by Slash
I was checked in to a two-bed room, but never had a roommate for the duration of my stay, which was great. The first three or four days of drying out were typically awful, though they were made less drastic due to the combination of medications I was given. I’d never kicked that way, so it was a welcome relief, but nothing quite so comfortable that I could eat anything or sleep soundly for more than an hour or two at a time.
After a few days, once the sweats and the anxiety and the inescapable discomfort receded, I was comfortable enough in my own skin to get out of bed and walk around a bit. It was all that I could do; I wasn’t ready for human interaction at all. But the moment I emerged from my room, the staff was all over me to attend group therapy. It was out of the question—just because I could walk didn’t mean that I wanted to talk. I wanted to avoid other people so much that I waited until I was totally famished to seek out food, because doing so meant encountering strangers in the cafeteria.
I learned later that should I have checked in a week earlier; I’d have known one person there: Steve Clark, the original guitarist for Def Leppard. Steve was in there for drugs, but as is customary in places such as those, once you surrender to their methods, they find countless other “afflictions” that are ailing you. In that frame of mind, sex and just about anything else, if you look at it from a certain perspective, can be seen as an addiction that rules your life. In Steve’s case, I hear they labeled him as a sex addict and slapped a “No Female Contact” patch on him after he broke the regulations by talking to the same girl more than once in private. He didn’t take to that too well and he promptly checked himself out of there. Steve died of a drug overdose two years later.
When I wasn’t in my room at Sierra Tucson, I spent most of my time sitting at a massive table with a giant ashtray for a centerpiece. I did my best to avoid conversing with the other residents. When I couldn’t avoid it, the conversation generally went like this.
Some stranger would sit down and start smoking nearby.
“Hey, what are you in for?” they’d ask me.
“Heroin.”
Usually, at the mention of that word, at least one or more other patients present and within earshot would start visibly twitching and scratching themselves.
“Yeah, cool. That’s nothing. Let me tell you my story…”
Most of the people I met there had multiple addictions and personalities so complex that they defied all of my preconceived notions. They were a strange collection of individuals from all walks of life; it was just like One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and like Jack Nicholson’s character, I was convinced that I was the least fucked up of all of them. I was operating under the impression that I knew what I was doing when I was doing it, no matter what it was, while these people didn’t seem to know what they were doing at any moment ever and had no idea of what they’d done to get here.
After another three or four days, that was it; I decided, FUCK THIS. I was sick of rehab on every level, from the staff encouraging me into group sharing and whatever might come from that to the too-fast friends I met while smoking that wanted to meet up on the outside to score drugs together when they got out in a few weeks.
When it came down to it, I wasn’t at all prepared to surrender in any way, shape, or form. I was in the middle of the desert, it was fucking hot, and I saw no productive way to spend my next twenty-two days there. I told the head nurse that I needed to check out immediately, and she did everything she could to stop me. The founder of the place even came down to talk me into staying.
He was the type of New Age cowboy that can only exist in the American Southwest: he wore a ten-gallon hat and lots of turquoise jewelry and cowboy boots, and spoke at length about his personal journey to sobriety. He was commanding and insisted that I hadn’t yet begun to do the real work. He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t give a shit—nor did I care to buy into his road to cleaning up whatsoever.
“Look,” I said, just pissed. “You can’t keep me here, man. You can’t. So give me a phone and get me my stuff, because I’m leaving. I’m leaving right now.”
“You are making a big mistake,” he said. “You are giving in. You are being weak, you need to think about this. Just come to a meeting with me.”
“I am not going anywhere with you,” I said. “That is not happening. Thank you very much for your help. But fuck that, I am out of here.”
I ordered myself a stretch limo to take me to the airport, as the owner continued to try to talk me into staying until the moment I got inside. I lowered the window and looked him in the eye.
“I can’t stop you but you are making a big mistake,” he said.
“See ya.”
A few miles down the road I saw a liquor store.
