The Heroin Diaries

by Nikki Sixx

  MARCH 19TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 1:15 a.m.

  I just took a shit and realized yet again that I haven’t bought toilet paper in weeks…

  * * *

  ODE TO MOM

  I woke to the sound of screaming in my head There was a dead body laying next to me in bed A knife had so neatly cut out her heart Ripped and tore and shredded it apart I hadn’t had a drink, hadn’t left the house So I was scared half to death, trying to figure this out I tried to scream, but my words came out low I was drowning in confusion, panic without hope Then the sound, a blessing I swear My alarm going off, waking me from fear I opened my eyes, a nightmare I gasped Then I realized I was holding a knife in my grasp I get out of bed, following a trail of blood There lies mother, no heart But looking good.

  * * *

  MARCH 22ND, 1987

  Van Nuys, 11:30 a.m.

  Last night it happened again.

  I remember going into my closet and pulling out my Dom Perignon box. I love it when that box is full. Some might see it as opening a casket and peering at death, but to me it’s like seeing a hole in the sky with a ray of light from God coming in. Whenever I open that box I know I’m gonna feel good in just a matter of seconds…

  Then I shot up the coke, into my neck, my leg, my arm or even my cock…and then it started. I knew that West Tech was listening in on me, that they could hear my heart beating, that they had cameras spying on me. I stood with my ear to the security box, not daring to breathe, and I was terrified. Did they have police coming to get me, or guys with straitjackets? They know that I’m insane, right?

  Then I realized I was wrong…West Tech isn’t my enemy—they are the ones who can save me from the people outside, trying to get in…so I pushed the panic button. Then I didn’t know–had I pushed it? Or did I just think I’d done it?

  So there I was…naked, strung out, my shotgun loaded, knowing people were about to break into the house…were they coming to save me, or to get me? So I quickly flushed my drugs down the toilet and waited for what was about to happen. My biggest decision was this…do I go quietly, or shoot to defend myself?

  Now I wake up to discover it was just another night of insanity. I didn’t press any button and nothing happened…except I flushed all my fucking drugs down the toilet again.

  Noon

  I hate mornings like today, when I wake up or come down…whichever comes first…and I have these memories of things that I’ve done that feel like they were on TV or I read them in a book. It’s getting harder and harder to know what’s real.

  MARCH 23RD, 1987

  Van Nuys, midnight

  Well, today we finally wrapped up the Girls album. All in all I think it turned out pretty good…of course you always say that when it’s your newest album, don’t you?

  We’re leaving for New York tomorrow to master the record. Mastering always brings out all the life and sparkle…so I will reserve judgment until the master to decide whether this is a great Mötley Crüe record or just a good Mötley Crüe record. But the fact that we’ve managed to finish a record is amazing to me.

  NIKKI: Tommy and I flew out first class to New York to master the album. Our engineer and mixer, Duane Baron and Pete Purdul, weren’t flying out until the next day. So what did Tommy and I do in NYC with a night off to ourselves? We went out to the sickest underground dance club we could find. All was well as far as I was concerned–I was a few thousand miles away from my junk and our album was done. But as usual the devil wears many masks…he kept on and on in my ear about how we should get some junk…finally I set out to find some, only to come back with pockets full of cocaine. Thank God–but, of course, none of us slept before mastering the album.

  MARCH 31ST, 1987

  Van Nuys, 9:15 p.m.

  Just got back from mastering the album. I forgot to take you diary, but if I had, I doubt I’d have written anything in you. They say New York is the city that never sleeps. I guess if we did nothing else, we fucking proved that one…I need my bed…

  APRIL 1987

  DOES MY ILLNESS HANG DFE DF ME LIKE A FUCKING SMELL?

  APRIL 1ST, 1987

  Van Nuys, 6:40 p.m.

  I just had a surprise visitor. It was the last thing I expected. Randy Rand turned up at my door out of the blue…I hadn’t seen him in months. When I opened the door his jaw literally fell open in shock, like he had seen a ghost. He told me that I’d lost 50 lbs since he’d last seen me. I’m pleased about this, but Randy didn’t seem to see it as a good thing. Then when I invited him in, he shook his head and said he had to go…does my illness hang off me like a fucking smell?

  I’m waiting for T-Bone to come over.

  NIKKI: Randy Rand was in the band Autograph, who had supported us for a few dates on the Theatre of Pain tour. I once stole his bass head from a rehearsal room in Hollywood because it sounded better than mine. He is a great guy…he never did bust my chops about it, still to this day…

  APRIL 2ND, 1987

  Van Nuys, midnight

  I went fishing today with Tommy and Duane Baron. We did coke all night until it was time to leave for the lake. We sailed out then came back in for more beers when Doc McGhee came to meet us. We were out on the lake playing the mastered Girls album over and over on Tommy’s little blaster.

  Doc told us that Jon Bon Jovi thinks we’ve written the greatest song of our career. I asked him which one and he said You’re All I Need. I asked if Jon had ever listened to the lyrics and Doc said, Why, what’s it about? I snickered and told him, and Doc told me that I’m an asshole and a sick fuck…fair comment, I guess.

