The Heroin Diaries

by Nikki Sixx

  Nikki hated Bon Jovi, and he was always busting my balls and calling me a traitor for working with Jon. He accused me of selling out by making Bon Jovi videos and told me I was ripping off Mötley’s style–well, pardon me, but I thought that was a universal style, not just Mötley’s! He’d always be in my face, saying “Fuck you,” and one day he grabbed me and sucker-punched me real hard. You kind of got used to it.

  NIKKI: I always dug Jon–I just hated his band’s music. It was the opposite of everything I loved and believed in. I would bust his band’s chops in the press then we would sit down over dinner and he’d say, “Thanks” and we’d both laugh. I think he liked to be around a true rock ’n’ roll asshole who didn’t give a fuck about anything.

  When they first got signed to Doc and we were both in Europe, Jon and I went to a brothel together in Germany. We were in this room with two twin beds and we each had a girl. We were both drunk off our asses and I looked up above my head and there was this Mick Jagger poster and the same one above Jon’s bed.

  The girls were doing their job but Jon wouldn’t stop telling jokes in his New Jersey accent and I couldn’t get it up. Finally I said, “Bro, can you stop talking?” He said OK and kept on rambling. To say I didn’t get my money’s worth would be an understatement unless I was paying Jon Bon Jovi to tell me jokes, in which case I got a pretty good deal.

  APRIL 13TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 4:20 a.m.

  Shot the video for Girls tonight. We had a blast. I even brought me a little souvenir home…dunno what her name is. Did me good to get out tonight.

  WAYNE ISHAM: When Mötley told me the concept behind “Girls Girls Girls” was strip clubs, I naturally did some meticulous multiple-night research to discover which establishment was the most appropriate. We wanted to use the Body Shop but that was all-nude and didn’t serve alcohol, so we ended up with a place called the Seventh Veil. Nikki and Tommy came with me one night–I remember us heading from club to club with a load of strippers in tow.

  We were in the same mind-set on the video–we just all kept saying to each other, “Can you believe they are paying us for doing this? We should be paying them!” This was the heart of Mötley–they were fun guys, and I don’t think the video was exploiting women. It was more a celebration of them, like a burlesque thing. But we got censored a lot by MTV because it was seen as scandalous back then.

  By the time we finished filming in the Seventh Veil, none of us were functioning properly. We left the club in a few cars to go to my studio nearby to film inserts. Tommy was in my car with me, and I suggested we should stop off at a Mexican restaurant on the way for a couple of secret shooters. When we got in there, Sixx was already in the bar, doing a line of shooters. He just looked at us and said, “What are you guys doing here?”

  When I look at the video now, Nikki’s eyes have that droop…there’s a real buzz going on. Look at the part where he gives the camera the finger…I think it’s fair to say that he is coasting there. But I can’t claim I noticed at the time. It’s like Hillel Slovak from the Chili Peppers–he was a fun guy, and the first time I noticed that something was at all wrong was when he went and died.

  APRIL 16TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, noon

  I’m sorry I haven’t written for a few days but things have been kind of crazy. You know how it can go sometimes.

  Vanity showed up unannounced a few days ago. It’s so fucked with her…I don’t see her for weeks, then suddenly she appears and we don’t leave each other’s side for…how long was it this time? Four days? Five? It can’t be healthy…but then I guess me and Vanity have never exactly been healthy.

  So she turned up with this huge baggy of coke, just like she always does, and we’ve been living in a blizzard for the last couple of days. But somehow I never go quite as insane when Vanity is with me. Maybe I hate her too much to let her ever see me at my most wasted and vulnerable.

  I never shoot dope or go to my closet with Vanity but it still gets fucking crazy. Yesterday we were lying on the bed and I could hear voices…people moving about the house. I started shouting, then fired my .357 through the door at them. Of course there was nobody there. It was the radio, and I shot a hollow point clean through my new speakers I bought off Bob Michaels…fuck.

