Drugs are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir

by Lisa Crystal Carver

In this eye-opening memoir, Lisa Crystal Carver recalls her extraordinary youth and charts the late-80s, early-90s punk subculture that she helped shape. She recounts how her band Suckdog was born in 1987 and the wild events that leaving small-town New Hampshire to tour Europe at 18, becoming a teen publisher of fanzines, a teen bride, and a teen prostitute. Spin has called Suckdog's album Drugs Are Nice one of the best of the '90s, and the book includes photos of infamous European shows. Yet the book also tells of how Lisa saw the need for change in 1994, when her baby was born with a chromosomal deletion and his father became violent. With lasting lightness and surprising gravity, Drugs Are Nice is a definitive account of the generation that wanted to break every rule, but also a story of an artist and a mother becoming an adult on her own terms.

Genres: Music, Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Drugs, Biography Memoir, Cultural

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2005

About the author

Lisa Crystal Carver (born 1968[1]), also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby.[2] Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes (her ex-husband with whom she performed Suckdog), Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many. A collection of notable articles from the zine was published as Rollerderby: The Book.

She started touring with the performance art band Psycodrama when she was 18 years old.[3] It was also at this time that she became a prostitute, which has been a major theme in her writings over the years.[4] She began touring with Costes a year later, and would also tour without him when he was in France. She toured the U.S. and Europe six times, the last time in 1998. The noise music soap operas included audience interaction including dancing and mock-rape of audience members.[3]

Carver is the also the author of Dancing Queen: a Lusty Look at the American Dream, in which she expounds upon various relics of pop culture past, including Lawrence Welk, roller rinks, and Olivia Newton-John. In 2005, Soft Skull Press released her newest book, Drugs Are Nice, detailing her early childhood and later romantic relationships with Costes, Boyd Rice and Smog's Bill Callahan. In addition to writing her own 'zines and books, Carver has also written for various magazines (including Peter Bagge's comic book Hate) and kept a fictionalized journal about her sex life for the website Nerve. Although Carver no longer writes her journal for the site, she is still a semi-regular contributor. The online Journal at Nerve was subsequently published in book form as The Lisa Diaries: Four Years in the Sex Life of Lisa Carver and Company. (via Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Laurasmoot · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a used book store about 6 months ago because it looked funny and decadent and smart, and figured whenever I'd get around to reading it, it'd make me feel like I was going some kind of interesting small-scale crazy until I finished it, which is a thing I look for from memoirs and certain kinds of fiction. Is your book making me think like you write? Cause I'm a double gemini and that sort of thing is a good time for me. And sometimes it's a bad time for me. I was a little nervous that reading Lisa Carver's memoir was gonna make me feel self-destructive and brilliant. That sort of happened; this was a really good book to read on Septa with dark lipstick on (y'know?), and also for staying up desperately tooo late because only books and ideas matter. Upon finishing it this morning, though, I feel the most clear-headed and not-crazy I've felt in months, and all I want to do is write and write and write. And THAT is even better than what I was looking for. So she wrote this impressively curated and honest account of her weird, broken story, and don't we all have a weird broken story?--but hers is one that I care about because she's a writer and a woman and a raging misfit who still cares about normal people and y'know there's the post-punk? ziney subcultural lineage. Anyway, more than nice of Carver to let me crawl into her brain and think like her for a week or so. Better than that, she had some important things to say to me about friendship and childhood and Making Stuff and abuse and having a kid to raise, and she totally busted her ass to be able to figure out how to see them and say them. I still can't figure out whether to just sharpie over my copy's book review one-liner on the front cover that calls her "Hunter S Thompson in a mini-skirt," or to instead write underneath: "HST fucking wishes, you asshole."

