Pink Recalls Tripping on Acid at 12 and 13 Years Old Singing ‘at the Top of My Lungs’ Until Police Were Called

Pink spoke with Howard Stern, and Robin Quivers live from SiriusXM’s New York City studios about her new album Trustfall and much more on today’s episode of The Howard Stern Show. Pink recalled her fraught relationship with Linda Perry, which began with a drug trip and her desire for the song “Beautiful,” which Perry instead gave to Christina Aguilera. “I used to trip on acid at 12 and 13 years old and sing out of the attic ‘Drifting’ at the top of my lungs until the cops were called because her voice — I could feel myself in her,” Pink said. “Everyone was like, ‘Why the fuck are you looking for Linda Perry?’” she recounted. “I was like, ‘You don’t understand … that woman saved my life.’ “[Our] relationship was very complicated,” Pink acknowledged to Howard. “She always said I burst her bubble, and she was so much happier when she was left alone and that she never wanted any of this.” According to the singer, their falling out had nothing to do with Aguilera, to whom Perry gave the ballad “Beautiful” instead of her. “[Perry is] so talented, and she just went on to be all these things, and that was the part that hurt, it had nothing to do with Christina, it had to do with all of it,” she said.

“One great thing about Linda is she will pull perfection out of you, and she did that with Christina … that song ended up where it was supposed to be,” she noted. “It found its home.” Pink has been candid about her past drug use in the past, disclosing for the first time in 2012 that she sold hard drugs like crystal meth in her teenage years. She also shared that she had suffered an overdose when she was 15. An Entertainment Weekly story said the singer, who played an addict in the 2012 film Thanks for Sharing, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, confessed, “I understand addiction because I was a hard-core partyer from the ages of 12 to 15. “I was like a candy raver, and I was on all the club drugs, eventually ending up selling ecstasy, crystal meth, and Special K,” said Pink.

When Pink was just a toddler, her parents divorced, and she was shuttled between their homes for the first few years of her life when she began to take drugs. Because of her constant movement as a teen, she could deceive them both into thinking she was at home when she was actually out getting high. “Nobody asked your age on club doors and everyone had fake IDs anyway,” she revealed. “I wasn’t interested in school, sports, hobbies or any of the other supposedly healthy things kids should be into. I just wanted to get high. I was running wild and heading for a fall,” she added. Once Pink began using drugs herself, selling them seemed like a natural choice. “There I was, putting my neck on the line as a young punk dealing hard drugs to gnarly addicts,” she said. Then, in 1995, Pink suffered a near-lethal overdose and was rushed to the hospital. “I was the pariah of my school and the shameful specimen of my disjointed family. I was lucky to survive and, since then, I never touched drugs,” she said.