Suicide Girls ; September 18, 2007

By Erin Broadley
Sep 18, 2007

It's December 25th 1986, and Nikki Sixx is alone in his mansion, crouched naked under his Christmas tree with a needle in his arm, scribbling in his diary about watching his "holiday spirit coagulate in a spoon." He writes, "Merry Christmas…it's just you and me, diary. Welcome to my life."

This is just one scene from a particularly harrowing chapter in Motley Crue bassist and founder Nikki Sixx's new memoir "The Heroin Diaries" -- a collection of riveting entries from his personal journals spanning one year from 1986 to 1987, a year he considers the height of his downward spiral into drug addiction. It's a story about drugs, depression, and the train-wreck of self-destruction -- but ultimately it's one man's story about survival told with unflinching and unapologetic honesty.

Sober now for 20 years, Sixx is the founder of the charity Running Wild in the Night (a fundraising program for the Covenant House) and will donate part of the proceeds from the book to help troubled kids get off the streets and away from drugs.

SuicideGirls caught up with the original glam-metal bad boy to chat about his darker days and why the future looks so bright…
Erin Broadley: You've never really been shy about talking to people about your demons and your past. But at what point, if there is a point, do you ever worry about the risk of feeling overexposed?
Nikki Sixx: Well, no. This is a different thing. It's me throwing myself under the wheels of the bus so that I can show what the outcome is. For me to be able to find the journals, get the commentary from everybody else and then write the overview kind of helped me to see my own past clearer, which would be great for people who read the book because they'll experience that arch that goes from adolescence to adulthood…we all make mistakes. We all fuck up. We all do whatever we do in our lives but I can see where mine became a downward spiral. I'm not saying, "Don't do drugs, don't drink." I'm not.
EB:
You're not up on any pedestal or soapbox, for sure.
NS:
I am so against that. You know, my friends drink. I don't care. My friends do lots of stuff that I don't do. And I'm sure I do things that they don't do. We're all individuals on this planet. So you know, I'm just one guy [and I] happen to have a spotlight on me. If I can show that experience and it can help to sell the project, which will donate money for [the charity] Covenant House. This is for the at risk kids, you know, it's one year of my life of giving back and I've had so many years of gifts.
EB:
In your diaries, on February 13th, 1987 you wrote about heroes and whether or not people idolize others for their music or their lifestyles. You say for you it's both. Do you think it's part of the quandary the entertainment industry is in where heroes are built out of excess and fans end up falling into that themselves?
NS:
You know it's such a touchy subject for the fans. I would like to come out of this where a girl looks at me and goes, "That guy's fuckable."
EB:
[Laughs]
NS:
And a guy looks at me and goes, "That guy looks like he could kick some ass." People in general would go, "Wow, like he's not fucked up anymore. He's even fucking better. He's even a better musician." If I can come out like that for people, maybe it's setting a new model for what the tattooed, crazy, rock and roller can be like, you know, but I'm not straightedge.
EB:
Right. Well that's a whole other level of extreme that I find just completely alienating in its own right.
NS:
Yeah. Oh yeah. You know, I'm very at ease and comfortable in my own skin. I just want people that are around me to go, "Wow, that guy's just on his own journey. He doesn't preach at us." I'm really good if you want to ask me what my experience was with something like, "How did you deal with it?" Well this is how I dealt with it. I don't tell them that's how they should deal with it and that's kind of like what the book's about.
EB:
The book reads very much more like a dialogue and a conversation than a manual of regret, especially with the outside commentary. Does that make sense?
NS:
Yeah. I won't apologize for any of the wrecked cars, destroyed hotel rooms or broken hearts.
EB:
[Laughs]
NS:
I don't regret any tattoos. We are a combination of all the things that we've done. That experience is who you are today and I don't know what I'll be like five years from now. I'm sure I'll be on a pretty similar path because this is the most comfortable path I've been on. I'll still be a photographer, a musician, a producer, a writer and it's just kind of where I'm at. I don't think I would have ever got here if I hadn't exorcised those demons. Not the addiction, we know that would kill me, we have proof.
