Rock star coming to Grand Strand for HGTC’s Addiction and Recovery series

Everclear frontman Art Alexakis has been sober since 1989 — well before he enjoyed success in the music business.

To understand Alexakis’ story, you need to know his childhood. His father left when he was six, he was sexually abused by neighborhood kids, his older brother died from a heroin overdose when Alexakis was 12 — and his girlfriend committed suicide shortly afterward.

He was shooting up by 13, and nearly died from a cocaine overdose at 22.

Although he said he played around with smoking a little pot, it was his brother’s death that set him firmly on the path to addiction.

“After my brother died, I kind of had a death wish,” he said. “He was the only parental role model in my life – other than my brother-in-law, who was an alcoholic and drug addict and died of alcoholism 15 years later.”

On Feb. 21, the singer-songwriter and guitarist will speak at the 12th annual Addiction and Recovery Lecture Series at Horry-Georgetown Technical College. The four-part weekly series starts Thursday and includes speakers, student panels and other presentations focused on recovery.

A free dinner will be provided in Cafe 1100 at 6 p.m., with the event starting at 7 in the Burroughs & Chapin Auditorium on HGTC’s Conway Campus.

Alexakis, 56, follows a veritable “Who’s Who” of celebrities who have spoken at the series over the years, including actors Danny Trejo, Louis Gossett Jr. and Mackenzie Phillips — all of whom overcame addiction.

Everclear dominated alternative rock radio in the 1990s with such hits as “Santa Monica (Watch the World Die)” and “Everything to Everyone” and continues to tour. The band’s 2015 album, “Black Is the New Black,” reached No. 11 on Billboard’s Independent Albums chart.

In a recent interview, Alexakis told The Sun News he started dealing drugs in his early teens.

It was when he was living in San Francisco that he went to his first AA meeting, thanks to a guy who worked in a record store there.

“I was drinking and playing in bands, and I wasn’t happy in my life in many ways — and I was starting to become an angry drunk, which is something I had always said I would never be,” he said.

He said he was miserable when he was sober and miserable when he was drunk.

“I’ve done every drug, and nothing gets you more violent and miserable and euphoric than alcohol,” he said. “It’s like the poison that kills every part of you, slowly but surely. It’s a miserable, slow death.”

On June 15, 1989, he gave up drugs and alcohol for good — 15 years to the day that his brother died and five years to the day that he almost died from shooting up cocaine.

Staying clean and sober in a high-profile rock band doesn’t seem to be an easy feat and could be construed as the ultimate slippery slope.

“If you want to be around it, it’s there,” he said. “You can be an insurance agent and be around drugs all the time if you want to be. It’s all about choices.

“One of the things I am going to talk about is inspiration — things that inspire you and how to be of service and inspiration to others — and how that has made me, as an addict, feel good about myself,” he said.

Event organizer and founder Casey King also is a physics and natural sciences professor at HGTC. Sober since 2005, King has long asserted that people do recover, pay taxes and vote — and he wants to change the face of recovery.

“The key to longevity in recovery is staying in the middle as opposed to the extremes most people experience in their addictions,” he said. “I may not ever be perfectly normal, but every year I get closer and closer.”

King said his goals for the series are to increase public awareness of recovery in the community, educate the public on the biology and psychological basis that drives many addictions, demonstrate that addiction crosses all social and economic boundaries, reduce the stigma our culture assigns to those in recovery and to demonstrate that recovery from addictions is possible through a multitude of methods and can be free to those who want it.

He plans on hitting other swaths of society for upcoming series keynotes.

“I have done the acting community,” he said. “Now I have someone from music community. I would like to get someone in politics next.”

As for the future, King intends to focus on the next drug epidemic.

“It goes in 10-year cycles and this one is just about over. My guess is meth will come back,” he said.

Alexakis will be telling his story at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Feb. 21 at HGTC’s Burroughs & Chapin Auditorium.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/AddictionandRecoveryLectureSeries.

This story was originally published January 30, 2019 at 4:02 PM.