My Appetite For Destruction (38 page)

You won’t get far

If you keep on sticking your hand in the medicine jar . . .

—”
MEDICINE
JAR
,”
WINGS

(cowritten by Jimmy McCulloch, who died in 1979 at age twenty-six from a heroin overdose)

I
n late February 2007, my brother Jamie went to an AA meeting in Beverly Hills. His group has some major celebs in it who share what must be some wild tales of chasing the dragon. But I happen to know that these guys take their sobriety very seriously. It was Jamie’s first meeting in a long time. Jamie had been dealing with his own demons, off and on, for about a decade. But that’s his business and his own story to tell if he so chooses.

I’ve always felt pretty shitty about being the guy who turned Jamie on for the first time. Mom went completely ballistic on me when she came over to my house that fateful night to pick him up and saw her pink-eyed muffin all smoked out, sporting a goofy smile. She wanted to kill me, and I couldn’t really blame her, although at the time it seemed like no big deal. Every big brother has to deal with a younger sibling’s exposure to drugs for the first time. If you ask me, it’s better having it happen in your presence, in the safety of your own home, than for it to go down in some dealer’s shit hole with a bunch of strangers.

Anyway, by early 2007, Jamie had been in a relapse for nine or ten months. He was greeted with sincere affection mixed with a healthy degree of encouragement to get his ass back on the wagon. Jamie was stunned, completely caught off guard by the presence of Slash. Seeing Slash at an AA meeting is like seeing the Pope at a
GNR
concert. It just doesn’t happen. Slash walked over to Jamie and gave him a big hug. Here was Jamie, GNR’s happy mascot, being greeted by one of his gods. Jamie was a one-of-a-kind phenom, the dream-come-true kid who got to hang out backstage with
GNR
before he was old enough to whack off. Genuine affection was exchanged, and Jamie was very touched by Slash’s warm greeting.

According to Jamie, Slash asked how I was doing and Jamie spoke truthfully. He told Slash that I was on my last legs. Jamie reported that I was back to using and abusing with lustful abandon and that after a couple of cardiac episodes and a stroke, my body was in no condition to weather any further assaults.

Now, I’m sure if Slash had asked
me
how I was doing, I would have said that Caro’s love had saved me and I was doing better than ever. And I would have believed I was telling him the truth. But the fact was that the boredom of living in Vegas had slowly, subtly, carved away at my soul. I had slipped by degrees over the last three months, and despite Caro’s love, I was back to my old routine without realizing it.

Slash told Jamie that they had to do something, because among other reasons, if
GNR
was ever going to get back together, there was no way Slash would even entertain the thought of a reunion without my ass on the drums. Jamie couldn’t believe the band would even consider getting back together, and it was enough to motivate him like never before.

The combination of my brother’s love for me and his newfound sobriety helped him get up the nerve to do what he knew was the
only
thing that would ever give me a shot at getting clean. Jamie called it “thug love,” which is like tough love to the tenth power. This was the only way they were going to get through to a pigheaded junkie asshole like me.

L
ike any good cop, Jamie knew when he needed backup. So on March 19, Jamie, Slash, and a near legendary interventionist, Steve Levy, all met at Burbank Airport and took the two twenty afternoon flight to Vegas. He even had a limo waiting to pick them up when they landed. They all piled in and motored over to the Las Vegas Country Club, where I was now permanently hiding out in my Fortress of Solitude.

Mom had driven over to meet them all in my front yard because she had to see it with her own eyes. She was proud of Jamie and she greeted Slash like a son. She has loved Slash for over twenty-five years and wanted to thank him personally for making the effort.

That’s my mom. She is always the first to say thanks and the last to get thanks for everything she’s done. But as I write these words, I’m so mad at her that I get all knotted up just thinking about it. Right now I
hate
the fucking bitch. I am furious with the way she’s treated me, but that’s another chapter—maybe a whole other book.