  She just left and as she went she said the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard. She said we were soul mates and asked me to marry her…I don’t know how I kept a straight face, so I said something equally stupid…I said yes. I couldn’t face her going crazy and starting another argument, and what does it matter what I say? My funeral will come before the wedding.

  BOB MICHAELS: Nikki called me one night when he’d shot a bullet through his bedroom door and into a JBL speaker he had bought from me. He was hallucinating that people were trying to break in and the police were there, and he and Vanity had barricaded themselves in the master bedroom in the middle of the night. He called me again the next day and they were still barricaded in there.

  EVANGELIST DENISE MATTHEWS: My help could only come from God. None of my relationships, including with Nikki, were capable of finding any kind of love or happiness because I would never look at the root of my problem, which undoubtedly was me. I was very messed up and it was time to change or die.

  We paint the outside of our bodies beautiful but the inside is like dead men’s bones. The hurt topples on top of itself until our hurt gets so big and ugly, growing like a cancer worm, webbing around the walls of our heart, which ultimately turns cold and callous and dull of love. We mistake lust for love and pop more pills, slam more drugs, drink ourselves silly or end us, as I did, scraping the inside of a pipe just to hit the resin and flush life down a toilet.

  Personally, I hated every second of being alive in this collapsible body. I wanted a new body inside. I wanted to remove my mind altogether–especially the part that hurt. Jesus did that for me.

  * * *

  LOST LYRIC VAMPERILLA

  Can’t say I’m happy Can’t say I’m sad But I can sigh in relief That I don’t have that Black-skinned bitch Drawing her nails across my grief

  Just do me a favor Before you draw the razor Next time across your wrists Tell me again I’m your white boy flavor And how we will live in bliss A little hidden sanctuary Only seen in this Hollywood tabloid hell Living in loyal matrimony I guess didn’t mean loyal to me Oh well

  Vamperilla Now you might as well go fuck yourselves Everybody else has for sure

  I guess you had to lose So the rest of us could win Your only fame and fortune has left you And he’s holding this paper and pen.

  * * *

  APRIL 17TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 6:50 p.m.

  Slash came over earlier…I haven’t told him this, but last year Tom Zutaut asked me if I would produce the Guns album. I just turned him down flat. I was way too strung out to take it on. It was all I could do then to focus on Mötley and staying alive…

  It’s a good thing that I didn’t do it. I know I could produce a great album for them but not while I’m on drugs…I’m too fucked up even for those guys.

  NIKKI: Tom Zutaut had told me I was being considered to produce Appetite for Destruction for Guns N’ Roses. I went to see them play at the Roxy, but I didn’t think they were all that great. The truth is that I was so out of it that I had no idea who was any good and who wasn’t. Fuck, at the time the most I would have been able to do as producer would have been pressing PLAY on the tape machine.

  TOM ZUTAUT: I was like a dog with a bone trying to get Nikki to produce Guns because I thought they were the next-generation Mötley, but more rooted in the Sex Pistols and Zeppelin than Mötley’s New York Dolls-meets-Kiss. In the same way that Nikki understood the role of each of the members of Mötley, I thought he might be able to do the same for Slash, Axl, Izzy, Duff and Steven. I hoped G N’ R might learn something from Nikki since he had crawled from the bottom of the dirtiest street in Hollywood (which was also their birthing place) to the top. But Nikki was in his strung ou
t narcissistic asshole days and he kept blowing me off and not even watching the video of G N’ R that I had sent him.

  Do I think he would have done a good job of producing the album? Given the state he was in, probably not.

  SLASH: That’s funny…I never knew about any of this. It is true that Zutaut was desperate to find somebody to produce Appetite for Destruction who would be able to deal with us. I remember that Paul Stanley from Kiss came down at one point, but we were way too much for him.

  APRIL 19TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 4:50 p.m.

