and got a school bus so I’m living in a 40 foot school bus converted, no chairs in it, and I bought a huge PA system.
So now I’m blaring Limp Bizkit in my school bus in these huge, you know, four foot tall PA speakers and I invited those guys over. So, another guy that lived in the hole, I call it the hole, because it was like a crater in the earth.
Another guy over there was called “Animal.” He had long greasy hair and he just grunted. He was like animal from the Muppet Show. That’s why they called him animal.
So I partied with all those guys – and it got to the point where I was getting drunk more than they were. I was blacking out and doing crazy stuff, pounding my fist on the floor of their trailers.
They would have to tell me what I did the night before and Sean’s just like Erik you were crazy last night. We didn’t know what you’re doing.
So the alcohol was starting to turn against me again. You know, I’ve only been drinking for like two years at this point, but I’m driving around with these guys, and Weasel is in the backseat of my car just yelling, this is great, this is great, and Sean’s just blown away by Limp Bizkit.
He’s like can you play that song again that had the siren in it, which was, full nelson is the song with the siren in it. So I would play that song again and again because they were just used to like Creedence Clearwater Revival and just old music you know, they had no electricity down there in the hole so they would just play the radio and play this old boring rock from the 70s.
So yeah, it’s full nelson with the siren and Shawn would be like can you play that song again he was just blown away by my music, and I used to play it through my 400 Watt PA system.
But here’s the thing, Shawn actually turned me on to a little bit of meth, there was one night that I was just wasted blacked out, I couldn’t even find my way home, I was getting tangled up in the black berry vines, and he came up and he saved me and he took me back to his trailer.
I’m just wasted, and he’s like here, try this and I smoked it and I was instantly awake, completely cognitive like I never drank at all. And, and I was just like what the heck was that and he was like, it was crazy. And I was like This is incredible. I went out I hopped into my car I found my car, got out of the hole, went downtown and bar hopped the rest of the night and it was amazing.
So I got turned on to meth, but meth was later on I discovered meth was very, it made me very perverted. It was very dark and this is basically the devil’s drug, and I’ll leave a link to I lost my soul one summer to Meth.
So, things are starting to get scary, and I’m starting to get blacked out every night and I’m starting to pee my bed. I’m losing my bladder at night. I’m getting so wasted that I’m pissing my bed every time I drank. It’s getting really bad.
I tried to get sober from the ages of 29 to 32, and then finally when I was 32 I had a heart attack, and didn’t know what the heck was going on. You know, I thought it was a fluke.
So I kept drinking after that even though the doctors placed a stent in my artery that was 80% clogged I was like it was a fluke I’m going to keep partying.
But at this point, I am drinking and driving every day. There are empty beer cans all over the place. Now I’m just drinking with Animal alone. He’s like my only friend, he’s basically homeless himself with his greasy hair just grunting.
I finally got sober when I was 36, and those guys in the hole eventually died. Shawn died when he was 50 from lung cancer and weasel died. He was the hobo from Haight Ashbury; he just died from alcoholism – and I don’t know what happened to Animal.
But, you know, all of the fun has to end guys and alcohol is a progressive disease it gets worse and worse over time. Even if you have bouts of sobriety, it keeps growing, whether you drink or not.
And even though those were great times with Limp Bizkit, and it was wild and crazy and I partied with those guys and, actually, started to write about them a little bit more when I got sober, but it never lasts, the fun times with alcohol and drugs never last.
It will either take your life, or you’ll go to jail, or you’ll go insane, or you can get sober. So if you want to get sober guys you have to get rid of all of those triggers that you associate with alcohol.
You have to get rid of the old drinking friends, you have to change places, you have to move out of town like I did or you have to move to another side of town.
If you have a lot of friends coming over and they all drink, you have to get out of that environment. We’re talking now or never.
But nu metal was just an awesome genre of that time, nu metal gave the disenfranchised a voice, it gave people with Asperger’s like me, a voice, people that were abused by their dads and that had childhood drama, all of those bands basically had trauma and they sang about it with some really crunchy awesome guitar ribs, some really awesome powerful Hip Hop drum beats and I loved nu metal.
In fact, I will still listen to it today, 25 years later, it was a very incredible time in my life, but I am very glad to be sober, and I got out of that situation, because those guys died, and you know a lot of my friends died from that time.
I just wanted to say that I am very grateful to be alive and hopefully this channel can inspire you guys to get sober, watch my other videos, read my other articles on sobriety because you’re here for a reason, you probably already slipped past dying several times. Leave a comment if you almost died, or if you like nu metal like I did, and we will talk to you soon.
