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Later on Sally and I went home; we had a few more drinks in our room and I passed out. Sally stayed up; I think she was aware of the scene going on Steve’s unit. I don’t know the series of events because I wasn’t there, but those guys had done their shit and at some point Nikki wandered into my place. Apparently, he had done one too many shots because he OD’d in my apartment.

Sally tried to wake me up when she found Nikki in a heap in a corner. I was so drunk and tired that she had to pull me into the shower to bring me around. That hardly worked: I got belligerent and thrashed about and broke the glass shower door. Meanwhile, the paramedics were hoisting Nikki out of the bedroom. Steven was there, too, all high, of course. Thank God for Sally; she was the one who called 911. Nikki might not be here otherwise.

A few hours later, Christine, Doc McGee’s assistant, came by to pick up Nikki’s stuff. We found out that he’d gone to Cedars-Sinai, been revived, and then he’d checked himself out a few hours later. I’m not sure what he did after that but legend has it that he did more smack and immortalized the evening in the song “Kickstart My Heart.” In any case, if looks could kill, Christine would have done me in. She treated me as if Nikki’s overdose was my fault; as if it had been my junk, my idea, as if I’d forced it on him. Christine was someone who was usually nice to me, but she was now sending me full-on daggers. I’ve never spoken to her again.

In spite of all of that, the Perkins Palace shows were some of the best shows we’d ever done… and Fred Curry was playing. It was awful for Steve: he was standing there in his Clint Eastwood shawl, with one of those batter’s helmet hats with the two straws leading into cans of beer and his arm in a cast. I sort of felt sorry for him. He played tambourine; he was so pissed off. He was nice to Fred, but barely. I could understand that: he had to sit there and watch us play that well—without him—to a homecoming, friendly crowd the likes of which we’d never seen.

I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH NIKKI’S overdose, but the fact that it happened in my apartment was reason enough for the powers that be to punish me by exiling me, Sally, and Steven from Hollywood to a Holiday Inn down in Hermosa Beach. It was the first of a few times that management devised ways to get me out of town to locations with less activity in an effort to keep me in check. Their intentions were good but their execution never was. Hermosa Beach was certainly eons away from Los Angeles, and one thing was for sure—I was stuck there in that little one-bedroom with its little TV and two chairs because I didn’t have a car. There wasn’t a proper kitchen, there wasn’t a proper anything, and it was too far from a town that could fulfill those needs. There wasn’t even room service.

Steven was next door to Sally and me; and I have to say, this was the beginning of Steven’s downward spiral. The few times I saw him he had all kinds of shit going on in his room; he was doing tons of blow and always had one girl or another keeping him company. I can only say this in retrospect, because at the time, he seemed happy. I was there drinking bottle after bottle of Jack, as my relationship, such as it was, with Sally came to a dramatic head. We fought nonstop once we relocated to Hermosa Beach. She became progressively more belligerent, and once I finally lost my patience, I shipped her off to L.A. For the next few years, I’d run into her, and one time, she even materialized at the foot of my bed… but we’ll get to all of that in just a little bit.

We did Lies during this period; we got the acoustic stuff all down and I did my guitar over dubs. That kept me occupied for a fucking second, which was great, because every day that I spent in Hermosa Beach I was one day closer to exploding. The guitar parts on Lies took me exactly two days; if anything, I was so excited to be back in L.A. that I ripped through them too quickly—I wish it had all taken longer.

It seemed like my exile lasted an eternity; it was the kind of reality where twenty-four hours took years. I wasn’t real popular down there either: I’d go down to the local watering holes and there was nothing fun to do, and the locals’ vibe wasn’t all that welcoming. That place was a beach-and-surf scene, and when a town adopts that as its cultural identity there’s nothing interesting about it at all—at least to my gutter rat sensibilities at the time.

Once the final leg of the Appetite tour was over, I was back in L.A., pretty shiftless and uncomfortable; for the first time in two years I had no predetermined place to be, job to do when I woke up. I had been away so long that nothing was satisfying and the everyday business of life seemed alien to me. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to go to the store for groceries after I’d played arenas in Japan the week before. I’d been on tour long enough to forget that I once bought my own liquor and cigarettes, and what I really couldn’t shake was the thrill of playing every night. I expected each day to hit that same dizzy climax. I had to fill the void. With the band on break, I embarked on a solo tour that never left L.A. I was more decadent than I had ever been; because when things stop, when things slow down, and when I don’t know what to do with myself, I’m the most self-destructive person I know.

I don’t see it as some kind of fault. I see it as a natural side effect. After two years of touring, it will take anyone at all a long time to wind down. I had been living at breakneck speed wherever I lived; I had no idea of what was going on with me. I’d done nothing at all to slow or calm down, so I sure as hell wasn’t prepared to stay in one place. Our career had meant working constantly just to make it take off. And then it kept on. It was five years, it was eight years… I was eighteen, I was twenty-three. I’d done it; we’d done it. And now I was home; I smacked up against the wall.

At one point in my life I was so obsessed with heroin and opium and anything derived from poppies that I went to the library to study the culture and the science of them every day. I read what I found; from the textbooks that explained the chemical makeup of the drugs to the history books that chronicled the evolution of the Triads and the other Chinese gangs who ruled the trafficking and smuggling of it. I also read about all of my rock-star heroes… all junkies. All things considered, I did manage to come into that part of the drug culture without an image in mind that I was trying to portray or mimic. It was a simple contradiction that made complete sense to me: everyone in town was doing heroin, and because of that I wasn’t interested in it at all. But once I actually did it, I was very into it… I just felt no need to advertise my interest.

The first and last rock-and-roll books that I ever read were loaded with heroin and drug use, and were much too sensational. I read Hammer of the Gods and No One Here Gets Out Alive, histories of Led Zeppelin and The Doors, respectively. They mention the drugs throughout, and I was so obsessed at the time that I read them for the drugs only; I wasn’t interested in whatever else they had to say. To me, those books were basically written for the authors’ own entertainment; they seemed inaccurate and full of shit. And after that I never read another rock-and-roll biography again.