[Sarah Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to suppress my desire to denigrate this as a fluffy memoirish ladytimes summer read, because while that's a tempting angle to take, it's not really fair. Lisa Crystal Carver is one of the proto-zinesters who made amazing and kind of solipsistic small-run self-obsessed photocopied magazines, back even before riot grrrl was really a thing or Sassy started covering the phenomenon. I was mostly into reading this because I treasure my compilation of her zine Rollerderby and I was curious to see how she would make the leap from the informalities of old school cut and paste to the officialdom of bookness. In her zines, Lisa Crystal Carver has this magic ability to write off-handedly about gross stuff (swallowing phlegm balls, her vagaries as Lisa Suckdog in the eponymous band/performance thing known as Suckdog, which often involved crude props and simulated scatplay on stage to accompany operatic music about lost kittens and stuff) and some feminist stuff (don't get scared away, though, this was before the towering pain in the ass of third wave Sex 'n the City feminism flamed up and out). It's surprising, somehow, that even with such saucy material to play off of, her best writing conquers the mundane (interviews with trashy cracker neighbors, reviews of her cats, hating on Linda Evangalista's new-at-the-time blond haircut). Gladly, gladly, a lot of the things I loved about Rollerderby are preserved in "Drugs Are Nice," but shown from backstage, with a more reflective look at the reasons feral teenage Lisa was so good, so bad, so slutty, so honest. And okay, the transition between zine and grownup nonfiction narrative is a little awkward at times. One gets the sense that she hadn't completely resolved her authorial position, whether to write from the present looking back at the past or to deliver it all immediacy-style with second person present tense, which annoyed me in the first few chapters but smoothed out eventually.

Of course, no memoir gets published without one of those classic hard knocks arcs, and the arc here follows Lisa's abusive relationship with a manipulative and dangerous man much like her father, and her ability to get away once she could clearly see the effect her awful and wonderful father had on her relationships. That right there, that's the reason I'm tempted to class this as a beach read version of the other side of growing up Gen X, but wait, fuck that. This is Lisa Suckdog we're talking about here, who did an entire album of weirdo songs threatening GG Allin. GG ALLIN, okay?

[chelsea li · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know how but I finished reading this in 1 day and I feel like I just stuffed a whole rotisserie chicken down my throat. It’s wonderful but I just can’t breathe very well right now

[Chris Estey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I slighted this book with my original review -- it is much more important than merely showing an early glimpse into GG Allin.

[Richard]

With Drugs Are Nice, Lisa Carver has created the first enduring memoir of her subculture and generation. Called one of Playboy's "favorite cultural observers" and Boston Magazine's "supreme cultural anthropologist," Lisa Carver's has written widely on popular music, art, and her own sex life (as a Nerve.com diarist). In Drugs Are Nice, she charts the birth of the movement she helped create, from the dizzying highs of European performance art tours to the genesis of the zine phenomenon. It's an extraordinary life, told by a writer only now coming into her own as a major literary voice.

In 1987 in the small town of Dover, New Hampshire, Lisa and her best friend Rachel--both seventeen--set up a punk show at the Veteran's Hall. When the headlining act got lost and drunk and never showed up, the audience was angry and the promoters hid in the bathroom. Then Lisa got an idea. The girls put on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, mounted the stage, smoked cigars, caterwauled, took off their clothes and hit things and people. Suckdog--called "the most interesting band in the world" by England's Melody Maker--was born.

Lisa Carver left for Europe at the age of eighteen, quickly becoming a teen publisher (of the fanzines Dirt and Rollerderby), a teen bride (to French performance artist Jean-Louis Costes), and a teen prostitute (turning her first trick a few days before turning 20). Hustler called Rollerderby "quite possibly the greatest zine ever," and The Utne Reader chooses Lisa Carver as one of the "100 Visionaries Who Will Change Your Life."

But when her baby was born in 1994 with a chromosomal deletion and his dad--industrial music maven and rumored neo-Nazi Boyd Rice--became violent, Lisa began to realize the life that needed changing was her own. A story of lasting lightness and surprising gravity, Drugs is a book about the generation that wanted to break every rule. A definitive account of rules broken, left intact and re-written forever, it ripens into the classic account of an artist and a mother becoming an adult on her own terms.

