Array Slash - Slash

The act of shooting up always turned me on.

AXL’S TENDENCY TO COMMUNICATE through management continued when he got back from Chicago through to my last days in the band. But the start of it maybe woke Alan and Doug up a bit, because suddenly they seemed desperate to get us in the same room regularly again. The success of G N’ R Lies had created a huge demand and we hadn’t released anything since. We could have sold out a worldwide tour on the basis of a debut record that was three years old, plus an EP with just four new songs. I suppose most other bands don’t enjoy that kind of demand, but we weren’t going to rush the next record, probably because we couldn’t settle down to write any of it.

For my part, I got darker than ever; I started speedballing heavily and really enjoyed the unique brand of hallucinatory paranoia that comes with it. No one had taught me to speedball; I just thought it would be like a narcotic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Coke and heroin were two great tastes that I knew would go great together.

It took me some time to figure out how much of each resulted in the effect I desired at the time, and it was endless fun experimenting. I had a few different techniques, but usually I’d shoot my coke first and then follow it up with a shot of heroin. Mixing the two was also a good time, but I often did them separately because I loved the ritual of the needle; the act of shooting up always turned me on.

Speedballing was the greatest roller coaster I’ve ever ridden: the rush of the coke would send me up and then the dope would kick in and the trip would take a wonderful turn; and the two would weave in and out of each other from there on out. I’d always end up shooting all of the heroin before I’d mowed through the coke, so usually I’d get wired to the point of an impending heart attack. At the end of those nights, I was also often left with the distinct feeling that I was being watched, so I started to think that walking around my house armed to the teeth was a good idea.

I bought a bunch of guns: a shotgun, a .38 Special, a .44 Magnum, and a few revolvers. I used to keep my .38 in the back of my pants, and after Megan went to sleep, and after I’d shot up enough coke and heroin, I’d walk around the house thinking about things while watching the little hallucinatory figures that started to pop up in the corners of my vision. I’d see them dive and roll off the top of the curtain rods or run along the baseboards in my peripheral vision, but every time I tried to look at them head-on, they’d disappear. Around then I stopped talking to everyone I knew and started doing a great deal of drawing. Throughout my life, my drawings have always reflected what I was into at the time. During this period, I drew nothing but dinosaurs and assorted graphic designs and logos.

I should have been drawing the little demon men that I could never quite see or seem to capture on film—believe me, I tried. As soon as I started to speedball regularly, those little guys were everywhere. They were small, wiry, translucent characters that I saw from afar until eventually they’d crawl up my jacket whenever I got high. I wanted to get to know them in a way; as I lay on the floor, waiting for my heart rate to relax, I’d watch the little Cirque du Soleil show that those guys would put on all over the room. I often thought about waking Megan up so that she could check it out. I even took pictures of them in the mirror when I found them perched on my shoulder and in my hair. I started to talk about them and see them so clearly that I even freaked out my drug dealer. On the rare occasion when I’d leave the house to score my drugs, I’d usually shoot up right away at his place and then start seeing those little guys crawling up my arm.

“Hey, do you see that?” I’d ask, extending my arm. “You see that little guy, right? He’s right there .”

My dealer would just stare at me expressionless. This guy was a drug dealer who was pretty used to strange junkie behavior. “You’d better go, man,” he’d say. “You’re way too out there. You should go home.” Apparently I was bad for business.

One night I was patrolling the house with my shotgun and came down the bedroom stairs into the living room. Then I went up the stairs to the bedroom landing and up to the loft, where Megan was asleep. As I got up there, the gun went off and blasted through the ceiling opposite the loft. Megan didn’t even wake up, which is amazing.

I was still awake when the fire trucks came. I was lying there pretty rattled as I heard the sirens. I just lay still and thought, “Oh, boy.”

My house was cut into a steep hill, so the small, square, second-floor bedroom window was actually just above street level. I heard the commotion and figured someone was coming for me, so I tucked my .45 in the back of my pants and ran upstairs to the window, pulled the shade aside, and stared at the firemen preparing to break down my door. I asked them what the problem was and they told me that my fire alarm had been ringing for thirty minutes.

I averted that situation; I assured them that there was no fire, and Megan was none the wiser. Another time that she might have caught on to my nocturnal activities but didn’t was the morning that she woke me up on the couch in the living room. Apparently I’d nodded out with the needle right there next to me.

“Sweetie,” she said. “I think the cat is playing with something.”

I looked down to see one of my cats smacking my needle around like it was a mouse.

Not too long after that, Duff started stopping by because he was worried about me. I’m not sure why; all of the conversations we’d had while I leaned out of my bedroom window and he stood in the cul-de-sac were pleasant enough. I always had a gun in my belt and never invited him in, of course, but it was cool because he never seemed to want to come in either.

“Hey man, how you doing?” I’d ask.

“Fine,” he’d say. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Not much.”

“Okay, then,” Duff would say, kind of sizing me up. “See you later.”

“Hey, you want to come in?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s cool. See you later.”

MY GRANDMOTHER HAD BEEN ILL WITH heart trouble my whole life up until she died. When she passed, I was utterly distraught. I never thought that she would die so young; she was only in her late sixties. I saw her in her final moments at the hospital; it was the only time I can really remember breaking down.

The night after I saw her dead in her hospital bed, I went to the Rainbow Bar and Grill and I borrowed a couple hundred dollars from Mario, who owns the establishment. Even though I had money, I never had any cash on me; my business manager was reluctant to give me any for obvious reasons. Mario had no idea what the money was for and it was the first time I’d ever asked for any. I went down to East L.A. to cop some dope, then came back to Hollywood and fixed in the front seat of my car on a side street. For some reason I called Izzy; he had recently rented an apartment in Santa Monica, and I asked if I could crash at his place. He said it was cool so I drove my little Honda CRX down the Pacific Coast Highway high out of my mind. Before I went to Izzy’s, I spent a few hours speeding around some Santa Monica side streets like a maniac. I remember actually jumping my car off dirt mounds on a construction site. How the car survived, I don’t know. I was literally out of my mind…. I don’t know how I didn’t get busted either. When I finally got to Izzy’s, he set me up on the couch for the remainder of the night. I remember that while he slept I watched the movie Performance, which he had rented…. Then I passed out.

Now, at this point in 1990, Izzy was on probation for having an altercation with a stewardess on a commercial flight, which is a federal offense, so he was keeping his nose very clean, so to speak. He had an appointment with his probation officer early the next morning, and left me at the apartment. I got off the couch with the apartment to myself, and proceeded to the bathroom to take a shower because my grandmother’s wake was later that morning.