  I realized something yesterday that when I’m high on coke, only to come down and realize again that I was on the fringes of psychosis, I’m starting to feel a friendship with those voices. I actually look forward to hearing them as I’m tying off. Ah yes, my friends the demons…

  I need to get out. I’ve arranged to meet Andy McCoy at a club tonight.

  APRIL 20TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 4 a.m.

  Well that was a fucking disaster of a night.

  I met Andy at the club and he was with a lot of other people. I felt uncomfortable and awkward from the start so after about half an hour I was saying to Andy, come on let’s go, let’s get out of here. Everybody around him was freaking out because Andy is clean now and they know I’m not, and he’s always on the verge of getting strung out again. But I didn’t care about that, or about anything…I just wanted to get back here.

  I brought Andy home and showed him my closet. I got all my shit out and said, Come on, let’s get high. He just stood there in all his gypsy clothes, and told me, You’ve got a habit! You’re strung out. I tried to say it wasn’t much but this dude has seen me die once, he knows the truth. Then he left.

  One by one my friends are abandoning me.

  APRIL 21ST, 1987

  Van Nuys, 9:30 p.m.

  Pete just called to see what I was doing…What does he think I’m going to be doing? The usual…walking around this mausoleum, waiting for Jason, thinking about shooting up, hating the security box, going quietly insane…

  Pete was calling from a strip club. He’s going to come over with some girls. It might be nice to make a few new friends. I just called Slash and Steven as well.

  APRIL 22ND, 1987

  Van Nuys, 1 p.m.

  I woke up this morning and the house is littered with bottles and empty bindles and cigarette ashes…it’s a disaster zone. There are people lying around, some naked, some partially naked…I walked into the bathroom to find Steven Adler fucking that girl we like to call Slave…and Slash pissed in the spare bed in his sleep. It’s at times like this that I wish all these people would go away…

  There must be something wrong in my blood sugar or my chemical DNA, because I can go from being completely the happiest guy in the world to being the most pissed off, angry motherfucker in no time at all. Last night I could think of nothing I would rather do than this. Now I hate it…

  I hate it…

  I hate it.

  SLASH: Man, I remember that party…there was so much blow and whisky. I fucked a lot of girls, and the next morning I woke up in Nikki’s spare bedroom with some chicks. I was hungover, my shit was strewn all over the place, and I had to be in the recording studio in twenty minutes. Fuck knows how I got there, but I did.

  I can’t deny it–I used to get so drunk that I wet the bed. Nikki’s place wasn’t the worst time. I remember once waking up in a hotel lobby in Canada. I was lying on a couch and I’d pissed myself. Then I found that not only was it not the hotel I was staying in but I had no idea where my hotel was or what it was called. I had to walk around in the freezing cold for hours. The wet pants didn’t help.

  APRIL 24TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 1:40 a.m.

  I feel like a rat on a wheel. At first I embraced this, then I wanted to get off, but it’s like somebody is turning it faster and faster. I fall and it throws me around and I just can’t stop…

  We have some time off, so what are we doing? Vince is cruising around the Caribbean and singing guest spots with Bon Jovi. Tommy is playing golf and riding his dirt bike. Mick is content to buy guns and hope for World War III…and Sixx? I’m losing my mind trapped in this tomb…

  APRIL 25TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 10:10 a.m.

  This is how low it gets…at 3 this morning I was crouched naked in my closet thinking the world was about to burst through my door. I peered out the closet and saw myself in my mirror. I looked like an Auschwitz victim…a wild animal.

  I was hunched trying to find a vein so I could inject into my dick. Then the dope went in my dick and I thought I looked fucking fantastic. I can’t keep doing this, but I can’t stop.

  * * *

  LOST LYRIC

  26 and I’ve never even lived I’ve been too busy slow-dancing with death Maybe a bullet to my head will make somebody love me Maybe a bullet in my head would make somebody care.

  * * *

  APRIL 27TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 10:30 p.m.