“Pull over,” I told the driver.
I bought a liter of Stoli. I opened it and threw the cap out the window. My anger at what I’d just been through grew as I progressed through the bottle on the way to the airport. I was insulted that my circle had thought that the ridiculous circus they’d sent me to would teach me now to control myself better than I already knew how. It was rude. I can’t imagine what my limo driver was thinking that afternoon: he’d picked me up from rehab and watched me down half a liter of vodka in under an hour.
At the airport, while I waited for my plane, I called a high-end heroin dealer who was a friend of Mark Mansfield and Matt Cassel from high school. I made arrangements to meet up with him the moment I landed; I knew that the first hit of heroin after a detox would be the finest, so I intended for it to be of the best quality. After I’d copped, I went home, I got high, and then I called my manager, Doug Goldstein.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Doug, it’s Slash,” I said. “I’m baaaaaack.” And then I hung up.
I've always had to do things my way
I SETTLED IN TO THINGS WITH MEGAN again and everything was fine. I also started partying by myself again after she went to bed. She had no idea that I’d just kicked or been to rehab. The thing was, because detox had been forced, I refused to get clean…though I knew I had to. I didn’t intend to get back into heroin—I just wasn’t going to kick it on their terms.
I planned a trip for Megan and me to Hawaii, and I got myself enough dope to allow me to take my use to a certain point, after which I’d kick on my terms. She and I checked in to a villa on Kauai, and the moment we got there, I started the detoxing process. I was feverish, sweaty, jittery, and altogether miserable. I told Megan that I had the flu and she believed me; she was happy enough to go shopping and sightsee on her own.
I didn’t expect this kick to be as bad as it was, because I thought I’d gotten through the worst of it back in Tucson. Well…I hadn’t; it wasn’t easy at all. I hoped that I could drink it off, but I couldn’t: everything tasted bad and everything felt bad. The symptoms were way more violent than usual: the dry heaves, the stomach cramps, the profuse sweating, the anxiety, and the creepy-crawling sensations were such horrible unpleasant company. I couldn’t watch TV, I couldn’t relax, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I’m sure Megan purposely stayed away most of the time.
Suffice to say, I was miserable. I was in that state for a week or so while Megan and I just chilled in Kauai. The thing is, for as much effort as I’d put into getting drugs to feed my habit, every time I’d kicked, I never invested the necessary time to obtain the appropriate medicine to ease the process. It always seemed like a pain in the ass to get a bunch of prescriptions from my doctor; it always seemed like too much planning before the day that I decided to do it. Besides, I always have to do everything the hard way, so it had always been cold turkey for me.
After a week I got to the point where I could move around and I finally started feeling better. I could see that I was almost out of the woods; and I started to make plans with Megan to do the usual things tourists do in Hawaii. At the same time, I also got the wise idea to call my dealer and have him FedEx me some smack.
All in all this was a really dumb plan, because at t
hat point I was halfway through the detox process; I would have made it if I’d been able to hold on for a few more days. But I refused to, plain and simple. In any case, my dealer could only send me a finite amount, so it was no more than a short-term solution. Looking back, I must say that it was a particularly stupid decision.
The dealer in question was the most high-end of the guys that sold me heroin; and he convinced me that my yearning could be fulfilled safely, via first-class mail, with very little chance of being caught.
I agreed to it, and the moment after I did, I remembered something: Mark, the guy from Faster Pussycat, the guy we’d duct-taped and sent to the lobby in the elevator, had recently been busted for having someone send him drugs through the mail. What the fuck was I thinking?
The next morning I was all jumpy, as junkies will be, anticipating the arrival of drugs. I still worried that I’d be busted picking them up. I weighed the pros and cons back and forth all morning until the phone rang.
“Hello, sir, this is the front desk; you have a package here.”
“Huh?” I said. “I have a package? I’m not expecting a package.”
