The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star

The ten-year anniversary edition of this memoir by Nikki Sixx, a member and primary songwriter of the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, is built around diary entries he kept throughout 1987, one of the darkest years of his life. Supplemented by retrospective commentary from Sixx and interviews with bandmates, managers, girlfriends, family members, and friends, the book chronicles Sixx's spiral through heroin and cocaine addiction, his repeated failed attempts at sobriety, and the overdose that killed him before paramedics brought him back.

In a preface written for the anniversary edition, Sixx traces the roots of his addiction to age six, when his mother and stepfather gave him marijuana and whisky during a trip to Mexico. The experience silenced what he describes as a constant static in his head. He reflects on the decade since 2007, a period that included major tours, the formation of his band Sixx:A.M., two bestselling books, a photography career, and his marriage to Courtney Bingham. He acknowledges that these years were also among his hardest, marked by the deaths of several people featured in the book and by his inability to reconcile with his mother, Deana Richards, before her death. He discusses the ongoing American heroin epidemic as a reason for reissuing the book and notes that he maintains sobriety through weekly Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings.

The diary begins on Christmas Day 1986. Sixx sat naked under a Christmas tree in his Van Nuys mansion, a needle in his arm, having spoken to no one all day. He lists three reasons for starting the diary: he had no friends left, he needed to remember what he did the day before, and it could serve as a suicide note. Drug counselor Bob Timmons explains that Sixx had been addicted to heroin and cocaine for at least a year and had refused rehab.

Through the final days of December and into January 1987, Sixx documents his escalating drug use, his love-hate relationship with his dealer Jason, and his volatile involvement with Vanity (Denise Matthews), a former Prince protégée and Sixx's on-again, off-again girlfriend. Vanity taught Sixx to freebase cocaine, deepening his addiction. Their encounters followed a pattern: binges, religious rants, screaming fights, and Sixx's retreat to his bedroom closet, where he huddled with drugs and guns, convinced that intruders were invading his home. These cocaine-induced psychotic episodes became a recurring feature of the year.

In January, the band returned to the studio to record Girls Girls Girls. Sixx enrolled in a methadone program but continued scoring from Jason, effectively adding another addiction. He arrived at sessions with visible track marks and once taught the band a song he had already taught them the previous day. The band and management remained silent because Sixx was the primary songwriter generating income for everyone. By this point, Sixx weighed 164 pounds, 40 less than a year earlier. Tommy Lee, the band's drummer and Sixx's closest companion, confirms that Sixx always wanted to go further than anyone else.

Through February and March, Sixx's physical deterioration accelerated. His veins collapsed, forcing him to inject into his neck and eventually his penis. He attempted to buy drugs in bulk but invariably binged immediately, hallucinated that police had followed the dealer, and flushed the stash. He documents conflicting accounts of his childhood: His mother insisted she was manipulated into surrendering custody, while his grandfather Tom Reese countered that Deana repeatedly abandoned him. Sixx acknowledges this childhood as the root of his addiction. Despite the chaos, the band completed the album.

In April, suicidal ideation intensified. Sixx put his grandfather's shotgun in his mouth and considered pulling the trigger. He had heavy shutters installed on every window, then tore them down days later when they made him feel caged.

May brought a breakthrough. Sixx called Timmons and asked for help. To prepare for the upcoming tour, he and Jason prepared 30 bindles, small packets of heroin in decreasing sizes, each paired with a fresh needle, creating a tapering regimen. Over five brutal days of withdrawal, with his grandfather providing motivation, Sixx kicked heroin. By mid-May he felt dramatically different, exercising, playing guitar, and dismissing Jason when he encountered him on the street.

The tour launched in June, and the diary shifts to a blur of sold-out arenas, groupies, cocaine, and sleeping pills. Sixx confesses to bringing heroin on tour as a final goodbye, then rationalizes the relapse in his own diary. He developed a reliance on crushed Halcion sleeping pills mixed with cocaine, which he called "zombie dust." Guitarist Mick Mars began a romance with background singer Emi Canyon, violating Sixx's rule against band members sleeping with employees.

Through July, August, and September, the tour ground on with Sixx oscillating between brilliant performances and disintegration. His depression deepened, and he wrote that he understood suicide and felt completely alone. East Coast dealer Sacha, who moonlighted as a limousine driver for the band's management, began supplying Sixx with heroin. Sixx overdosed in his New York hotel room. He briefly resolved to get clean and broke up with Vanity, but the cycle of relapse continued.

In October, Sixx missed the band's flight to Oakland after days without sleep. A separate jet was sent, and the band demanded to see his arms, which were destroyed. This is the moment all band members later identify as the point of no return. In Tacoma, his mother and sister Ceci Comer visited his hotel; Sixx, gripped by psychosis, screamed at them through the door and later had his mother thrown out of the venue. In Canada, he and Tommy spent a night injecting Jack Daniel's.

November brought the final American dates with Guns N' Roses as the opening act. Slash, the Guns N' Roses guitarist, became Sixx's constant drinking companion. Sixx wrote an unsent letter to his mother expressing decades of rage. His physical condition deteriorated visibly: yellow skin, sunken eyes, and blood in his stool. He wondered whether anyone would attend his funeral.

The year reached its crisis in December. During final tour dates in Japan, Sixx was arrested after throwing a whisky bottle at businessmen on a bullet train. After an impulsive trip to Hong Kong, where a fortune-teller told him he would not survive the year, he flew back to Los Angeles on December 22. That night, a dealer injected him with heroin at the Franklin Plaza hotel. He turned blue and stopped breathing. Sally McLaughlin, Slash's girlfriend, performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while fighting off a panicking Slash. Paramedics revived Sixx with adrenaline injections. Sixx describes an out-of-body experience in which he watched his own body being loaded into an ambulance.

He staggered home, and as soon as his housesitter Karen Dumont left for work, he shot up again, passing out with the needle in his arm. When he woke, he threw away his syringes, read the first step of the twelve-step recovery program, and for the first time found it made sense. On Christmas morning 1987, he woke feeling hopeful, without the compulsion to reach for a needle. He decided to put the diary away and start a new one.

In an afterword, Sixx chronicles going cold turkey after 1987, being diagnosed with clinical depression, finding relief through Prozac, writing the Dr. Feelgood album, and enduring multiple relapses before committing to permanent sobriety after entering rehab in Tucson. A closing section describes his current life: married to Courtney, raising his four children, and completing Mötley Crüe's final tour in 2015. He closes by declaring he can outperform the young, self-destructive version of himself any day.