  I sat behind my bed last night with my grandfather’s double-barreled shotgun. I had it aimed at the door, and I knew people were coming in. I can’t bear all these windows being open to the street so everybody can see in. Today I called a shutter company and tomorrow they are coming to fit heavy wooden shutters on every window.

  I’m thinking about going to rehab, but I have too much to do right now.

  APRIL 28TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 11:40 a.m.

  This morning I woke up with my shotgun in bed with me. The girls have stopped coming around, and now I’m sleeping with a gun. Then I remembered putting the gun in my mouth last night and considering pulling the trigger just to stop the insanity…I want to shut my head down and make it stop.

  Somehow I’ve gone from a person who laughs at people considering suicide to a person who is considering suicide himself…some fucking progress…

  Midnight

  The new shutters are fucking cool.

  BRYN BRIDENTHAL: I was Mötley Crüe’s PR for many years–I first met them the day they signed their record contract with Elektra. I could see immediately that there was a special light on in Nikki’s eyes. He knew where they were going: he had the whole idea, every album fleshed out in his head. Tommy was just a big cocker spaniel, Mick was real quiet and as for Vince…well, let’s just say that Nikki Sixx was the brains of Mötley Crüe. I’m sure he still is.

  One of the early things Nikki used to do was set himself on fire during interviews. I remember he did it in Mötley’s first ever TV appearance. I was always terrified the flames would ignite his hair spray and he’d totally go up, but Nikki never seemed bothered by that: he thought he was invincible.

  Nikki was a brat and he was very smart, but he had a great big hole inside. Money didn’t fill it, nor did success or power: what he really wanted was respect for his songwriting. But I spent so much time with him, and I had no idea he was doing all the dark stuff he was. When he was bad, he was very, very bad, but I never thought he was doing any more drugs than everybody else was back then.

  At the time, I didn’t know much about junkies. Since then I’ve worked with Nirvana and Courtney Love, so I’m rather better informed. But the ’80s were the days that I’d regularly go into a record label executive’s office and find white powder all over his desk. Heroin seemed like just one more temptation–no better and no worse than the others.

  Nikki Sixx never struck me as dysfunctional. He had so much drive and energy and certainly wasn’t drooling or living in the gutter. He hid everything so well: he can dance fast, that one. I guess junkies can just be so cunning.

  APRIL 29TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, midnight

  For reasons unknown to me I believe I am not meant to live much longer. I am dying a slow, unhappy death shrouded in confusion and questions. I am confused as to how I have become the drugs and the drugs have become me…we live together in complete harmony.

  What was once a question, an inquisitive interest, a curiosity
even, has finally answered itself. It’s a death wish I cannot will away. I cannot or will not escape this prison until I have completed this journey. It ends as it began, with me alone. Like birth, death is a solitary experience.

  Like Hemingway said, the only thing that could spoil a day was people. I am the person who has spoiled my life…

  I have lost all track of time in here.

  APRIL 30TH, 1987

  Van Nuys, 5:10 a.m.

  When Jason left last night and closed the door, I had the feeling he was closing the door on a crypt. It’s so fucking dark in here…I feel like a ghost. So I got a hammer and ran around the house tearing the shutters from the windows and throwing them into the yard…they were making me feel like I was in a cage.

  I’m not doing any drugs when I wake up today.

  MAY 1987

  HE ASKED ME TO GET ON MY KNEES AND PRAY TO GOD TO LOSE THIS OBSESSION WITH DRUGS

  MAY 1ST, 1987

  Van Nuys, 3 a.m.

  Today I did something that I never thought I’d do…I called Bob Timmons and asked him to help me. Bob came over and I told him I just can’t stop bingeing on cocaine and heroin. I think the blow speeds up my heroin addiction ten times. Bob agreed and said he knew how strung out I am. He asked me to get on my knees and pray to God to lose this obsession with drugs…I wouldn’t do it. Fuck that! I won’t get on my knees. Bob said he’s got on his knees with guys a lot tougher than me, like the president of the Hells Angels, but he can forget it.