Posted September 18, 200717 yr “Drugs? You name it, I took it!” She’s a multi-million-selling superstar with a blissfully happy marriage, but life hasn’t always been rosy for Pink. She turned to drink and drugs after her parents’ divorce, but unlike some of her friends, she’s still here to tell Glamour the tale. http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/11hp4_copy2.jpg When you think of Pink, your mind automatically races with images of a tough girl, tomboy bad-ass who could happily hold her own in a fight – and then some. However, what immediately strikes you upon meeting the notoriously loose-lipped 27 year old singer is how pretty, not to mention petite, she is. Vulnerable, even, particularly when the conversation turns to her troubled background and subsequent years of hard partying and dalliances with even harder drugs. Born Alecia Moore in Philadelphia on September 8, 1979, Pink says her home life was far from sweet – in fact, it resembled ‘a war zone’. Her Vietnam veteran father, Jim, and her mother, Judy, divorced when she was just eight. And it’s a memory that remains vivid to this day: “I remember when they told us. I was shocked and, you know, we cried a lot, but as soon as my dad was gone I was like, ‘Freedom!’ My dad was the strict one, so I thought, ‘I can do whatever the f*** I want now!’” http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/vid5.jpg And that’s precisely what she did. To excess. From the relatively tame acts of skipping school, running away from home and getting tattoos, to the borderline destructive – smoking, drinking excessively, and experimenting with every drug imaginable – Pink did it all. “You name it, I took it,” she candidly admits. The trouble started with her smoking cigarettes at nine, then graduating to marijuana joints by ten. “From about 12 to 15 it was just downhill all the way. Sometimes when your life is full of pain, drugs give you an escape and then you end up dead or sick. Thankfully I was never that much into it to have treatment, but I certainly dabbled. I even saw three friends buried from a heroin overdose. That should have stopped me – but it didn’t.” Her mother tried to exercise some control over her wild-child daughter, but Pink had been the ultimate rebel from an early age. “I was way ahead of myself and my mother simply couldn’t handle me. She threw me out when I was 13, but I was actually ready to go long before that. You know, we’re both very difficult people and I never believed in authority. I knew what I wanted to do and I didn’t like rules and I made sure everyone knew that. My mother was an out of control single parent who was going to school as well as working full time.” So, with her terrible teens in full swing, Pink was forced to go and live with her father, who was much harder to rebel against. “I listened to him because he would put me through the walls if I didn’t,” she laughs. “And I respected that. If he wanted to warn me he’d count to three, but I only ever let him get to two and three quarters. You don’t f*** with Jim Moore – you just don’t.” http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/039.jpg But curbing her wild ways proved trickier than she imagined and Pink continued to party hard for some years after. Her eventual wake up call came on Thanksgiving 1995. After a marathon session of drugs and booze she collapsed on the floor and became convinced she was going to die. Hardly surprising, considering she’d been drinking, smoked numerous joints and taken a cocktail of cocaine, ketamine, crystal meth and angel dust. But the nasty scare did the trick: “Then I was clean, at 15.” http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/23714507.jpg From then on, her main focus was conquering the music business: “I always had a goal and people I lost to drugs pretty much didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grow up. They got distracted and lost their way. But when I was younger I thought my life would be completely over if I didn’t get on Star Search by the time I was nine! And despite everything that happened I never lost sight of that dream, of wanting to be a singer and songwriter.” http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/10445900.jpg With album sales in excess of 18 million, a Brit Award, two Grammys and a current hit album (the fantastically titled, characteristically autobiographical I’m Not Dead) – Pink’s professional life couldn’t be better. A success that’s also mirrored on the home front. Earlier this year, she finally married long-term boyfriend, motocross rider Carey Hart, and although they’ve barely seen each other since her rigorous promotional schedule, its hard for her to contain how blissfully happy she is. “Neither me nor Carey are conventional people, you know – our parents and our whole families are divorced four or five times over, but I love the idea of commitment. I don’t believe you have to have a piece of paper between you to be committed, or to be in love, or to have a good time. But I knew it was important to him and he’s important to me. He’s had tough times as well, so between the two of us, it’s perfect.” http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/2842294.jpg And she’s even found peace and made up with her mum: “We have an incredible friendship now after a mixture of pain, honesty and unconditional love and a long break from each other. We’ve come a long way, but it’s been a long track.” http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e15/pink_princess01/new%20album/5790-Pink-288241462.jpg Having said that, Pink’s the first to admit she’s far from perfect. “What can I say, I’m a work in progress. I can still be stupid, but I’m doing my best to improve. What more can you do? I respect anybody that is trying to be better. And lets face it, you can always be better.”
