words: John Z
photo: Frank White
Mötley Crüe chief songwriter and bassist, Nikki Sixx has always walked on the wild side, but the accounts in his book, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, detail a brutally honest picture of his near debilitating heroin and cocaine addiction, his drug psychosis and the all around dysfunction he lived in 1986 through ’87. Co-written by Ian Gittins, the book traces Sixx’s highs and lows with the Crüe, his struggles with life as a full-blown junkie, the sexual escapades he engaged in and the near-death experiences he avoided as his life spiraled further out of control.
“My relationship with the pen and paper were my only friends,” says Sixx today, in retropsect. “I was like an insane person just talking in the corner. I didn’t know who to talk to.” At times Sixx’s cocaine psychosis was so severe, he was convinced people were in his house and that imaginary people were chasing him. To remedy the situation, he would barricade himself in his closet with nothing more than his stash of drugs and a loaded shotgun pointing towards the door. “It would be easy for me to write a fluff piece,” says Sixx, 49, now six years sober. “I’ve wrecked everything on the planet—from hotel rooms to dressing rooms to cars and I’m sharing my experience with this book.”
More than a year ago, Sixx stumbled upon these journal ramblings while cleaning out a personal storage space in California. He decided to release the entries with modern-day comments from his Mötley band members, former drug partners and musical colleagues including Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and Slash of Guns N’ Roses. As a way to give the reader a deeper editorial experience, Sixx also wrote a rock opera called The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, with James Michael and DJ Ashba under the moniker Sixx: A.M., whose music recounts the path from destruction to salvation.
“With the soundtrack you get to read the story and make up a movie in your head that touches on a lot of emotions,” Sixx explains. “We wanted to follow the book in concept from hell and follow it and break it down in a different way.” Sixx’s journey into addiction could be traced back to him being raised in a broken home—his father abandoned him at 3, before Sixx found himself homeless a decade later. As a teenager, Sixx jumped a bus to LA, where he began hanging out in local clubs and playing in bands. In 1981, Tommy Lee co-founded the Crüe with Sixx, which eventually brought him fame and fortune, but also a crippling addiction, sadness and multiple overdoses—including one in ’87 where he was declared clinically dead.
Sixx finally checked himself into rehab in 2001, getting down to the root of his addiction and putting the hard work into remaing sober. “I completely gave up and I felt like I had no power,” Sixx recalls. “I said, ‘I don’t ever want to use again.’” As a way to give back to the community, Sixx is donating 25 percent of book sales to Running Wild in the Night, a charity he founded to raise money for Covenant House California which assists runaways and those living on the streets. “I’m not a preacher and I’m not on a soapbox—that’s not me,” he points out. “It’s not my job to tell you how to live, but I want to tell you how I’ve lived and by throwing my story out there, these kids could have a chance.”
