Slash

I was going to make it right with the band, I’d have to go to some clinic in Tucson called Sierra Tucson, and so I entered rehab for the first time.

The thing about rehab is that you have to want it. When you do, it works wonders—but when you don’t, it may clean out your body, but it won’t change your mind. That is precisely what happened to me my first time: I went through detox, in a very secure, sterile environment, but there was no way in hell that I intended to take part in any aspect of the clean-living community that is phase two of rehabilitation.

But before I even got there, I did what every dedicated junkie does: I told everyone at my intervention that I agreed with them, that I intended to go along with their plan for me, so long as I could spend one last night in my own bed before I set off to clean up in the morning. They said okay, because my shenanigans had run their course as far as they were concerned.

I went back to my house, retrieved my stash, did my fix, and hung out with Megan—who was completely unaware of this entire event going down. I told her that I’d be away for a while on band business, and in the morning, I got up bright and early, fixed again, and got into the limo with Doug to go to Tucson. This place was in the middle of the desert in every way: there were no markets, housing developments, strip malls… nothing civilized was within miles. It was a little sober oasis.

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