The Heroin Diaries

by Nikki Sixx

  Doc came out and talked the cop out of it and I had to apologize. How demoralizing to apologize to that fuckhead, but I bit my tongue and said sorry. I’m sure he wanted to kick my ass like the cops did outside the Whisky years ago…

  Gotta get ready…time for a shot of JD then kick LA’s ass—today and tomorrow.…

  OCTOBER 7TH, 1987 GRAND WESTERN FORUM, LOS ANGELS, CA

  No entry

  OCTOBER 8TH, 1987 LONG BEACH ARENA, LONG BEACH, CA

  11:45 a.m.

  Yesterday was a nightmare…probably the worst day of my life next to Nona dying.

  Vanity showed up at my house after the first Forum show with a baseball of base. I stayed up all night and day until show time the next day…they had to send a car to get me and when I got to the Forum yesterday for our second show I was so frazzled I couldn’t even talk. I hid in the dressing room fearing my heart would explode till it was time to go on. I had to snort about a 1/4 gram to get onstage. I truly thought I was gonna die onstage last night–what is wrong with me? Why can’t I say no to drugs? They haunt me…or hunt me…

  P.S. I should be the happiest man in the world. My dreams have come true. I need to quit–this is killing me. Vanity is killing me. Drugs are killing me…or am I already dead? I won’t make another year. I know it.

  NIKKI: This was the beginning of the end. I knew I was either gonna die or get sober. I knew how to die. By then I’d had many secret overdoses and seizures so I understood where the line was and I was just inches from crossing it. The dying could be easy…it was the living that I didn’t know if I could do.

  * * *

  POSSIBLE T-SHIRT SLOGANS:

  REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS

  or

  WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT DOPE?

  * * *

  OCTOBER 9TH 1987 DAY OFF

  Van Nuys, 7 p.m.

  I’ve just been hiding all day under my sheets. I won’t answer the phone. No TV, no music, just me and my .357 on my bedside table…it seems to be talking to me in a whisper. I know it seems dramatic, but you’re not inside my head. I feel like I need to check into a nuthouse…I know it’s only a matter of time till I die. The question isn’t how anymore. It’s when.

  OCTOBER 10TH, 1987 OAKLAND STADIUM, OAKLAND, CA

  Van Nuys, 4 p.m.

  I haven’t been to sleep in over 48 hours. I don’t think I can make the show. I can’t even write…my hands are shaking so bad. I keep hearing voices every time I hit the pipe then I come down and nobody is there. I’m losing it. I need some dope to come down and nobody is around…all I have is coke. No booze, nothing…not even one fucking pill. I’m just not gonna answer the door or phone. I can’t do it. I’m too paranoid…I can’t face people. Fuck…what am I gonna do? There’s a sold-out stadium waiting and I’m dying here and nobody really gives a fuck. Neither do I. I wish I could die. I’m gonna go take a hot shower and lay in bed, maybe I’ll fall asleep…ya right…I’m soooo fucked…

  Van Nuys, 2:30 p.m.

  Yesterday was about as low as I’ve gone. I hadn’t slept in days and was so based out I missed the Mötley jet. Actually I didn’t miss shit–I just never showed up. Doc had a jet sent for me to take me to Oakland Stadium. I was out of my mind–I was so fucking coked out, I felt like I was gonna have a heart attack.

  When I got there, there was a band meeting and they all asked me if I had been shooting up…they wanted to see my arms. Thank God I was freebasing…no traces except the insanity. I finally made it onstage and went home right after the show. Everyone is pissed at me and you know what? Fuck them! I’m sick of this fucking band! On top of that bullshit my stomach has really been killing me lately. There are little traces of blood again every time I take a shit. This always happens when I’m drinking too much or I up the drugs. I guess after a while that shit tears my guts open. Problem is I haven’t been drinking as much as doing drugs…maybe my insides are coming out? 301

  * * *

  TAKE ME TO THE TOP

  Take me to the top and throw me off

  * * *

  TOMMY LEE: Oakland Stadium was the point we all realized Nikki’s shit was getting really bad. When he didn’t make the flight we all started freaking out and saying, “Fuck, we’re playing a stadium tonight–this isn’t just an arena or a club!” Dude, that would have been the worst no-show of all.