EB:
At one point, you know, in your diary you write, "I've been up to no good again but it's given me a killer idea for a song."
NS:
[Laughs]
EB:
I feel like it's a really tricky situation when the things that are hurting you, are not healthy for you, also happen to be so intrinsically tied into what you're getting paid for and the lifestyle you're getting paid to live. You mentioned that a lot of people didn't yell at you for fucking up because you were the cash flow.
NS:
Right.
EB:
Can art and stability co-exist?
NS:
It is interesting because, you know, they say Dali was mentally insane.
EB:
Right. His mustache sure was.
NS:
Well, his mustache definitely was insane. They definitely should have committed that mustache.
EB:
[Laughs]
NS:
So, what would his artwork have been like if he'd been put on antidepressants and psychosis medications? I mean, nobody will ever know. You know, Johnny Thunders had to die to make it the end of that story and so did Sid Vicious and so did Bon Scott and some of these amazing painters and poets and guys like William Burroughs. They carried the needle right to the end. I don't know where my story ends. I don't know what a different soundtrack my life would have been if I would have done something different.
EB:
At another point in the diary you write, "The drugs are ruining the show and we're all scared to death". At what point did that thought really first materialize for you with Motley Crue?
NS:
You know, it's interesting because there's a part of me that knew I had a problem probably even before Motley Crue. It's like I was destined for the outcome. It was just interesting. I looked back and I was so full on. I remember like 17, 16-years-old taking elephant tranquilizers. I mean, why? Why? I had to do much soul searching to try to find an answer. Part of it was just straight up being young and who I surrounded myself with. When you're unhealthy, you don't really surround yourself with healthy people. When you don't have role models that are healthy, who are you going to get your feedback from?
EB:
Another thing you wrote is, "Why can't I do drugs like normal people?"
NS:
I can't do anything like normal people.
EB:
[Laughs]
NS:
It's just not possible.
EB:
Well, it's part of your charm.
NS:
I love too deep. It's unbelievable how in love I get about anything or anybody. I'm so passionate about everything. I've actually learned a bit of balance. I mean, going through this divorce and being single for the last year and a half has been real interesting where I've re-evaluated a lot of the things, like where you've made the mistakes in relationships with the people that you thought would be lifelong partners.
EB:
Uh-huh, like redefining your definition of what a life partner is.
NS:
Yeah, exactly. You know, exactly. So, this whole thing is a journey, a very interesting journey and hopefully one that still smells and tastes rock and roll.
EB:
You wrote in February 1987 that, "Everybody thinks I'm so tough as nails, if only they only knew." A lot of times people have a hard time keeping a private diary because they're always afraid that somebody's going to read it. It's like, "Oh what if I do die and everybody reads it finds out all these things going on in my head and my insecurities." You know, the whole diary keeping process is kind of a lost art form today because everybody's blogging.
NS:
Right, right, everybody blogs it. They blog and they spell check.
EB:
Right, it's not a diary if you spell check, asshole!
NS:
Exactly. Especially if you re-read it and go, "Well that doesn't make me look good." I mean, just that relationship with the pen and the paper and my own barricaded world -- it was freeing.
EB:
Yeah, barricaded in your closet.
NS:
In my closet. I still do it today, not the closet but the writing. I have this weird thing that I'm always on the floor. I always have to sit on the floor and it freaks people out. Not like in restaurants or businesses, but if I go to someone's house, you know, and we're flopping in the front room, I'm like the first one on the floor.
EB:
I do that too. When people are over at my house I always sit on the floor. I think it stems from very young party, social situations where we were just camping out on the floor, drinking or doing our business. Like a floor powwow situation.
NS:
Yeah, it is. It's very much like a powwow.
EB:
The only people on the couches are the ones that are passed out.
NS:
Exactly, the couch is more like a gurney.
EB:
Yeah, exactly [laughs]. In the editing process of the diaries, did you have any moments where you were like, "I just don't want to include that in the published version?"
NS:
No.
EB:
