Keith Richards autobiography, 'Life'

Richards boasts of his constitution. He not only recounts his "acid-fueled road trip with John Lennon" but also makes sure to tell us that Lennon "couldn't really keep up." Richards recalls, "He'd try and take anything I took, but without my good training. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, couple of downers, a couple of uppers, coke and smack, and then I'm going to work. I was freewheeling. And John would inevitably end up in my john, hugging the porcelain."

At times, the book sounds like a consequence-free version of William Burroughs's "Junky." In one extended passage, Richard describes his daily diet:

I would take a barbiturate to wake up, a recreational high compared to heroin, though just as dangerous in its own way. That was breakfast. A Tuinal, pin it, put a needle in it so it would come on quicker. And then take a hot cup of tea, and then consider getting up or not. And later maybe a Mandrax or quaalude. Otherwise I just had too much energy to burn. So you wake up slow, since you have the time. And when the effect wears off after about two hours, you're feeling mellow, you've had a bit of breakfast and you're ready for work.

Richards is proud of many things, including his capacity to stay up for days at a time. His all-time record, he says, was a nine-day coke-assisted session of wakefulness, at the end of which he merely tipped over, slamming his head against a stereo speaker: "It was just a curtain of blood."