Courtney Love: “I Think of Myself as Sober”

Talking about Courtney Love is one of my very favorite things to do. Other favorite things to do include talking trash about Lea Michele and fawning over Evan Rachel Wood. But Courtney is a little different. With Courtney, I just like to discuss: no shit talking, no harsh words, just facts.

As much as I love to talk about Courtney Love, I love to hear her talk about herself even more. She’s just so … what’s the word I’m looking for … crazy? I think that’s it. And in a magical chain of events, Courtney Loved talked about herself to The Fix for a year, and then The Fix went and compiled all those interviews into a book. Let’s not waste time and get right to some excerpts, all right?

On being “sober”: “I think of myself as sober,” Love says, though she admits that her daily diet of prescription meds wouldn’t pass muster at an AA meeting. “When you’re used to heroin and cocaine, a few pills doesn’t seem like the end of the world. As they say in AA, it’s about progress, not perfection. I mean, abstinence is a nice idea, but I don’t know if it’s right for everyone. Especially for someone who was nursed on a steady diet of Valium and Ritalin from the time I was seven, thanks to my fine mother.”…[But] I’m not a junkie anymore. I’m an establishment woman, godammit! I’m a f*cking plutocrat! I’m fun, I’m sober, I’m fabulous! I have a few character defects, but I’m not dishonorable, and I’m not a liar. I have a good heart. There are a few things I do really well. I write good lyrics and sing. I love beautiful clothes and good music. I adore movies and acting. But unfortunately I suck at social graces. I lack a certain set of basic life skills, which is probably why I got into drugs in the first place. All I need is someone to give me a course in living.…When I was taking all the drugs, I just felt neutered and dull, like a nun. They helped get rid of all these uncomfortable feelings in my brain. So getting off drugs has made me feel really sexual and tender…like a 16-year-old virgin.”

As if that wasn’t enough, go ahead and click below so you can read more of Courtney’s beautiful words.

On her troubles after Kurt Cobain’s death: “When Kurt died, I just fell into this endless spiral. I was doing drugs from the moment I woke up till the time I went to bed. I was out of it most of the time. I was naïve. I was stupid. I did what I was told to do. And by the time I figured out what was going on, I didn’t have a dime left to my name. I hired a forensic accountant to find out how all these f*cking people had managed to screw me so royally with all the fake credit cards. Kurt earns more money than any other deceased musician in history. One year, he even made more than Elvis! But I was so broke that Frances and I had to move in with my stepfather to stay off the street. All that time, these lawyers and accountants were feasting on billions of my dollars, and Frances and I didn’t have a dime! We didn’t have money to eat.”

On living in Dr. Phil’s house: “I was living in Dr. Phil’s mansion on Alpine. Just as you’d expect, it was an awful, hideous place, with all these big dumb carrots and turnips splashed all over the kitchen walls. I had intended to flip it, but since it was decorated exactly like you’d think Dr. Phil would decorate his house, it wasn’t exactly an easy sell. So I ended up staying there for a while, though I wasn’t a big hit with the neighbors. The police department doesn’t approve of musicians with tattoos living on the west side of Sunset Boulevard. As long as we stay on our side of the border, we’re fine, but if you dare to cross over, you’d better watch out. Stupidly I was getting bundles of blow delivered to my house by a mulatto in a Nissan with a dragging muffler. I was living three blocks from the Beverly Hills Police Department. My house was located two blocks from a school….The police got a warrant and just came crashing into my house. After that I didn’t cop for the rest of my life. Since then no drug transaction involving cash and Courtney Love has ever occurred.”

On crack: “The strange thing is, while the crack screwed me up in a lot of ways, it improved me in certain others. I’ve never been good with numbers, but when I was on crack I could do math really, really well. I became a f*cking whiz at calculus.”

She’s seriously bad with money: “Shortly after Kurt’s death, the lawyer who was representing me called and said, ‘Courtney, you have over $7 million coming to you, but you need to give me your Social Security number.’ [I couldn’t] remember my Social Security Number, so I had to lie and make one up. My mother, saint that she is, had a million husbands. My brothers and sisters were adopted by one stepfather, then by another. Thank God I was emancipated when I was 15, but ever since then I’ve wandered through life wondering who the f*ck I am: Courtney Michelle Rodriguez? Courtney Michelle Menelli? Courtney Love? Courtney Cobain? It’s like, I don’t even know my f*cking name! How am I expected to know my Social Security number?”

On Pamela Anderson’s roast: “That Roast wasn’t a great moment for me. I was doped and dazed, and had lipstick smeared all over my face. I may have even been drooling. But it was all Andy Dick’s fault. He handed me a fat pill right before the show and said, ‘Courtney, here, take this—it’s like Vicodin without the aspirin.’ Winona Ryder slipped me a similar pill a few years ago. I’m such an addict that I just swallowed them both, without asking what they were. So thanks to Andy Dick, I ended up getting addicted to benzos again, which went on to plague my life.”

On drugs: “I don’t do street drugs anymore. My medications are all legally prescribed by prominent physicians. I’m entirely legal. But the truth is,  I’ve never claimed to be anyone’s role model. I’m not Mother Theresa. All I’m trying to do is stay alive.”

Courtney’s mom on her childhood: “I’ve tried my best but I’m not the perfect mother,” Carroll says. “Courtney has always painted me as this neglectful parent. But I’m not the person that she portrays me to be. When she was young I’d react to her volatility by distancing myself. Sometimes she really scared me. The truth is I didn’t know what to do. I love her very much, but Courtney was never a typical child. Her problems were beyond me.”

Courtney’s mom on rumors that Courtney was involved with Kurt Cobain’s death: “Every time I hear someone say that I feel physically ill,” Carroll said, responding to rumors in a controversial documentary that Courtney was involved in Cobain’s death. “Courtney may be very impulsive and she makes terrible choices at times, but that doesn’t make her a murderer. She loved Kurt very much. She has nothing capable inside her like that, Kurt was the only person Courtney ever really attached to.”

The Fix also got some new details about that time that Frances Bean, Courtney’s daughter, filed a restraining order against her back in 2009:

– In a sworn statement to the court on December 10, 2009, Frances recalled accompanying her mother to the home of a former boyfriend, James Barber, years earlier. “She took me in a taxi to his house in the middle of the night, and from outside the house, in her bare feet, she screamed at him, threw rocks at the house, and threatened to burn his house down. His children were inside the house, but that did not stop my mother.”

– “My mother is obsessed with uncovering fraud and spends much of her day raging about the fraud that has been perpetrated on her and on me,” her statement continued. “She incessantly rages about her many theories relating to the supposed incidences of ‘fraud.’ She slams doors, breaks things, stomps around the hotel or apartment and spends hours on the phone, yelling.”

– Love “has taken drugs for as long as I can remember. She basically exists now on…Xanax, Adderall, Sonata and Abilify, sugar and cigarettes. She rarely eats….She often falls asleep in her bed while she is smoking, and I am constantly worried that she will start a fire (which she has done at least three times) that will threaten our lives.”

– According to the deposition, Love once threatened to jump off a balcony while her daughter watched.

– Frances further claimed that her cat died after getting entangled in piles of Etsy fabrics, boxes of paperwork, trash and other possessions, and that a dog died after swallowing a pile of Love’s pills. In addition to keeping Courtney away from Frances, Frances’ grandmother and Frances’ aunt, the restraining order also prevents Courtney from contact with Frances’s dog, Uncle Fester.

So … crazy enough for you?!