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Rock legend Billy Idol is the subject of a new documentary, and during his current press tour, he’s made some shocking revelations about his personal life.
Sure, we all knew Billy was a partier.
But until this week, we didn’t know that he kicked his heroin addiction by substituting it with a good old-fashioned crack habit.
Idol made that revelation during a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s “Club Random” podcast.
“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 remarked.
“Did you really?” Maher asked, prompting Billy to reply, “It worked. It worked.”
This, of course, is not the first time that Idol has admitted to major substance abuse issues.
But it’s the first time that he spoke about basically using crack as a DIY Ozempic in order to curb his other bad habits.
It’s not a strategy that we would recommend to anyone at home — but we’re glad it worked for Billy!
According to early reviews the doc — aptly titled Billy Idol Should Be Dead — contains many such revelations.
“I had it all, and I lit it with butane,” the rock legend remarked in a recent interview with the New York Times.
“There’s a point in my life where I was very drug addicted,” he added, before acknowledging that he’s lucky to be alive.
“I’m lucky that I’ve kept the brain I’ve got, because some people went brain-dead, and some people ended up in jail forever. Or dead,” he told the outlet.
“Imagine if it was today. If I was doing what I was back then today, I would be dead because I would have run into fentanyl.”
In the interview with Maher, Idol revealed that on at least one occasion, he nearly died from snorting heroin:
“I kind of, eventually we did pass out and then when people, other people in the room came too, I was going blue,” Idol said.
Maher was puzzled by the fact that Idol turned blue, prompting the singer to provide a grimly hilarious explantion:
“If you’re dying, you’re gonna start turning blue,” he said.
Obviously, Billy made some bad decisions over the years — but at least he still has his sense of humor (and a lot of good stories).