No? There was no censorship after the fact?
NS:
Nope, absolutely not. It's forbidden in my world.
EB:
That's great…I think that's needed. Censorship, especially self-censorship has become so prevalent. I mean it's everywhere and we don't even realize it anymore. You know the whole phrase, "Think before you speak," well, stop it already. There is no kind of stream of consciousness.
NS:
Well, are we going to get shit for it? Are you going to be publicly ridiculed for it? If it's in a text message if you don't put "ha, ha, ha" or "LOL", are they going to know it was sarcasm? Oh Jesus, and I'm guilty of it. I mean, I live on text messages.
EB:
Uh huh, I've definitely sent out a few "LOL-s" in my life.
NS:
I've sent a few out, and a lot of "ha-ha-ha-s" because I'm very dry. I'll say something and I'll get back, "Are you pissed?" And I'll send back, "LOL."
EB:
With other drug-based memoirs like, I don't know, my problem with books like the Basketball Diaries is that they still had too much self-preservation going on in the writing process, you know?
NS:
Right, right. I mean I read them and I was like, "Looks cool to me." [Jim Carroll] never really looked bad. Everybody else looked bad and he was kind of like a victim.
EB:
Right, the tortured artist. You don't veil your Jeckyll-Hyde personality in the Heroin Diaries at all. I thought that was interesting to read, especially from somebody who is as in the public eye and has been in the public eye for a long time. You're not afraid of not looking cool.
NS:
No, after being in Motley Crue, you're not afraid of that. I got over that a long time ago. This probably isn't a good book to send to a girl before I date her.
EB:
[Laughs] Right, or maybe it is… just to get it over with.
NS:
Get it over with. It's like a deterrent. It's like when girls wear a fake wedding ring. I'll just carry the book around with me and give it to girls.
EB:
Speaking of the Basketball Diaries, I had issues with the way different characters were portrayed, especially the addict-dealer relationship in that book.
NS:
Yeah, yeah.
EB:
You're very frank about how you both loved to hate each other and hated to love each other. It's just a very interesting dynamic.
NS:
It must be very frustrating for a guy who has the same habit as me to be going to a mansion and I'm throwing down $1,000 at a time. And there are just $20,000 Persian rugs and antiques that are just destroyed. From his point of view I would be like, "Fuck you, you spoiled piece of shit."
EB:
You're throwing it all away, but at the same time --
NS:
He's no better. I mean it's incestual, isn't it? It's very broken. I remember sitting down over the cocaine, talking about how bad cocaine was. I mean, you know, its like, "This is really bad. We shouldn't be doing this. Pass me the mirror." It's a very interesting, very weird life.
EB:
In the forward of the book you mention there were people that wouldn't get involved in this because they were afraid of tarnishing their reputation. Was that unexpected?
NS:
Well, from the get-go there was a charitable piece to the puzzle and that was the thing is to talk to people. I said, "You've got to be honest if you want to do something charitable." We didn't need another fluff piece out there on this subject, on any subject, to be honest with you, and I have such a thing about telling it how it is. I'll be honest with you, I tell it how it is, and sometimes a year later it's not how it is anymore. People change, thank God. Things change and people don't always like it when you change. And you don't always like it as an artist when you change. I was an asshole. I'm not anymore but sometimes I can be. Yeah, "I was a dick. That was then, this is now either accept my apology or not." You want to know who people are when you look them in the eyes. My experience is that people want to do the right thing. It's fear, everything is fear based. The more I look, everything in life is fear based. Fear of everything. Fear of writing the right thing in your blog or the fear of, "Is the song going to fit the format?" Or the fear of, "Is my hairstyle in?" Fear of, "How come we're called a shit metal band, or how come we're called crap-rock band.
EB:
Crack rock?
NS:
Crap-rock, like when it was rap-rock then it got turned into crap rock.
EB:
[Laughs] I was going to say, that's a weird genre, crack rock.
NS:
Crack rock that would be the opposite of straight edge. We're crack rock, we just do crack.
EB:
[Laughs] We just do crack and sing about crack.
NS:
Yeah, every song is about crack.
EB:
Butt crack and cocaine crack.
NS:
Both cracks.
EB:
Oh God [laughs].
NS:
Oh my God.

This interview is old a little but still interesting
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