  Sixx had to get a later flight and when he turned up he just looked like shit–a lovely shade of gray. We asked to see his arms and of course they were a mess. But we never thought of going as far as asking Nikki to leave the band. The truth was we were all fucking around with shit, so we were in no position to bust his balls about it.

  VINCE NEIL: Playing Oakland Stadium was a real big prestigious deal and there was Nikki, fucking it all up for us. There were a lot of people depending on us, and when he didn’t show I thought it just wasn’t going to happen. I was just glad we got through the show, but I have no idea how Nikki managed to do it.

  OCTOBER 11, 1987 DAY OFF

  Van Nuys, 4 p.m.

  I forgot to write down another of my stupid lil mishaps. The other night I fell and smashed the back of my head on the fireplace in the bedroom and I probably only remember ’cause my head is still pounding. My stomach and my head are killing me.

  I feel like I’m slowly rotting away both physically and mentally. I was playing guitar last night and could barely make a chord I was so fucked up. Painkillers, whisky and cocaine…what a lovely life, right?

  Karen came back today. I opened the door to her and it was all I could do to say hi, then I just came straight back to my room. She must see how sick I am.

  KAREN DUMONT: I was only ever in the house a few days when Nikki was there and he hid things very well, but occasionally I’d see him really the worse for wear. He’d been foolish enough to tell me what he liked to do–close his bedroom door, go into his walk-in closet and get ripped. He was so paranoid that all the doors had to be closed, so I insisted his bedroom door always had to be open, and if it wasn’t I’d bang on it and shout until he opened it. It used to scare me that Nikki had a gun.

  OCTOBER 13, 1987 MEMORIAL COLISEUM, PORTLAND, OR

  Hotel, 4:30 p.m.

  I’m getting a weird vibe from the band. Either nobody wants to be around me or they’re trying to punish me for Oakland and you know what? It’s really pissing me off…we’ve all fucked up in this band. Vince killed someone, Tommy has fucked up a thousand times, Mick has fucked up too, and nobody has ever complained when we’re all doing coke and junk all night. So I missed the jet? Fuck, I made the show! Now I’m the rock ’n’ roll nigger of the band. Fuck them!

  Maybe I should quit the band. Then they’d be fucked with no songs.

  * * *

  WITHOUT YOU

  Without you, there’s no change My nights and days are gray If I reached It just wouldn’t out and touched the rain feel the same Without you, I’d be lost I’d slip down from the top I’d slide down so low Girl you’d never, never know…

  * * *

  OCTOBER 14, 1987 DAY OFF

  Hotel, Tacoma, 2:45 p.m.

  People…everywhere…there seems to be nowhere to hide, not even on the inside.

  OCTOBER 15, 1987 TACOMA DOME, TACOMA, WA

  Backstage, 6 p.m.

  I can be such an asshole sometimes. My mom and my sister came to the hotel yesterday and I had been up all night and day and was freaking out of my mind. I was in the middle of staring out the peephole looking for people who were spying on me when my mom and sis knocked on the door and said, Hi Nikki it’s us, we’re here to see you. I don’t know why but I completely lost my mind, calling them every name in the book and to fuck off, etc etc. Between me and you I don’t know if it was the drugs talking or the shame of being so high on coke and I didn’t want them to see me. My mom is coming to the show tonight. I’ll try to make good.

  On the jet, midnight

  I’m drunk…sitting on the jet leaving for Canada. My mom came to the show and after she
started in on me about the hotel I lost it again. I had her thrown out of the building…called her a whore in front of everybody…I think in moments of confrontation it all hits me how I was abandoned by her and my father and it comes out in all sorts of evil ways. My sister had no part in it but somehow I have linked them together in my mind. I know I made a lot of people uncomfortable tonight with all my screaming and breaking things but I can’t help how I act. I wish I could part with all this anger…

  CECI COMER: My mother and I went down to meet Nikki in Tacoma. I had both of my boys with me–Jake was two years old and Caleb was just a baby. I had to pay for parking in the hotel garage and it was all the money I had. First there was a bunch of crap in the lobby–Nikki told me via the front desk to wait for ten minutes, which turned into an hour. When I finally got permission to go up to his room I knocked on the door and Nikki asked, “Who is it?” I got pissed because he ought to know it was me, but I said, “Hey, it’s Ceci, I’ve got the boys with me, you coming out?” He just yelled, really loud in a raspy voice, “Go away!” I was totally crushed and saw red. I went back home completely raw, just thinking, What an asshole. I felt scorned.

