Pop Eye ; November 15, 2007

Nikki Sixx is high on being sober
Pop Eye By Elaine Corden
Publish Date: November 15, 2007


It is a universal truth that, as far as excesses go, one need look no further than Mötley Crüe for the most extreme examples of everything both seductive and repulsive about the music industry. As is well documented in the band's best-selling 2001 autobiography, The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, the Crüe, during its mid-'80s prime, was unparalleled in taking sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll to ridiculous ends. Yes, there was none more Mötley than Mötley.

One Crüe member stands out as the most ridiculously extreme of them all: bassist Nikki Sixx. Famously pronounced dead after an overdose in December 1987, then brought back to life by a paramedic who happened to be a fan, the former Frank Carlton Serafina Feranna Jr. is rock's most unlikely survivor–a junkie, cokehead, and all-around bad man, bent on self-destruction. Yet on a recent Friday afternoon, the rock icon passed through town alive and well, promoting a book that decries the life of indulgence he once symbolized.

With luminous, seemingly capped white teeth and the kind of Oompa-Loompa tan that only life in Los Angeles affords, Sixx now cuts an amazing figure. Having just chatted with former Liberal MLA Christy Clark on her CKNW radio show, he was in an amicable mood, sipping on a coffee and fiddling with his BlackBerry. He had played with his new band, Sixx: AM, the night before, and would be signing copies of his book, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, at Chapters in Metrotown later that evening. It was rather difficult to reconcile the man who had just been discussing addiction treatment with a former right-wing politician with the Sixx famous for The Dirt segments like the one in which he earned his red wings.

"People say that as a recovering person, you don't have any balls," said Sixx, who's recently been working as a lobbyist for addiction treatment. "But I'm still having more fun than most people, trust me on that."

Read just a few pages from The Heroin Diaries, a compelling compendium of the bassist's journals from his lost years, and you'll find it hard to believe Sixx could have fun sober. From stories of injecting Jack Daniel's into his veins ("It never occurred to us to drink it") to heartbreaking entries written when Sixx was cracked out, paranoid, and naked in his closet, he relied heavily on substance abuse to enjoy himself.

Nowadays, he's high on everything but drugs: his kids, his music, his clothing line, his book, and most importantly, his efforts to aid drug addicts. With a workaholic's zeal, he jumps from one project to the next.

"My take is never to be a preacher," said Sixx of his and others' addictions. "I hate that people think it's a moral problem. It's a disease. George Bush thinks that it's a moral problem, and so I'm working with people in Washington, D.C., to help him understand that it's a disease."

While present-day Sixx sounds like a man that '80s Sixx would have hated, after years of pissing on everything around him, the leathery rock star has finally found a reason to live. And although fans who approach him today seem to want the bad-ass junkie of yore, Sixx clearly couldn't care less about disappointing those who are looking for the smacked-out character he refers to as "Sikki Nixx".

"That was then and this is now," he said, his fuck-you attitude shining through. "I have this saying: what people think about me is none of my business. If I cared about what people thought, I would've never done any of what I've done in my life."