| Charlie Wilson speaking on becoming an addict and homeless | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 21 2015, 06:57 PM (1,317 Views) | |
| Shirley Brown | Jul 21 2015, 06:57 PM Post #1 |
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In this quote from Charlie Wilson autobiography he's speaks on becoming a drug addict and homeless. Charlie Wilson-----My singing career was over, that was when I made the turn from hard core drug user to stone cold addict. The drugs and alcohol dull the pain, made me forget in those hazy moments that the thing that gave me my identity, my ability to perform for others, was gone. Soon enough I was on the streets, a junkie depending on a network of of drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and homeless people to shelter me and get me my fixes. I avoided homeless shelters because people knew me and I still had hit songs on the radio. Hollywood Boulevard was my haunt. I had a network of places that I called home, some were back alleys in the nooks of Los Angeles's most infamous street. Other times I would head to the U-Haul parking lot, where I'd find makeshift shelter under the cabs of empty trucks. A lot of homeless people did the same, it was the perfect temporary accommodation if you wanted to stay out of sight and reasonably protected from the elements. My spot was beneath a truck in the back of the lot. The trucks up front would get rented first thing in the morning, forcing whoever was sleeping beneath them to gather their things and head out so that the trucks could be moved. My spot in the back gave me great cover, it allowed me to escape being exposed as homeless, plus I didn't have to rush out early in the morning. I also found both company and and safety in a shelter made up of shopping carts and plastic tarps that a homeless couple let me share with them. Then I slept on a cardboard box with a brick for my pillow. I didn't eat out of garbage cans, but if that homeless couple had a sandwich, they shared it with me and I would eat it because they were sanitary. I trusted that what they were putting in their mouths were safe enough and clean enough for mine. There were only a handful of people who knew I had nowhere to go. I never told anyone about my situation. Not even the drug dealers and prostitutes and pimps who took care of me knew I was down and out. Remember Lonnie was still releasing Gap Band albums, and there were also new Gap Band material on the radio. Drug dealers gave me drugs because they thought I was still on top. If someone recognized me, I'd tell him I just got out of the studio and was on my way to the office and I just needed a little pick me up to make it through the day. They'd say come over to my place and take a shower. I got some shit that'll wake you up and you can go back to work. I got a lot of favor because of people who thought I was, and if anyone anyone said anything out of order to me, there were a couple of guys who would look after me on that front, too. They were deep in the life and hung in dangerous places, sometimes dirty motel rooms, ramshackle houses on the fringes of down trodden neighborhoods overrun with stench of poverty, prostitution and drug abuse. I didn't belong there, I knew this. The dealers and henchmen knew it, too. But when I came knocking on their doors they never ever turned me away. These were guys with two strikes against them and not a care in the world about going to prison for 20 years to life. But still when I came into the room they launched into these ridiculous sermons full of pleas and warning, Charlie if the police catch you here you're going down. Still even as they recognized the danger and risk I was taking to get high, my stardom was mesmerizing them. They wanted to be around me as much as I wanted to be around them. We got high off of each other. It was easy enough for me to score. Even though I was strung out, people were willing to suspend disbelief and think I was a rich junkie. The pimp and drug dealers would leave me in the house with their money, their drugs and their women, and when they got back they would weigh up everything just to make sure I stuff anything in my pockets. I guess they were testing me, and once they saw everything was accounted for and they packaged what they needed, they would bad up what was left and say hey Charlie that's for you. I didn't buy anything because I didn't have the money, but what I did have working for me was that trust. Even the crackheads were generous. They would say Charlie Wilson from the Gap band, and then make a place for me to sit even if I didn't smoke a lot. When I think about it now, about the benevolence of the people even at my darkest moments, treated me like I was still special, I remember how bless I am. Though I didn't know it at the time, God covered me with his mercy, even when I didn't deserve it. Especially so, he had angels camped all around me. Without them surly I would be dead. This is a picture of Charlie autobiography below.
Edited by Shirley Brown, Jul 21 2015, 07:53 PM.
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| Shirley Brown | Jul 21 2015, 08:03 PM Post #2 |
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Here is another powerful quote from Charlie Wilson book. Charlie Wilson-----This one guy with whom I was smoking fell over dead. This guy hit the floor and nobody even looked up, nobody even called 911. Then there was the time that I reconnected with this guy who lived in a huge mansion up in Beverly Hills, adjacent to the houses of celebrities that I use to visit when I was on the road with the Gap Band. I would pull up and like Scarface he's have a big mountain of drugs sitting on the table. He would take a ziplock bag and drop a handful of a little something in it, and roll it up and hand it to me. He was generous that way. One time I called him and whoever answered the phone said come on over, so I went over to his place anticipating a nice score. When I got there the door was open and he was on the floor dead, with a bullet womb to his head. I turned around and ran the hell out of that house, trying not to touch any doorknobs, because I have no doubt that I had shown up before he was killed, or after the police was summoned, I would have been in a world of trouble. I watched from afar as they roped off the place and took the body away. It scared me to see that. But whereas something that traumatic could convince most people to quit full stop. But my addiction wasn't having it. It wanted more, and the more drugs I did the more reckless I became. Nobody knew how far I had sunk, but there I was lower than I'd ever been, and mad about it. I was bitter and embarrassed about what I didn't have. I couldn't reconcile how it was that I could work so hard and end up with little more than a bad jones and brick pillow. |
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| Plus 1 | Aug 1 2015, 09:18 AM Post #3 |
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I know a good kid at the Center who would enjoy this book. I'm going to recommend it. These words are powerful. |
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| Ronroyce | Aug 1 2015, 08:44 PM Post #4 |
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lol.. this guy seems like he his lying in order to sell books.... smoking crack with dead people around him, smoking crack in front of police that lets him go back and smoke more crack, being called to be at the scene of a murder... I dont trust this guy.. |
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| DeShawn | Aug 3 2015, 01:26 PM Post #5 |
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Ronroyce, Charlie Wilson is telling the truth about his life. He was a in drug rehab and that's where he met his wife, she worked there. |
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| Miami | Aug 10 2015, 01:00 AM Post #6 |
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That's powerful, that shows the power of God and what he can bring you through. |
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| Ronroyce | Aug 11 2015, 10:48 AM Post #7 |
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I dont doubt it that he let drugs take control of his life, but damn, some of his experiences sound outrageous.. I dont know how he managed to get himself into them.. |
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| Knowledge | Nov 19 2015, 02:23 AM Post #8 |
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Amazing what God brought him through. |
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2:55 PM Jul 11