  DEANA RICHARDS: Oh my God, this was so painful…We got to the desk and asked for Nikki. They told us which room he was in so we called, but he didn’t answer. So we went up to the room and kept knocking on the door. We could hear him in there, but he wouldn’t come to the door. He told us to go away. It was horrible. The whole day was like a horrible blur to me, just so awful.

  It was like another night years earlier, when Mötley Crüe was just getting big, and Nikki invited me and Ceci to a show at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. I was so glad and so excited to see him, after all those years. Ceci and I went backstage to talk to Nikki, and I put my hand on his back, and he just angrily shook it off and went out of the room.

  He went into the rest room with Ceci, and when I followed them in, he was taking cocaine. It just broke my heart. I asked him, “Nikki, what are you doing?” And he said, “I know exactly why you have come here–you want something from me. You want my money.” It shocked me so much, because it was the last thing on my mind. So I left…and then I didn’t see or hear from Nikki for a very, very long time.

  NIKKI: Believing that I had been abandoned by my father and later my mother had left me holding a garbage truck full of feelings and all that garbage had begun to stink. I didn’t know how toxic it actually was at the time. When we think of storing stuff away you usually think some day you may need it, but with feelings it’s different. You store it away and forget about it, then one day–like a serial killer keeps all the dead bodies in his garage–something starts to stink. They say a dog is the first one to smell his own shit. I think a drug addict is the last.

  * * *

  ON WITH THE SHOW

  Frankie died just the other night Some say it was suicide

  * * *

  OCTOBER 16TH, 1987 PACIFIC COLISEUM, VANCOUVER, B.C., CANADA

  Vancouver, 7:30 p.m.

  Sitting backstage yesterday after the Seattle family massacre in Tacoma I was having a few drinks with some girlies and it seems they have some connection to fresh packs of needles so I told them to join me in my room after the show. I snuck an oz and 2 grams of Persian into Canada with me but I told them to bring an 8-ball ’cause I don’t wanna run out. I’m not gonna let them know I have any dope. Fuck that…bad news travels fast. Gotta put some Mott the Hoople on the boom box and get into going onstage. My body is so tired I feel like I could just lay down and die.

  Tonight should be fun. One girl’s name is Mouse. I don’t know the other’s…or care.

  OCTOBER 17TH, 1987 DAY OFF

  Hotel, 3:50 p.m.

  Stood in front of the mirror today and all I could see was death. I have lost so much weight and my skin is yellow if not gray. My eyes are sunk into the back of my head and my smile has disappeared. I dress it up with leather and cover it with being defensive just to get through this hell…ain’t fame great? Anybody want some? ’Cause you can have mine…I hate it.

  OCTOBER 18TH, 1987 NORTHLANDS COLISEUM, EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA

  Backstage, 6:05 p.m.

  Sitting here reading my own diaries…I’m really making myself sick. These drugs haunt me. These pages are an ongoing bitchfest. I’m smart enough to know these drugs and alcohol are killing me and my music, so why can’t I get ahold of this? I dreamt my whole life of making music and I have every reason to be happy yet I can’t be. How do I get out of this downward spiral? I can’t find a way out of this hole. I would like to say to myself, If you’re in a hole, put down the shovel, but I can’t. I’m so addicted, it’s all I think about, but I know there’s more. Is it the fact that I’ve never mourned not having a father? There is a reason and I’m sure it’s right in front of my face. I’m too proud to ask for help but that’s what I need.

  I have to get a grip. I have to quit. I feel like I’m rotting. In the mornings when I wake I can smell death on me. It’s right around the corner and unless I get out I’m not gonna make it. How do I stop? Do I have to go to rehab? Is there even a reason to live? It’s insane that I ask myself that but I sometimes wonder if anyone would miss me if I died…would anybody even show up to my funeral?

