Answer Addiction

Tag: reflecting on addiction

  • Slash Reflects On Hitting Rock Bottom, Getting Sober

    Slash Reflects On Hitting Rock Bottom, Getting Sober

    The legendary guitarist has been sober since 2005. 

    Like many hard-partying rock stars, Slash is lucky to still be alive today. His use of alcohol and heroin is well documented, and now at the age of 53, he’s reflecting on why he finally cleaned up his act in 2005.

    Slash first left Guns N’ Roses (GNR) in 1996. As the legendary guitarist explained to Belfast Live, once he no longer had the “security” of being in a rock band, “I drank myself through it. I did drugs through it and it was like, textbook almost… I’d left my band, I was getting divorced, I was going through all this s—t. I had record company issues. It was really classic rock ’n’ roll life—the bad side.”

    As Slash was trying to launch himself as a solo artist, he explains, “I was drinking myself to death… I was out playing all over the place, I had no real direction I was going or any real concrete idea as to what I was going to be doing for any predetermined amount of time. It was very excessive.”

    This period carried over “through the early millennium, up through 2005,” and into Velvet Revolver, his post-GNR band featuring the late Scott Weiland.

    “Just because of the nature of the band—and it’s my own fault—but it was easy to do. I got completely strung out again and at that point I realized there was nothing about being strung out that reminded me of anything like when I first started using drugs. It was pretty miserable… Nothing was doing it for me and I decided I had to stop.”

    The guitarist also knew he had to clean up for his family. As he told Loudwire, “I had two kids and I was living in a hotel because I couldn’t be around them. It all sort of came to a head and I thought I needed to go to some sort of facility and just get away from everybody for a month and I’ll clean up.”

    Slash knows he’s lucky to have a second chance in GNR. “To have the opportunity to go back with Guns and that being such an amazing experience and such a positive experience, at this point in time, right now, to be in these two bands is probably one of the best professional periods I’ve ever been in.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • DMX Reflects On Sobriety

    DMX Reflects On Sobriety

    In an interview from 2017, DMX got candid about addiction and rap’s relationship with drug use.

    Rapper DMX was just released after serving a year in prison, prompting the re-release of a 2017 interview from the radio show Big Boy’s Neighborhood, in which DMX reflects on his sobriety from cocaine addiction and how rap glorifies drug abuse. 

    In the interview, DMX discusses how rap glorifies drug abuse. 

    “They’re all promoting drug use,” he said, according to HotNewHipHop. “If that’s what you wanna do, that’s your business, but you ain’t gotta promote it like it’s cool and make it cool. Kids walk around like, I’m popping molly, I’m popping percs!” 

    Rather than pills, DMX said that his main drug of choice was cocaine. “Cocaine. Crack. I think we kind of knew that was the problem. I would get in trouble. It wasn’t worth it.” 

    Although the interview is from 2017, DMX said that at the time he was staying away from drugs. “I don’t do anything. I have a drink now and then, but that was never the problem,” he said. 

    On January 25, DMX was released from Gilmer Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia, where he had spent a year in prison after being convicted of tax evasion.

    At first, he was released on bail conditions that required him to stay clean and sober. He had told the judge that he needed to be able to keep touring in order to support his 15 kids. The judge, Jed Rakoff, said that DMX had promised to remain sober and travel with a sobriety coach, but that ultimately he wasn’t able or willing to do those things. The promise “was a great big lie, a repeated lie as it turned out,” Rakoff said.

    After failing drug tests, DMX was put on house arrest in August 2017. 

    Later that month he was spotted in New Hampshire, where he was apparently seeking treatment. However, he appears to have left that treatment facility in order to visit his daughter in New York, where he also visited bars, according to prosecutors in the tax evasion case. 

    In January 2018, DMX again failed a drug test and was held in jail until his March sentencing. At the time, he tested positive for cocaine, opiates and oxycodone. 

    Despite his claims of sobriety in the radio interview from around the same time, DMX’s lawyer said that his client wasn’t sober. 

    “He deals with problems by drugging himself,” the lawyer said at the time. 

    View the original article at thefix.com