  NIKKI: Tommy and I were so high on coke that night that in our minds the tent was flying like a magic carpet ride. We actually believed we were flying through the air around the lake in the tent. I remember Tommy telling me to stare at him and not move. With my hair all in tangles and the shadows from the lantern dancing across my face he kept imagining I looked like this wicked witch. He was getting so into it, I remember at one point thinking, OK, who’s more insane here? Me for sitting here for hours motionless, or Tommy for having me sit here so he can hallucinate? I don’t think we caught any fish on that trip but we sure had one hell of a magic carpet ride…

  TOMMY LEE: Here’s a “There Goes the Neighborhood” memory! Readers, picture this–a packed family campground with kids, bikes, fishing poles, water skis, campfires, etc. Then, just when you think it’s safe…here comes the badass black super-stretch limo from hell! It’s not something you normally see at any campground you go to, but then again you never went camping with me and Nikki! I know you are thinking: God, these dudes are so spoiled and that the limo is there to take them home right?? NOT! The cocaine has been delivered by limousine! Imagine us crawling out of our dark tent into the daylight to pick up more blow–not a good look! That poor limo driver ended up making a few more round trips up there to keep our magic carpet ride afloat.

  APRIL 4TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 2:20 a.m.

  I think things are looking up. Pete and me have now got porn stars doing our drug runs for us…Lois came over earlier. She’s an interesting character. She came in and we had a few beers and then she said she wanted to show us her new video…we said sure. So she walks over with the VHS tape, sticks it in the machine and voila! It was eight black guys coming all over her face. Even I was shocked, but Lois is proud of it…says she thinks it’s some kind of world record…

  More importantly Lois has agreed to go down to Watts for us to score some loads. Let’s just say it’s not the best place for a tattooed white kid to go to score. But after seeing her video, maybe Lois has a special relationship with the dealer down there. Hey, practice makes perfect…

  These pills are my new fave drug. I love them. You can’t even fucking move on them, completely comatose! They’re like heroin on steroids. I can’t wait…

  NIKKI: Loads were a combo of two different kinds of pills. You took three of one kind and two of the other and literally in ten minut
es you were so high you couldn’t even stand up. We had a very scientific approach to mixing it with blow to somehow even out the effect enough to at least somehow function. When I was a teenager, we used to take elephant tranquilizers. The effects were similar.

  3:30 p.m.

  After Lois got back with the loads last night, things got kind of…warped…

  When she came back she had some other girl with her. I recognized her from some porn movies Pete had. I don’t remember what her name was…did I even know it? but she left a few minutes ago. Anyway, after I took a second dose, and not enough cocaine to bring me out of my stupor, this girl decided she was going to spend the night with me…who was I to argue?

  The only problem we had was that my dick didn’t seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I’m not surprised she left…I suspect she won’t be coming back.

  APRIL 5TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 1:45 a.m.

  Went to a bookstore today and bought some cool books on performance art. Also got a book my grandmother sent me to read when I was 17, called Autobiography of a Yogi.

  APRIL 6TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 2:40 a.m.

  Today I was thinking about coming back from Tommy’s wedding last year and finding that letter from Chuck Shapiro telling me that I would go bankrupt if I carried on getting wasted at the rate that I was…fuck, that I still AM. The funny thing is, even if I was broke, and kicked out of the band, and all I had was a room like this closet, and enough gear to stay under the warm blanket…forget Mötley and the fans, forget the music even. I think I could be happy…I think.

  NIKKI: Chuck Shapiro was the band’s accountant. On the day in ’86 that Nicole and I got back from Tommy’s wedding, Chuck left me a hand-delivered note. It read,

  This was quite a chastening note, so obviously I did the only thing that I could in the circumstances. I ignored it completely.

  Steven Tyler told me once he didn’t think he would ever be off heroin. At this point in my life, I remember thinking the same thing. The feeling of completely giving into your demons is hopeless, but when you can’t climb your way out of such a hole, you tend to crouch down and call it home.

  APRIL 7TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 2:30 a.m.

  Jason is coming over with some real pure china white rather than the usual Persian…Persian is OK but you have that whole routine with lemons and the extra cotton. China cooks up clean and dissolves so much easier, and when I put it in a syringe with some coke…man, that’s the fast track to heaven.

  The thing about china is it looks like coke and you can snort it easy. Sure, you can snort Persian, but it kinda stinks like dirt and it’s a dead giveaway snorting anything brown. So nobody knows you’re snorting heroin. They assume it’s something harmless (Ha!) like coke.

  I hope he doesn’t bring his damn girlfriend. She sometimes will be talking as I nod off and when I come to she’s still talking. It’s usually about her so I can jump in right where I was before…not caring.

  NIKKI: There were such different levels of addiction during this year. Sometimes I felt I had it under control and I was just having fun. Unfortunately the fun never lasted. If you’re gonna play with the dragon, you’re eventually gonna get burned.

  BOB MICHAELS: Sometimes Nikki would take heroin really openly around me and ask me to take it with him. At other times he was real sneaky. He would go to the bathroom, shoot up, puke, then walk back out and sit by me to watch a movie. The whole thing would take ninety seconds and I would have no idea he had done it. Nikki was a very good actor.