[Tina Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think that what the publisher info leaves out here is that Lisa Carver is learning to overcome the cycle of abuse, and lives in a whirlwind right up until she has her own kid and has to rethink her whole lifestyle...also, she does a great job of conveying what various (super interesting!) relationships she was in felt like. She didn't waste any space, either - I felt like she could have written a 3 volume set but instead chose to really pare it down and only include the most intense parts of her unusually intense life.

My favorite thing about this woman (and thus her memoir) was how she invented her own life and really DID everything she set out to do.

[Selvaggina, · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at a time when I was convinced that I couldn't make successful art. Reading about her adventures and drive to just do what she had to is still a big inspiration.

[malu]

dnf at 31%
not a nice thing to say about a memoir but this book is gross, sad and problematic. there were a few good insights about art and people in general, but beside these little moments of ilumination the text was really difficult to read. this was definitely not for me.

[Vic]

Finished it in one day. Depicts domestic male violence and arts in extremism. Made me think about generational trauma and question whether there is a possibility to raise a child properly a lot.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll start by saying this book definitely isn't for everyone. The text is very hard to get through the first few chapters. It's like reading a jumbled collection of thoughts and random conversations.
But after like five chapters, it gets more palatable, and after about half of it, you're used to it.
The second thing I have to say is that this book is definitely going to offend you in some way or another. There's lots of racism, sexism, transphobic, and homophobic comments from all the characters, but I don't really care about that.
This book talks about some heavy stuff like sa, child sa, domestic violence, prostitution, drug usage, and so much more, and none of these topics are approached in a normal, educated or sophisticated way. It's plain and simple and cruel. Right in your face.
But at the end of the day, it's a love-hate read where you don't like the people enough at the start of the book and by the middle and end you just want everything to work out for Lisa and her baby.
Would I recommend it? Only if you're already used to this kind of desensitized type of humor and attitude.
I would recommend checking a list of trigger warnings before reading it.
But I enjoyed it!

[Delia Rainey · Rating 4 out of 5]

a not-boring read, a gossipy tour/zine/fuck-up memoir, i had to read this on the bus and in waiting rooms wherever i went because i needed to know what was going to happen next. i loved running around with lisa and her band, and even as they did these shocking acts on stage, her book gave us so much genuine retrospection and thought, political and philosophical analyzing of it all ~ this was not a book written just for shock-value. it felt like this book was written for me, for girls who love self-destruction, masochism, freaking people out with art, and underneath all of that, this naive and "good" desire to change the world. even though i love lisa throughout, she shows herself as such a flawed person. she changes her mind constantly about how she feels, she stays in abusive relationships and blames her own agency, she can't decide if she's happier as the submissive doll or taking control. she raises a baby under a nazi flag, she is a libertarian-leaning pro-lifer, but she's still denied her choice. in the end, i will never forget the relationship between lisa and rachel, even if their looking-back-on-life dialogue at the end on the train tracks was a bit cheesy. to find someone who understands you in this world, who stands by your side, and you save each other over and over again by needing each other, that's the whole point.

[Fantods · Rating 5 out of 5]

magisterial

[Ronny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Killer

[Danielle Chelosky · Rating 5 out of 5]

best book ever wowwww wow wow wow

[Uri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5*

[Haven Nasif · Rating 2 out of 5]

surprised i finished this one, but had to hate-read after a certain point. i normally like memoirs where the authors have done some questionable shit, bc we all do, but this was just 250 pages of a white woman thinking that shock value equates to substance and somehow not realizing that a rumored nazi might actually in fact be a nazi! the biggest problem with gen x “punks” like this is that they think dressing a certain way and acting like degenerates is somehow making a statement on politics or culture. there are multiple points in the book where Carver platforms outright racist ideas (and tries to hide it behind a weak condemnation). i think she would do a wonderful job with fiction, because there are rich descriptions of colorful characters, but why are we acting like this reality is just a funny story? maybe she never found mainstream success because everyone realized she wasn’t saying anything profound at all, she was just journaling her delusional life choices.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa Crystal Carver writes:


At the end of the tour, I tell Jean Louis I can't do these shows any more. I still think they're great; I still believe in a dirty glamour, and that chaos and violence and ambiguous relationships and constant travel can be paths to redemption. It’s just that it’s all wrong for me now because it doesn't embarrass me. Showing my body or its functions to strangers, being laughed at or chased away never embarrassed me. But saying what I really feel - any emotion, no matter which one - makes me turn red and want to throw up. My flying limbs and flying vagina - both on stage and off - create a flurry of distraction obscuring my embarrassed heart and shy soul. I want to be and feel truly exposed. I mean, I don’t want to. I’m terrified to. But because I don’t want to, I want to.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this so that I could review it in Resonance, and it was absolutely fantastic and riveting. I didn't know much about Lisa Crystal Carver going into it, but as it turns out, she's a minor celebrity, having been involved with (either sexually or art-wise) lots of famous underground musicians. The writing style is exactly as it should be for a memoir - sometimes it feels like she's writing in her diary, because the facts are just so shocking and personal, and other times it feels like you're sitting down and having a conversation with her. You really feel like you know her, and more importantly, you care about her life and what she has to say, which is something I occasionally struggle with when it comes to memoirs.

[DoctorM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Lisa Carver's 'zine "Rollerderby" back in the late '80s and actually managed to see one utterly chaotic, over-the-top, vaguely scary, really sexy, and musically incomprehensible Suckdog performance. At one point I did own a stack of Suckdog/Lisa Carver videos... I've followed her from her days as performance artist through 'zine star through Nerve columnist, and always had a major crush on her. So..."Drugs Are Nice" is a welcome memoir. It's funny, sad, disturbing, and told in Lisa's own acerbic but gentle style. Worth finding.

[Leanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1994, I ordered a copy of Rollerderby. I had never seen anything as weird and different in my life. At the time, I kept the zine hidden in my journal. I brought it to the school cafeteria to show my friends. It was [south] Charlotte, North Carolina spring 1994 ninth grade. Everyone was freaked.


I admit it-- I read this book beacause of Rollerderby and I love the title. It was a good read.

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lisa "Suckdog" Carver shares her twisted and dysfunctional motives, feelings, and actions in this raw memoir. She is not afraid of exposing herself and all her passion, recklessness, and cravings for the real, the harsh, the intense.
Although the book starts out with great momentum and a feverish pace, it does bog down a bit towards the end with a heavy and depressing focus on her abusive relationship with Boyd Rice and her handicapped son.

[Kathy Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the chance to meet Carver a few weeks ago so I was interested in reading her bio. It was absolutely fascinating. I also felt pretty connected because I too had once lived in Dover NH and felt a strong connection to the Seacoast area. I also have lead a really, really boring life as compared to Carver. A great read.

[Jaclin · Rating 3 out of 5]

she reminds me of this girl i went to high school with. distracted by that fact. nothing in this book surprised me. nevertheless, enjoyed this and found that it went down easy.

[Jaina Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

LCC successfully transposes her gritty and glittery life story into the Hero's Journey.

[Matt Jasper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa is an amazing writer, and I'm not just saying that becasue she arranged for a group of women with scissors to cut my clothes off. . . .

[shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

seriously this was one of the more depressing things i have read in a while, and i friggin loved rollerderby. i guess not all things of my youth need to be revisited.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, it's important to note at the very start for future readers that:

This is not a happy-funtimes book
There are no dealings with any post-punk bands that people know
There is pretty much nothing about drugs in this book
This is deeply raw, personal and female


I didn't know who Lisa Carver was before this and I'm still not super interested in her art, but her writing is good, interesting. Not impeccable, but very good, exciting, multilayered, it stays with you.

I wanted to read the book because of Boyd Rice. Well, this book, "Iconoclast" and his music and writings can together make a key that will unveil what he really thinks and which of the things he's accused of he's really done. The mechanism of his psychological sublimation can be revealed. Unfortunately I don't give enough of a fuck to do the research. He's a person who has made denying his true self into an art. The book shows what that entails. To rephrase M.Atwood - when women have trauma, men get laid, when men have trauma, women might die. It's all too fucked up and not-making-sense to be fake. That's how life is, it doesn't follow a correct narrative structure. The only thing I felt could've been fake is that he didn't immediately disown his son due to him being disabled. Must've been a short moment of contact with the true self, which he just couldn't take, so went down deep into fearful, violent darkness.


