Book excerpt: Before his life went totally off the rails, Patrick O'Neil was living the punk rock dream, working at San Francisco's legendary Mabuhay Gardens, going on to become a roadie and then the road manager for such seminal bands as Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Subhumans, and T.S.O.L. But that was before his heroin addiction veered totally out of control. A junkie for eighteen years, O'Neil, the educated son of intellectuals, eventually turned to a life of crime, ending up the ringleader of a group of armed bank robbers, all in an increasingly out-of-control attempt to keep himself and his girlfriend in drugs. Now, after a stint in San Quentin and fourteen years sober, O'Neil takes a look back at the experiences--moving, calamitous, and at times both hilarious and terrifying--that led to his downfall and recovery. Told in sparse prose and graphic detail, Gun, Needle, Spoon examines the long road to redemption and the obstacles along the way, demystifying the "criminal life" so often depicted in film and fiction but seldom written about from the first-hand viewpoint of those who have lived it.