  APRIL 8TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 11 p.m.

  So here I sit. Alone again. Needle in my arm. Playing the fucking victim yet again–or is it the martyr?

  As much as I love my band, I also hate them, because they are with people that love them. I don’t understand why, as big as my heart is, I’m alone.

  Maybe I just choose to be this way?

  Maybe I don’t have a choice?

  Maybe I don’t know?

  Maybe I’m just asking myself questions to hear myself talk?

  APRIL 9TH, 1987

  3 a.m.

  How could my parents treat me the way they did?

  How could my father just vanish, and not care about the son that he brought onto the Earth?

  How could my mother love me, or say she loves me, then send me away for months and years at a time every time she got herself some new fucking boyfriend?

  I don’t have a mother…I don’t have a father…I don’t have a friend. And they made me the way I am. They made me like this.

  BOB TIMMONS: In my opinion, Nikki Sixx was suffering from depression during the time of his addiction. There was a lot of sadness: he told me many times that he felt people wanted to be around him only because he was famous, not because of who he was. Addictions are just symptoms of underlying issues, and in my view Nikki self-medicated the emotional pain of his childhood, and being away from his mother a lot, through drug use. What did he want? Ultimately he wanted to be able to create love for himself as a person.

  * * *

  THE TROUBLE WITH ASKING QUESTIONS IS YOU

  SOMETIMES GET ANSWERS YOU DON’T WANNA HEAR.

  * * *

  11 p.m.

  Jesus, it’s such a hassle to go out nowadays. I can’t walk down the street or go to the store without being surrounded by fans, wanting to talk, or wanting my autograph, or to come home with me. I mean, I love our fans, but fuck…

  I’m gonna go back to the bookstore ’cause I think I might have depression. Maybe something there can help me? I can’t control my moods. I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams…even when I’m not on drugs. If only they knew.

  It seems I’m always falling apart, always falling apart at the seams…

  APRIL 10TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 5 a.m.

  I pushed the panic button again tonight. It wasn’t my fault. Every time I dared to peer out of my closet, I could see faces at the window and I heard voices at the door. It’s probably 50 feet from the closet to the security box but it took me an hour of shaking to run there. I felt like I had to run the length of a football field.

  Then when West Tech arrived I wouldn’t let them in…I just kept shouting at them through the door to get away from my fucking house or I would shoot them. Eventually they went away. Thank God I had a little junk to bring me down.

  DOUG THALER: It was about this time that I called Nikki at home one day. He could never wait to get off the phone, and on this particular occasion, he told me after about a minute, “Well, I’ve got to go now.” I asked him why, and he said, “Doug, there are Mexicans carrying guns climbing over my fence.”

  3:15 p.m.

  Doc McGhee just phoned. He says he had a call from West Tech security about last night. Their guy claimed that when he showed up here I was naked and waving a shotgun at him, and accusing him of bugging my house. Seems they’re worried about their “personal safety” and threatening to cancel our contract. Luckily Doc talked them down and smoothed things over.

  That’s what a good manager is for, right?

  DOC McGHEE: Nikki was always seeing Mexicans and midgets running around his fucking house. His blow paranoia was totally out of control. I would get calls from West Tech saying he had set all his alarms off and was in the house refusing to answer the door. Or the police department would call me because Nikki’s neighbor had phoned them to report that Nikki was crawling around in his garden in the middle of the night with a shotgun. It would be bad enough if it happened once, but this shit was going on at least twice a week.

  APRIL 12TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 3:15 a.m.

  Went around strip bars with T-Bone and Wayne to scout out locations for the Girls Girls Girls video. I think this one is gonna be good. Wayne gets where we come from…it’s just a shame that the bastard
steals our ideas for Bon fucking Jovi…

  WAYNE ISHAM: I shot a lot of videos with Mötley but I first met them way before I was a director, when I was stage manager at the A&M soundstage in LA. They came in to film the “Shout at the Devil” video. I had a little office next to the dressing room, and could hear them complaining to each other that they needed a drink before they started shooting. I told them I had some Jack, and they all came stomping into my office with their huge hair and platform boots and drank it all.

  My first Mötley video was “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” right at the start of my career. I met Nikki and Tommy and talked through the shoot the night before, then they said, “OK dude, let’s go out!” I was saying, “No, no, we have to work tomorrow,” and Nikki said, “Are you some sort of pussy?” They had this real, um, enthusiasm for life.

  We all partied so hard back then, drank so hard and did so much blow, I guess we felt indestructible. Nikki never seemed worse than anyone else, although when we made the “Home Sweet Home” video there were a couple of times he had to be carried on and off the set for his close-ups. That was the first time I thought, Are you rocking this, or is it rocking you?

  Nikki was a real Jekyll and Hyde character. One minute he would be coherent, friendly and articulate, the next he’d be out of it and a real sardonic wiseass and insulting motherfucker. He had this positive energy, then he’d just turn the page and be a real asshole–and there was a real meanness in the way he chastised me.