“Yes, sir, you have a package from the mainland. I believe it was sent from Los Angeles, California.”
I decided to take extra precautions; I took the service elevator to the first floor. It let me out in a concealed corner where I could sneak into the lobby maintaining a sniper’s perspective. Nobody in the area seemed obviously suspicious, but I wasn’t sure whether some of the hangers-about were cops or not.
I was sure, however, that whatever it was that I was wearing was totally unpresentable. I slunk up to the desk, from the alley by the service elevator, and just went for it, keeping one eye peeled, so to speak.
“You know, I got a phone call saying that someone sent me a package,” I said, to the entirely innocent-looking-but-maybe-she-knows-about-this-thing girl at the front desk. “It’s totally funny because I’m not expecting anything at all.” I smiled…at least I think I did.
She fetched the package, which turned out to be an envelope full of CDs hiding the dope. When she put it down on the counter in front of me, I froze; I looked at it but didn’t touch it.
“Here’s your package, sir.”
“Is this it?” I asked. “That’s so crazy, I wasn’t expecting anything.” I looked all around the lobby, my eyes prying the corners, searching for cops or feds moving in for the kill. “That’s really odd, I’m totally surprised. I did not expect to get a package sent to me here at all.”
“Well, this package arrived here for you this morning, sir.” She looked at me oddly and held out a pen. “Will you sign here, please?”
I stared at the slip of paper sitting on the counter between us. I realized that if I was being set up, if there was any level of law enforcement watching this transaction, it would be the end of me, and that once I signed this paper, they’d have all that they’d need. I looked up at the girl, I looked down at the paper. I looked all around again, too obviously. I didn’t do anything for what became a very pregnant moment. Then I thought, Fuck it; I signed for it, I said thank you to her, and I ducked into the service elevator and hurried back to my room.
Megan was still out somewhere at the time, but when she got back I was high, I was happy, and the rest of our trip was wonderful. Call me what you will, but that vacation took a one-eighty degree turn for the better once I got my meds. Megan and I started doing stuff, we went shopping, I rented a Jeep, and we toured some of the sights.
From Hawaii, Megan and I flew out to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with her mother, whom I was meeting for the first time. I finished the last of my smack in the hotel in Hawaii, and by the time we got to Chicago, I was starting to experience the typical junkie itchy twitchy withdrawal. I only knew a few people in Chicago, and I ran into one of them at the Smart Bar our first night there. This guy was one of the engineers who’d set up our rehearsal rig, and though he didn’t have a line on heroin, he always had tons of coke, so he hooked me up with a pile of it. When I got back to Megan’s mother’s house, I started shooting it in an effort to get myself straight.
Megan had no idea, but I could tell that her mom knew that something wasn’t quite right with me; I’m just not sure whether she knew exactly what it was. It was tough to keep my whole scene under wraps that holiday season because she and her mom lived in pretty close quarters. Their bedrooms were divided by a shared closet; so if the sliding doors on both sides were open, you could walk from one room into the other. At night, when I was watching TV and shooting coke after Megan fell asleep, I’d start tripping out, convinced that her mom was watching me from the other side of that weird divider. This went on for a few nights. I don’t know what I was thinking; I was shooting coke in her twin bed, between Megan’s body and the wall. It was ridiculous.
When Thanksgiving Day arrived, I took a shower and got ready to meet the family and friends; and I noticed as I walked down the stairs that somehow heroin had been cleaned from my system—it defies common logic, but my only explanation is that the coke had inexplicably taken the edge off on a very intrinsic level. I was out of my mind the whole time I was over there, regardless, and that Thanksgiving dinner was one of the most uncomfortable holiday meals I’ve ever had, but it did have its moments. We had plenty to drink and we had some good times, and then Megan and I flew back to L.A. and at that point I was clean(ish)—or so: no drugs, and very little booze. At least for a while.