So after all the lovey-dovey, Jamie told Mom to clear out because he didn’t want her near the place when they broke out the heavy artillery and the ugliest of intervention shit started flying. Mom understood this and went back to her condo a few blocks away. Jamie used Mom’s key to get into my place and told Slash and Levy to chill in the living room while he went upstairs to fetch me.

Jamie headed straight up to the bedroom because he knew that was where I was kicking it 99 percent of the time. The drug den: my permanent place of worship. It was so funny because Jamie came in and immediately started choking because the air was thick with the smoke I’d been laying down nonstop for like the last fifteen hours: thick rancid smoke from cigarettes, rug burns, bongs, joints, crack pipes, and more cigarettes. And there wasn’t one open window for ventilation or sunlight, just the digital glow from my flat-screen and the dozen or so lighters I had on the bed and nightstand.

Jamie was shocked when he first caught sight of me because, surprise, I already looked like a corpse, and you can’t save a corpse. I had lost another twenty pounds or so and was down to about a hundred fifteen pounds, which meant I was now lighter than half the chicks I ever fucked. Now, I was just fucking myself.

Jamie threw up his best poker face, then smiled and told me that he was in town to take Mom out to dinner, something I knew he did every month or so. He said he wanted to swing by my place first to say hi and in fact had some friends downstairs with a bag of kick-ass weed. I was out of my bed like a shot, rubbing my palms together in anticipation as we bolted down the steps together.

I flopped on the couch and flashed my best rock star smile. Tasty weeeed time. I said hello to the other two guys and then did a double take. Holy shit.
Slash!
What the fuck was he doing here? Any lingering suspicions or paranoia I may have felt at the time were wiped out by the sight of my brother from another mother sitting there casually smiling at me.

Slash leaned across and gave me a big long hug. When we plopped back down I caught a quick glance of his face all scrunched up like a flummoxed Kermit. I felt a rush of blood to my face. A quick pit check confirmed my worst fears: I hadn’t washed in days and must have smelled like the worst combination of stale smoke and rank ass. I felt horrible about that.

As my head cleared a bit from the rush of seeing Slash, my humiliation was quickly supplanted by a growing rage. Wait a minute . . . I realized what my fuck-ass bro was pulling off, or trying to pull off, and the resentment began to build. But I was determined to keep a step ahead of these bastards who had invaded my sanctuary. Before Jamie could begin to conduct the meeting, I started in with some conduct of my own. Bad conduct.

I had some things to say, and I knew that in order to do it, I would have to keep my anger in check, at least until I had vented. So I talked about everything that Slash had done to abandon me and how he never questioned Axl or stood up to Axl for a moment. He never defended me, Steven, the guy who had given him his first guitar. Slash had crashed at my house and eaten my food and basked in my family’s unconditional love, and how did he thank me? He thanked me by sticking it to me again and again.

So for the first half hour or so, Slash and the boys just nodded and listened. My voice started to get kind of shrill at the end, and I have to give them a lot of credit for just sitting there and taking it. I’m not sure I would have. I think I’d have grabbed the nearest ice pick and gone to work.

Then it was time for the boys to fire back, and they remained pretty damn emotionless. I have to hand it to them; they were really focused on their little Rambo mission. They wasted no time with their reason for being there. They wanted me to check myself into Eric Clapton’s rehab center in the Caribbean. They had cashed in a lot of favors to get me in there. Jamie said he’d help me pack, because we had to be on a plane that night. Tickets had been bought. Plans had been made. Commitments were to be met.

Steve Levy started to say something that sounded very relevant and very interesting, but I couldn’t sit there another minute. I raised my hand like a schoolkid requesting he be excused. My nerves were snapping, and I felt light-headed. I know I should have felt the love, but as I got up to go to the bathroom I booted all over the place for like fifteen minutes. It was too much; I think I was in shock. It was like I had to hug Slash to be sure he was real. But even that didn’t give me any kind of lasting joy. I just wanted to slip upstairs to my bedroom, get under the sheets, and wait for everyone to just leave.

Particularly Slash; I wished he would please just go. This was the first time in over fifteen years that Slash was in my home, and I couldn’t wait for him to leave. The drugs have just screwed me up for good. I don’t react to situations the way any sane person should.

