Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx has penned a year in the life of a junkie rock star. It's not the first tell-all of this sort - Aerosmith spilled it with
Walk This Way and even Motley laid it out in their own
The Dirt - but it's probably the most honest.
Here, Sixx talks about life as a heroin junkie, coke fiend, alcoholic, control freak, manic depressive, and general asshole. What makes it so captivating is the absolute lack of guile. He doesn't make excuses for his actions and doesn't backpedal in attempts to defend what he's doing.
He talks about actually flatlining twice; the second time, after ripping out the IV tubes in the hospital's ICU, he found a ride home and immediately took another shot. He describes the time he showed the band a new song and couldn't figure out why they played it so well - it was the same song he'd shown them the day before, and they were too embarrassed to tell him.
It's a truly fascinating book about an extraordinarily successful rock star who hates his life, the people around him, and what he's become. He attempts rehab several times but it never takes. Finally, during Christmas of 1987, he checks into a facility in Arizona and becomes sober for the first time in his life.