Crazy Enough: A Memoir

Yes, Storm Large is her real name, though she’s been called many things. As a performer, the majority of descriptions have led with “Amazon,” “Powerhouse,” “a six-foot Vargas pinup come to life.” Playboy called her a “punk goddess.” You’d never know she used to be called “Little S”—the mini-me to her beautiful and troubled mother, Suzi.

Storm spent most of her childhood visiting her mother in mental institutions and psych wards. Suzi’s diagnosis changed with almost every doctor visit, ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to multiple personality disorder to depression. As hard as it was not having her at home, Storm and her brothers knew that it was a lot safer to have their beautiful but unreliable mom in a facility somewhere. Then one day, nine-year-old Storm jokingly asked one of her mother’s doctors, “I’m not going to be crazy like that, right?” To which he replied, “Well, yes. It’s hereditary. You absolutely will end up like your mother. But not until your twenties.”

That was the starting gun for a wild race to escape what Storm believed to be her future. Desperate to delay the lonely sickness and sadness that haunted her mother, Storm stomped her size-twelve boots straight toward as much sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll as she could find. Losing her virginity at thirteen, she sprinted through her young life, trying to smoke and fuck and wail away the madness that she feared would catch up to her at any moment. Instead, she found herself deep in a life of craziness of her own making.

Then, in her twenties, with nothing to live for and a growing heroin addiction, Storm accepted a chance invitation to sing with a friend’s band. That night she reconnected with her long-term love of music, and it dragged her back from the edge. She has been singing and slinging inappropriate banter at audiences worldwide ever since. Storm’s story of growing up with a mental time bomb hanging around her neck veers from frightening to inspiring, sometimes all in one sentence. But her strength, charisma, and raw musical talent gave her the will to overcome it all. With tremendous honesty and tremendous dirty language, Crazy Enough is about an artist’s journey of realizing that the mistakes that make, break, and remake us are worth far more than our flailing attempts to live a life we think is “normal.” It is a love song to the twisted, flawed parts in all of us and a nod to the grace we find when things fall apart.

Yes, Storm Large is her real name, though shes been called many things. As a performer, the majority of descriptions have led with “Amazon,” “Powerhouse,” “a six-foot Vargas pinup come to life.” Playboy called her a “punk goddess.” Youd never know she used to be called “Little S”—the mini-me to her beautiful and troubled mother, Suzi.

Storm spent most of her childhood visiting her mother in mental institutions and psych wards. Suzis diagnosis changed with almost every doctor visit, ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to multiple personality disorder to depression. As hard as it was not having her at home, Storm and her brothers knew that it was a lot safer to have their beautiful but unreliable mom in a facility somewhere. Then one day, nine-year-old Storm jokingly asked one of her mothers doctors, “Im not going to be crazy like that, right?” To which he replied, “Well, yes. Its hereditary. You absolutely will end up like your mother. But not until your twenties.”

That was the starting gun for a wild race to escape what Storm believed to be her future. Desperate to delay the lonely sickness and sadness that haunted her mother, Storm stomped her size-twelve boots straight toward as much sex, drugs, and rock n roll as she could find. Losing her virginity at thirteen, she sprinted through her young life, trying to smoke and fuck and wail away the madness that she feared would catch up to her at any moment. Instead, she found herself deep in a life of craziness of her own making.

Then, in her twenties, with nothing to live for and a growing heroin addiction, Storm accepted a chance invitation to sing with a friends band. That night she reconnected with her long-term love of music, and it dragged her back from the edge. She has been singing and slinging inappropriate banter at audiences worldwide ever since. Storms story of growing up with a mental time bomb hanging around her neck veers from frightening to inspiring, sometimes all in one sentence. But her strength, charisma, and raw musical talent gave her the will to overcome it all. With tremendous honesty and tremendous dirty language, Crazy Enough is about an artists journey of realizing that the mistakes that make, break, and remake us are worth far more than our flailing attempts to live a life we think is “normal.” It is a love song to the twisted, flawed parts in all of us and a nod to the grace we find when things fall apart.

From indie rock sensation Storm Large comes a rough, raw, and compulsively readable memoir about living with the terror of losing your mind—and losing it, only to find yourself.

What would you do if you thought you were going crazy? That, at any time, the voices in your head would finally overwhelm you, hijacking your senses, leaving you a babbling mess, locked up and all alone? Would you tell someone? Who, your family? A doctor? What if the doctors agreed with you, that you were going to lose it one of these days, then what? Storm Large (her real name) knew the toll of mental illness from an early age. She spent major portions of her childhood visiting her mother in mental hospitals and the rest of the time by herself. During a visit to one of these institutions, she jokingly asked her mother’s doctor: “I’m not going to end up crazy like her, right?” To which he replied to the nine-year-old, “It’s hereditary. You will absolutely end up like your mother.”

At that moment, Storm’s life changed forever. Figuring her only chance at any semblance of a life was to run away from everything she saw in her Mom, the weak, the sad, the drug addled, and suicidal. She stomped her size twelve boots through sex, drugs, and rock n roll, on safari for her sanity. One by one she battled her demons of self-destruction, promiscuity at age thirteen, developing an insatiable hunger for drugs and awful men, eventually becoming addicted to heroin. It was a chance performance with a friend’s band that finally pulled Storm back from the edge. When she discovered her rich talent and deep love for singing, that passion became her salvation and gave her the will to overcome.

Storm’s one-woman show, which inspired her to write her story and serves as the foundation for the book, was praised by press as “gritty” and “unapologetic,” as well as “funny and direct and insightful.” Crazy Enough is a brash, in-your-face account of how one unstoppable woman lost her mind—then found it again in a song.

Storm Large  has been singing and slinging inappropriate banter at audiences around the globe for more than fifteen years and shows no sign of slowing down or shutting up.  She earned an associate’s degree from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, where her big dramatic voice impressed her teachers and made musical theater the obvious choice for her.  However, Storm resonated more with Alphabet City than Broadway, spending all her free time in gritty rock clubs with the lowlifes, sluts, and geniuses she adored. She pursued rock ‘n’ roll instead.