Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Billy Idol, 70, has revealed that he successfully treated his heroin addiction by switching to crack cocaine, a therapeutic approach not currently endorsed by the American Medical Association but apparently effective enough for him to make it to the documentary phase of his rock and roll career.
The man who survived on a portfolio of drugs and rock and roll. And probably sex too. (gregorylee/depositphotos)
“Once you’re trying to get off heroin, what do you go to? You go to something else. I started smoking crack to get off heroin,” Idol told Bill Maher on his podcast, in the tone of a man as if he were explaining why he switched car insurance providers. Maher asked if he really did that, apparently needing a moment, and Idol confirmed that yes, it worked. Twice, in fact. “It worked. It worked,” he said, laughing, as if repetition might make it sound more like a solid self-help strategy.
The revelation comes amid the release of “Billy Idol Should Be Dead,” a documentary whose title doubles as a medical consensus. The film chronicles Idol’s long career of doing every drug available in the Western Hemisphere while simultaneously riding motorcycles at high rates of speed. “I had it all, and I lit it with butane,” he told the New York Times, which is either a metaphor about self-destruction or a literal description of any one of his Tuesday evenings in 1986.
Idol’s relationship with substances began early and escalated with the commitment of a man training for something. He took his first hit of acid at twelve years old, which in the context of the British punk scene apparently qualified as a late start. By the time he moved to America in 1981 to launch his solo career, he had assembled a drug portfolio that most people would describe as “highly diversified.” His popularity and his intake scaled together, which means his life was likely saved by a slide into irrelevance.
The near-fatal overdose came in 1984, when Idol flew back to England to celebrate the success of “Rebel Yell” and immediately sought out the strongest heroin available, because nothing says “victory lap” like almost dying in someone’s apartment. Everyone did a line, everyone passed out, and when nearly everyone regained consciousness, Idol was turning blue. His friends placed him in an ice-cold bath and walked him around on a roof, which can constitute either emergency medicine or British hazing, depending on which decade we’re talking about.
Idol’s other near-death hobby was motorcycles, which he rode fast enough to lose a role in “Terminator 2” after a 1990 crash nearly cost him his leg. The role required running, and as a result of the accident, Idol could not run.
Idol was left with a Bitter Taste after missing out on T2. That's one of his songs, in case you didn't know. Which you probably didn't. ( Murdocksimages/depositphotos)
“I’ve always flirted with death, in a way,” he told the Associated Press, adding that riding motorcycles means “you’re staring at the concrete” and “you find out how human you are, how vulnerable,” which is a beautiful way to describe an activity he kept doing anyway.
Fatherhood, combined with the motorcycle crash, eventually convinced Idol that perhaps he couldn’t do this forever. He describes a gradual process of becoming less of a drug addict, the way someone might describe slowly renovating a house that was also continually on fire. “It took a long time,” he told People, “but gradually I did achieve some sort of discipline.” He now considers himself “California sober,” which means he takes THC pills sometimes and hasn’t done a line of cocaine in twenty years. By Idol’s own historical standards, this qualifies as monasticism.
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