As a person born in the 90s with a boring life and an average amount of trauma, this book has taught me:

Why people do crazy things on stage
Why women can be extra promiscuous
What it was like to be a young person part of the underground in those times (the insane shit the international mail service had to deliver...)


I very much enjoyed the descriptions and psychoanalizing of Lisa herself, the people around her and their relationships (Shit gets Freudian fast, it seems almost indulgent, but it all makes sense). I was interested in the descriptions of "setting up" her shows. I appreciated that there weren't many descriptions of unwashed scenesters having sex. Many conclusions and ways of looking at things are completely original (because they are authentic), same goes for her literary devices.


The ending is kind of weird. Lisa believes that she's more or less solved the primal conflict with her father. Spoiler alert, her biography and this article say otherwise https://unbelievablybad.wordpress.com.... Then there's something her best friend says about her, which is interesting and probably true, but it rubbed me the wrong way like "here, read a long citation of something nice my friend said about me". I guess it was more for her than for me.


I recommend this to people who are interested in why people are fucked up and what are the various ways to be fucked up. Reading it the same way you would read up on celebrity gossip and other such vile shit is possible, but would be cruel both to the author and the reader who, by not trying to understand and being empathetic, won't receive a lot of what this book can offer.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it was a quick read. I read Dancing Queen 15 years ago heard about Rollerderby and Lisa's exploits through the 90s in publications like Factsheet 5 et. al. We have very few things in common, and yet I enjoy her work. Her reads are often fun or make me think about my life and life in general. I guess she is a philosopher for our times. One we need but I doubt we'll ever be deserving of her. I like her writing about Wolfgang the most. I know she thinks she's messed up and has messed up a lot, but if there is anything she really got right, it's Wolfgang. She encapsulated the thoughts of anyone who has a disabled child. Every instinct to protect him, every time she notes how proud she is of how unusual his tastes can be, she really gets that right.

I read that book "The Gift" twice and there's so much in there I don't understand and I can't see how to apply to myself. Lisa's book? Lisa's story? There's enough there for me to work with and think that maybe I'm not as alone in this great big world as it seems I am.

[Cait Kotai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa's memoir is vulgar, crude, and raw in the best way imaginable. Her words are unapologetic and harsh but real. To me, the persistence to shock people and reject what is deemed 'normal' or 'simple, was in itself a desire for connection. From her marriage to Jean-Louis Costes to her relationship with Boyd Rice, her life seemed infected by her relationship with her father. But to focus on these dynamics discredits the fierce independence and the chaotic path to finding herself. Her earlier years of 'rebellion' in which she found her way is something I think everyone fantasizes about but never seems materialize. While some of the experiences may not be directly relatable, her thought process as a young adult stuck out to me and was rather comforting; "I always knew I wasn't the prettiest or the funniest or the sweetest or the most educated, but I thought that if kept working hard at it - at thinking, I could work out some important stuff to tell other people". To sum, she is a kick-a** woman.

[eloise౨ৎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautifully written

My favorite line anywhere, ever, is another one of Dostoyevsky’s—and I’m sure he did say this one; it’s in The Brothers Karamazov. “In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we assume. And this is true of ourselves too.”

We get these impulses and we don’t do them because there are all these invisible walls up everywhere, but they’re not real. There aren’t really any walls at all.

“Hey, you got small fucking tits,” he comments. I laugh. “Yeah, I know. All girls who make music do, almost.”

“I can stand you.” No, he put it like this: “You, I can stand.”

I notice how when the sun hits the water, it stops there. It spreads out across the surface, and leaves the black part below to itself. That’s what I’ve been doing these last few years—hitting the surface of all this sorrow and confusion in the world, and in me, and taking off running over it, moving so fast I don’t sink. I think—maybe—it’s time now to fall in, and see what’s down there.