The Heroin Diaries: The Life after Death of Nikki Sixx
By Joe Brown
Few books are so raw that they make the reader cringe while reading. The Heroin Diaries: a Year in the life of a Shattered Rock Star, written by Nikki Sixx, the founder, bassist and chief song-writer of Mötley Crüe, is a collection of diary entries written by Sixx from Christmas 1986 to Christmas 1987, during his year-long jackknife into heroin and cocaine abuse. The book also features current commentary and stories written by not only Nikki, but just about every person mentioned in the pages of these shocking diaries. The inserts from other people adds to the intensity of the story in a strong way because the reader is already connecting with the people, those same people are looking back now and recounting what happened and are presenting different angles to the happenings in Sixx's life. In fact, this book is so intense that if a typical grandmother read it, she would likely have a heart attack. As Sean Daly of The St. Petersburg Times put it, "he paints scene after pathetic scene of his drug use, impotence and increasing paranoia." These diaries hold nothing back when exposing the gritty and grimy world of, as Sixx described himself and his friends, "the drug scouts of America." In The Heroin Diaries, the trials that Sixx dealt with while battling his cocaine and heroin addictions seemed like he would never come out on top, but he proved to the whole world that no matter how impossible the situation may be, anyone can be victorious, no matter the impossibility of the situation.
In The Heroin Diaries, Sixx walks the reader through his shocking and twisted world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The reader experiences all of Sixx's psychotic drug escapades, and truly gets the feeling that they are connecting with the people in Sixx's life. The contrast between who the people in the book were in the 80's, and who they are in present day is striking. Sixx's non-conventional girlfriend Denise Mathews, known then as Vanity, is a force in the book that constantly is giving readers whiplash, but most of the time, the reader may just want her to over-dose one final time. Vanity dated Prince before the diaries take place, and once during the time she was with Sixx, she had dozens of roses sent to herself and made it seem as though they were from Prince as a way to do nothing but mess with Sixx's head. These mind games were something that happened quite often while Sixx was around Vanity. The relationship between Vanity and Sixx is more dysfunctional than some may think possible. Not only was their relationship solely built on top of heroin and cocaine, but in the midst of their cooperative effort to self-destruct together, Vanity would preach about God. Yes, she would literally preach while neck-deep in a drug binge so intense that most will never imagine experiencing such an extreme. After everything Vanity put Sixx through, it's a wonder he kept her around as long as he did, but then again, the mind of an addict is not always especially logical.
In a slightly different world, the band and some of their management who was nearly as strung out, would watch and say nothing as Sixx was going "down a dead-end street at 200 mph screaming for vengeance and embracing death," which is Sixx's present-day description of his life at the time. All of the band members expressed that he was much worse than any of them were, and although they were concerned, they remained silent almost until the first time the band broke up. What nobody knew except Sixx and his diaries was that he was quite literally going completely and seemingly-irreversibly insane. Sixx would lock himself in his bedroom closet with his shotgun and drugs for whole nights, and his mind would go wild with hallucinations and paranoia, all driven by cocaine. On one occasion, he was convinced that there were "little men with helmets and guns in the trees surrounding his house" and he called Rob Timmons, who was a fellow junkie at the time, and asked him to call the police. Sixx wrote he even had a panic button installed in his bedroom that connected directly to his home security company that he pressed many times while drowning in hallucinations. He was even convinced he pushed the button one time, and flushed thousands of dollars in drugs down the toilet, but when he came down, realized he had never even pushed the button. The Heroin Diaries is written for an audience that seldom is the target audience of a New York Times bestseller, partially due to the fact that teen metal-heads and retired rockers generally may not read as much as Oprah's book-club's target audience. In turn, the book needs to apply an iron grip on even those that may glance at the book while walking by in the bookstore, which it successfully does. The book was illustrated by Paul Brown, a friend of Sixx's, and he captured the feel of the story in such a way that the illustrations in the book act as an extension of the words on the pages. The images are filthy, dirty, and full of emotion, and those who may not read much, or even at all, are likely to be pulled in, and held by the images long enough to start reading the book, which in turn communicates so well with the reader that they will be wholly infatuated, and not be able to put the book down. The images range from many psychotic scribbled pictures of Sixx, to distorted spoons, syringes and skulls.
In the midst of all the positive aspects of The Heroin Diaries, experiencing all the relapses and hopeless ramblings of Sixx can be almost painful to read, especially to those with either a history of drug abuse, or readers who are close to someone that struggled with addiction. The first half of the book covers the few months before the Girls Girls Girls tour while the band was recording the album, where his addiction was spiraling more out of control than ever. The way Sixx talks about his relationships with various drugs is so helpless and in-love that reading what he had to say is emotionally painful. As Sixx puts it "Alcohol, acid, cocaine... they were all just affairs. When I met heroin, it was true love." Many times in the span of the book, Sixx decides to get clean, and almost manages to follow through with it, but always falls deeper into his love-loathe relationship with cocaine and heroin. In the midst of his drug use, Sixx wrote that he knew the drugs were killing him slowly and painfully, but the drugs were such a large part of him that he would have to rip apart who he was in order to get away from them. The largest disappointment that readers who are knowledgeable about addiction may have is that there are a couple instances where Sixx makes it seem as though he no longer views himself as an addict. In the last few pages of the book, which are ultimately the most encouraging and uplifting, Sixx italicizes the word "was," when he says "I was an addict," and in a 2007 interview with Time Magazine, Sixx said that it has been 20 years since he was an addict. This is greatly disappointing to read after following Sixx through his misadventure called life. It can be shocking to read that after all the relapses and inescapable clutches of addiction, that after 20 years, he views himself as free of this self-destructive disease.
The Heroin Diaries may be the most gripping, effective and enthralling book about drugs written by a world-class rock star. The book leaves readers with not only a sense of fear towards these drugs, but a feeling of encouragement because even though an addiction or problem may quite literally be impossible to escape, there is always a way out. To further deepen these feelings, Sixx recorded The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack with his current band Sixx AM. Both the book and the album were released at number seven on their respective charts, so when Sixx said that maybe one person will read this book and it will help them, it has quite obviously become a towering understatement.
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