Before I knew it Christmas was around the corner and Megan started planning a lavish party: she was way into the decorations, she bought a fondue maker, and she invited all of our friends to her winter wonderland. It was the most bizarre thing I had been involved with for a long time, and the fact that I was straight made that feeling pretty hard to ignore. The day before the party, she came home with about $400 worth of useless garbage that she’d bought at the market to decorate the house. That was my breaking point.
I watched her decorate our place, thinking all the while, I don’t even know who the fuck you are. We had the Christmas party, we had our friends over; and as soon as they’d gone, I set about telling Megan that she had to go as well. It wasn’t cool, and it was pretty explicit; I flipped on her for going to the market but that wasn’t the real issue: I was done with her, cut-and-dried, and I needed her to vacate the premises as soon as possible. It didn’t matter to me how she’d gotten there, it just had to stop. It had to end immediately. It went horribly: I looked her in the eye and said, “Go away.” And she went…her friend Karen, who hated me anyway, showed up and packed her up.
Looking back, once I was sober, I didn’t see Megan the same way at all. She was sweet, she was fine…but she was just there. Suddenly she was like a piece of furniture that I didn’t remember buying and I began to ask myself, each and every day, what we had in common. With nothing to cloud my vision, it felt like she was a stranger. I also didn’t have time for the time-consuming responsibilities and distractions of a relationship, so it wasn’t her so much as it was me. I was getting back to my old self; I was getting into work mode. All I kept thinking when I looked at her was, What are you doing here? You’ve got to go. I’ve got shit to do. We’ve got a fucking record to make. I believe I said as much to her. I treated her harshly, especially for me, because that’s not my style. But I just couldn’t take it anymore, and that’s the last that I ever saw of her. I’ve always had to do things my way; I’ve gotten high my way, I’ve gotten clean my way, I’ve been in and out of relationships my way. I’ve taken myself to the edges of life my way. And I’m still here. Whether or not I deserve to be is another story.
10
Humpty Dumpty
When we started this band, our future depended on our uncompromising unity; our attitude fostered a loyal camaraderie among us the likes of which is very rare. Success fragmented that bond by giving us everything we wanted and a lot we didn’t need—all at once. We’d made it in the conventional sense; and that meant money and money meant f
reedom. We were free to splinter off on our own trips. We went so far that we almost forgot what it was like to be in the same room; we almost forgot how we had earned that freedom in the first place.
In the end we found it again, just in time…but there were losses and growing pains we could not avoid. To get back to where we started, we had to reintroduce ourselves; we had to trim the fat. We had to rediscover Guns N’ Roses. It had only been a few years, but it felt like we’d forgotten how fun it used to be to be us. You’d be surprised how quickly you forget what’s important when you’ve suddenly got everything you’d never thought you’d have.
Once I had dropped the smack again, once Megan was gone, and once I started hanging more with Duff, listening to music, drinking, and doing the occasional line, it all came together. It was all no big deal; I’d transitioned out of smack like I had before and into drinking and I was ready to do some work again. And that was good.
Izzy hadn’t come back from Indiana yet—he wasn’t ready for the temptation of L.A.—so it was Duff and I who started going back down to Mates to write. We hoped to get the ball rolling by way of our example, by maintaining a regular schedule during which we’d write music. We were feeling out the foundation of a few new songs and doing some work on some preexisting ones. As in Chicago, our goal was to get Izzy and Axl back in the room with us, but we knew that before we could do that, we needed to deal with Steven. Our man Steve had built himself up a pretty pesky drug habit and was in full denial. Steve never grew out of those junior high rock-and-roll fantasies, even when the threat of losing them was staring him in the face, so we had our work cut out for us. Duff and I split our time between jamming at Mates and monitoring Steven, who conveniently lived down the street from Duff, but was as sneaky as could be about his consumption. When we were in Chicago, everyone had started to see signs that he was becoming a little bit neurotic and frail, but back in L.A. in my strung-out haze, I hadn’t registered how bad off he was.