  I shot up a lot of coke last night with Tommy…I mean a lot. My fucking arms look like pincushions. Have a show then off to Calgary. Mouse and Laurie (is that her name?) are following us…

  TOMMY LEE: I think the time I finally figured out that Sixx and I were fucking crazy and had gone insane was in Canada when we ran out of heroin and cocaine, and sat up all night shooting up Jack Daniel’s. Afterwards, I just thought, What the fuck was that all about? It didn’t even occur to us that we could always just drink the JD. Bro, let me tell you, there was something seriously wrong with us.

  * * *

  THERE IS NO HERO IN HEROIN.

  * * *

  OCTOBER 19TH, 1987 OLYMPIC SADDLEDOME, CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA

  Calgary, 6:30 p.m.

  After yesterday’s show we flew here and I ended up shooting up all night by myself. I tried shooting up Halcions too–whatever works. I got about two hours sleep. I gotta play a show. I’m gonna order a few drinks and get out of here. I never even unpacked…

  OCTOBER 20TH, 1987 DAY OFF

  Hotel, 5:20 p.m.

  Just woke up. I pulled another solo all-nighter. I’m actually out of coke. Those chicks Mouse and Laurie have been with Tommy and I know they got rigs and dope but I said I wasn’t doing anything and have holed up in my room. I feel so bored. Playing guitar is boring…listening to music is boring…fucking is boring…I’m boring.

  Doug Thaler asked me if I would consider rehab. At least he cares. I’m tired of touring and tired of drugs but I can’t seem to get off either.

  * * *

  AA saying: SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED

  * * *

  OCTOBER 21, 1987 WINNIPEG ARENA, WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA

  Hotel, 5:30 a.m.

  Tonight’s show was really tight. It felt magical. Then afterwards Tommy and Fred came back to my room and we sat drinking and doing lines. Zombie dust was involved as well. I snuck outside and set fire to a door with lighter fluid and hair spray–I thought it was Rich Fisher’s room. It set the fire alarms off and security came running up but Fred managed to turn it around so it was their fucking fault. Tommy and I were listening behind the door and pissing ourselves laughing.

  Then an hour ago Doug called and told me I could have burned the hotel down and there was some Chinese family in the room who are really freaked out. Shit! I was just fucking around. It’s not like I really did catch the hotel on fire! Fucking bullshit! Now everybody is pissed at me (again). Can’t anyone take a joke round here?

  P.S. I’m gonna slow down. You wouldn’t believe the blood. Off to Toronto now…

  FRED SAUNDERS: Nikki, Tommy and I were sitting in Nikki’s room and he went to the bathroom–or so we thought. Instead he’d gone ou
tside, got lighter fluid and poured it all over a room door and doorjamb. He lit it, banged on the door and ran off, so by the time the guy opened the door it was fully ablaze. There was a young Chinese guy with his son in there–it could have killed them. Hotel security came up and I started yelling at them that what the hell kind of hotel was this? I had a band to look after and didn’t need somebody sneaking around trying to set fire to their rooms! They apologized to me. Nikki was hidden in his room, just sniggering.

  OCTOBER 22ND, 1987 DAY OFF

  Hotel, Toronto, 7:15 p.m.

  Fucking hell, I need a day off. My hands are fucked up and cut up, as is my body from throwing myself around onstage. I have a pulled hamstring and my ankle is sprained–who said rock ’n’ roll isn’t physical? Hahaha…Tonight me and T are going to a club and then gonna go and do radio around midnight.

  Breakfast is here…gotta go. SIXX

  Hotel, 5:30 a.m.

  Drunk–me and Tommy had a blast tonight. We beat the fuck outta some jackass who mouthed off to Tommy. His name was Axl. At first I thought we beat up Slash’s singer but it was some other guy. Then we went upstairs to this radio station…the DJ Joey was fucking cool but I think we got him fired. We had too much fun…oh well…

  JOEY SCOLERI: In 1987 I was a twenty-year-old DJ with a metal show on Q107 in Toronto. I called myself Joey Vendetta. The show ran every Friday from midnight to 2 A.M. and I was excited by the chance to talk to Mötley Crüe on the program.