I came out of the bathroom and poured out my soul. I told everyone how grateful I was and how this all meant so much to me—that I definitely wanted to check myself into rehab. They hadn’t come a moment too soon to save my sorry ass. Thank you. Thank you!

Everyone eyed me like, “Okay, but we know you, Adler. What’s the fucking catch?” The truth was that there wasn’t any catch. I think that at that moment, I honestly wanted to go. Or at least some part of me wanted to go. But after waiting around for me to finish packing for over three hours, Slash and Levy said they had to get back to L.A. They had families, and unlike me, they had lives. They had dropped everything to come out to my house and show me the love, but it was time for them to head home. They grabbed a cab and took off.

The sad fact was, after the initial rush of seeing Slash, all I could think about was my drug connection coming by my house soon. Like always, I just needed to get high
one more time
before going to the airport. I had successfully dragged my feet long enough to make sure there was no way we were going to make the flight that night. But my goddamn brother must have figured out why I was stalling and that some dealer would soon be making a house call.

Now, there was no way Jamie was going to solo with me overnight and get me on that flight the next day. I was way too slippery for that and he knew it. So he jumped on the phone and started pulling strings. Next thing I know a security guard is rolling up my driveway. This guy gets out of the car, and he’s bigger than Texas. I figured he’d have Jamie’s back for the duration, and the two of them would hold down the fort overnight and thwart any attempt by me to sneak my drug runners past the gate.

Plus, Texas was packing heat. This was one intimidating prick, but I could see that at the core of things, he was a big teddy bear inside. You just couldn’t risk getting on his bad side. Jamie introduced him as Troy and told him I was fucked up, filthy dirty, with festering abscesses all over my body and numerous infections of varying severity.

Jamie said this right in front of me and I could see he didn’t care, because at this point, he was becoming livid. Jamie knew I had lost all interest in everything but my next high. So there was to be no more patience, no more understanding; there was only “the Mission,” and it was going down with or without my cooperation.

H
ow did Jamie know about the abscesses covering my stomach? Earlier, when Jamie complained that I was stalling, I told him that painful sores on my gut were making me move slowly. I figured it was a convenient excuse I could use to take longer to pack and miss the flight Jamie had booked to Clapton’s rehab. Unfortunately Jamie called Mom about the abscesses and found out I also had a blood infection that had recently threatened to travel to my left eye socket. This had been diagnosed a few weeks earlier and luckily the doctors were able to kill the infection. My eye would be fine but I was supposed to have stayed in the hospital for another week so the doctors could thoroughly clean out my blood.

Fuck that. I bolted after three days. One of the nurses came in while I was putting on my shoes. She was completely stunned but managed to ask me what I thought I was doing. I told her I was a hopeless drug addict who had to go home to get loaded, but then I’d be right back. I finished lacing up my shoes and shot out the door. Of course I never went back to the hospital. My mom told Jamie the doctors hadn’t had enough time to finish the treatment and that it was possible I could relapse.

After Jamie introduced me to Troy, I did what I always do when confronted with someone who can get between me and my drugs; I turned on the charm. Within minutes, Troy and I were hitting it off like old war buddies. My plan was to get Troy to drop his guard, have a few beers, and watch some TV while I snuck out to the driveway to meet with my delivery boy. But Troy was no fool; he wouldn’t let me out of his sight, and the pain in my gut from the abscesses was really starting to act up.

As I came off my high, the pain level went from ten to twenty and I started complaining. I didn’t want Jamie to freak any more than he already was, so I told him the pain was just from me tripping into my closet door while packing. Jamie gave me a look like “Oh, puh-lease,” and I knew that my number was up.

Troy lifted up my shirt before I could protest and confirmed everyone’s worst suspicions. The abscesses had worsened, considerably. There was one open abscess on my stomach the size of a ripe plum, and it needed tending to. Pronto. Too many dirty needles had been stuck into my belly, and now it was payback time.