It was Sylvia Plath who once wrote that dying is an art, and like the tragically gifted poet, Nikki Sixx did it exceptionally well. Crouched naked under a Christmas tree with a needle in his arm on Christmas Day, 1986, Sixx began a journal he would keep during the height of his heroin addiction. As one of the biggest rock bands in the world, Mötley Crüe had afforded him the means to completely exploit the perks of his profession. There wasn’t a drug he wouldn’t do. Like his bandmates, he binged on alcohol and cocaine, but unlike them, his drug of choice was heroin. As a freebasing junkie, his life was spiraling out of control. He suffered from acute paranoia and cocaine-induced psychosis, often barricading himself in his closet, surrounded by drug paraphernalia and gripping a shotgun, shooting at the walls when he was convinced the cops were on the other side coming to get him or that midgets and Mexicans were surrounding his house. But what failed to kill Nikki Sixx only inspired him. He managed a song from each overdose. “Dancing on Glass”, from Crüe’s album Girls Girls Girls, recalls an incident in London where he overdosed in a dealer’s house. Having tried to beat the life back into Sixx with a bat, the dealer disposed of him in a nearby dumpster, leaving him for dead. “Kickstart My Heart”, off the Dr. Feelgood album, was written about the night of December 23, 1987, nearly a year to the day he began his junkie journal, when Sixx was declared dead for two minutes after yet another overdose, this time to be revived by paramedics with two adrenaline shots to the heart. The near-death experience had very little impact on Sixx though. When he came to in the hospital, he promptly ripped out the tubes in his arm and staggered out into the night in just his leather pants. He hitched a ride home, headed straight for his room, shot up and passed out. Sixx woke the next morning with blood in his hands, the needle still stuck in his arm. It was a year that would bring Nikki Sixx to his knees.
The idea to turn his entries into a book came when Sixx discovered the journals in a trunk filled with press clippings and various other mementos of his career. He decided to share them in an effort to lend hope to those who find themselves in a similar situation. Sixx wanted to raise awareness of a global epidemic whose reach extends far beyond the streets to stretch limos. He wanted to shine a light for the many grappling with the disease of addiction.
In September 2007, after many years of clean living, Sixx released the New York Times bestselling memoir The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, a portion of whose proceeds are donated to Sixx’s Running Wild in the Night charity, a fundraising initiative for Covenant House, in an effort to help get others like him off the streets. Written with British journalist Ian Gittins, The Heroin Diaries is a story told from many perspectives to give as thorough an account of this period as possible, interspersing the shocking, brutally honest entries with commentary from his bandmates, friends, ex-lovers, caretakers, business associates and family members who were sucked into the maelstrom. Sixx found writing from such a dark place cathartic. Having to dredge up and relive that time without being self-aggrandizing or glamorizing the drug-addicted rock star lifestyle was a challenge he rose to by separating himself, knowing that who he was then is not who he is now. The book is a riveting read, and an unflinching look at addiction. The sheer insanity of that time in his life would make for laugh-out-loud comedy (at least to those with a twisted sense of humor or those who can relate on a more personal level) if it weren’t so heartbreakingly sad at its core.
So, what does an ex-junkie rock star with a shocking memoir climbing the charts do for an encore? In Part 2, James Michael and D. J. Ashba join forces with Nikki Sixx to create music out of mayhem.
…when you've tasted excess
Everything else tastes bland
“Heart Failure”
SIXX:A.M.
