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I didn’t say much, but her mother was convinced that I was the cause of her daughter’s condition. The truth is that I was the only one in her scene not on heroin. Her mother left that day hating me and leaving her daughter behind, but eventually she won out: that girl soon disappeared. After that, Steven’s girlfriend moved out, too, and neither of us ever saw either of them again.

Up until I watched Steven and the girls do it and eventually did it myself, all that I knew of heroin were the antidrug movies I’d seen in school and the plot of The French Connection, which centered on Popeye Doyle’s maniacal efforts to stop the import of a French cartel’s huge shipment of it. At that point I had no idea that all of my heroes were on heroin. But I’d soon find out. It crept into my life like ivy up a wall.

Izzy and I were at Nicky Beat’s rehearsal studio back in 1984, when I first chased the dragon with him, sucking up the smoke that rose from the foil through a straw as we heated it up. All it left me feeling was queasy and not very high at all. I didn’t get the instant buzz, so I lost interest in it quick; feeling sick was not my idea of a good time. Izzy was cool; he could smoke it and get complete satisfaction that way.

A few months later I mainlined for the first time and that was all she wrote; after that, I’d never do it any other way than straight into my bloodstream. I was just like every other cheap-thrill user; I wanted it fast and I wanted it now. I’ve never been able to get high doing it any other way than with a needle. If I can’t, I’d rather not bother; it’s a waste of drugs, a waste of time, and a conscious decision to be inefficient. I had tried to do it the way it is supposed to be done; the ancient civilized method of chasing the dragon according to Chinese custom, but that didn’t work for me. The Chinese were cool, collected, and composed about heroin, in the same way they were about opium. The intravenous method was developed much later, in the West, once people began using morphine recreationally. Needles were sought out for the instant gratification factor and that is what street people were after. In America, in the cowboy days of the Wild West, more women did it than men, all of them using needles, most of them hookers and barmaids.

One night really can change your life and this was the night that changed mine. I’ve thought about this a lot and I’m sure that it was probably because of all the Jim Beam I drank. We were in some chick’s apartment I ended up at with Izzy. I was at her vanity table, in her bathroom; it was very dimly lit, very druggy. She tied me off, loaded it up, shot it… and a wave engulfed me from somewhere deep within my stomach. I got this huge rush and that was all that I remembered. I was pulled under, I passed out cold, and fell off the chair and woke up sprawled across the floor hours later at daybreak. It took me a second to figure out what had happened: there was a bottle of Jim Beam next to me that I’d been drinking and for a moment I forgot altogether that’d I’d done heroin.

I looked through the doorway and saw Izzy and the girl asleep in the bed and that was when I realized that I felt somehow… different. I wasn’t sure what it was, aside from the fact that it wasn’t familiar. It was all fine, though, because I was in the best mood. When Izzy and the girl woke up we hung out and I was just so content, so happy, and entirely at peace with everything. Izzy felt exactly the same way.

The girl’s apartment we were in was off Wilshire near downtown L.A. and we left her that morning without a worry in the world. The future looked bright even though we didn’t have any prospects at the time. As morning came over the city, we wandered all the way back up into Melrose in central Hollywood and that’s when I got the bright idea that we should go visit this girl I knew. She was a really attractive girl who went to Fairfax High who had a crush on me. Though I didn’t know her all that well, I did know that her mom was at work every day, so we went over to her place and hung out and listened to the Beatles all afternoon. She had a big girlie bed with a fluffy comforter and the sunlight came into her room in a certain way; the whole space was very airy and white and pink and soft.

Izzy and I got there and fell out and listened to music. I was in love with the song “Dear Prudence.” “Revolution” into “Dear Prudence” seemed to be everything that mattered in the world. “Norwegian Wood,” that was good, too. We hung out there for the better part of the day, then left. On the way home, whenever we stopped walking, I would fall into that blissful nodding state that heroin brings. I realized that the buzz I’d gotten had lasted the whole day long.

This is the best thing I’ve ever done, I thought to myself. Nothing was ever like this.

I was nineteen years old.

OUR REHEARSAL SPACE/MY AND AXL’S apartment was where the band headed with our stragglers in tow at the end of the night. It was where we’d go after we’d played a show and whatever club it was had cleared us out. As our fan base grew, this ritual became an unwise proposition that wasn’t going to end well but we engaged in it anyway. The Villas were deep enough into the cross section of Hollywood and downtown that no one but hookers and drug addicts were hanging around after dark—our neighbors were nine-to-five businesses on each side with the exception of the Gardner Elementary School right behind us, whose hours were more like eight to three. It was easy for fifty or more people to party all night, shooting smack, smoking pot, and breaking bottles against the wall without any trouble from the police. Soon that scene grew enough to fill our space, the alley, and the entire parking lot next to the building: people with liquor in brown paper bags could be found engaging in illegal and sordid activities, less than fifty yards off Sunset Boulevard at any hour of the night. We’d be up past dawn, but when the kids would start filing into the elementary school in the morning, usually we started to wind things down. Luckily there was no interaction between our scene and theirs, although their playground did end at the back of our “studio” building.

Another band used the storage/rehearsal space next door to us and we could never remember their name… oh, wait, they were called the Wild. Dizzy Reed was in that band playing keyboards, and that is how he and Axl met and became friends. The Wild were a typical rock band of the day that I never went to see; I also never paid much attention to how they played. I did, however, party with them. Our entire rehearsal-space life was a scene defined by these two bands partying all night, every night in a dingy part of town.

The level of debauchery, for our part at least, got pretty outrageous. I remember being up in the bunk one night after a show with Izzy and some girl. We were taking turns having sex with her, but Izzy wasn’t wearing protection, so when he pulled out, he fucking came on my leg, since I was right there on the other side of her. That definitely stopped me in my tracks. I sat up, looked over at him, and said, “Hey! Izzy… man. We’ve got to get a bigger place.”

A scene that out of bounds wasn’t going to last, and when it crashed it did so very dramatically. After one particular gig, as usual, our friends and whoever else was in the club came back to tear it up at our place well into the early morning. Now, most of the girls who chose to party in our alleyway until six or seven a.m. weren’t the sharpest pencils in the box; but this particular night one of them lost it completely. My memory of the events is hazy, but from what I remember she had sex with Axl up in the loft. Toward the end of the night, maybe as the drugs and booze wore off, she lost her mind and freaked out intensely. Axl told her to leave and tried throwing her out. I attempted to help mediate the situation to get her out quietly, but that wasn’t happening.