Billy Idol started smoking crack to overcome his heroin addiction, and spoiler alert, it worked.

During the performance “Bill Maher and Club Random” The idol admitted that smoking crack helped him quit using heroin.

“What do you do when you want to quit heroin? Go do something else. I started smoking crack to quit heroin,” Idol said.

“Really?” Maher asked, and the idol replied with a laugh, “It worked. It worked.”

In a new documentary, Billy Idol Should Be Dead, the 70-year-old rock legend opens up about his career and the brat that nearly cost him his music career and life.

“I had everything, so I lit it with butane,” he said. New York Times.

While building a successful career, the idol took many risks in life, racing through the city on a motorcycle while battling heroin addiction, speeding too much while saying, “I’m so lucky.”

In an interview with Associated Press In April 2025, the idol revealed that her rock’n’roll lifestyle “incorporated drugs” and that she took acid for the first time at the age of 12. “There was a time in my life when I was addicted to drugs,” he added, later acknowledging how lucky he is to be alive.

“If you want to quit heroin, what do you go to? You go to something else. I started smoking crack to quit heroin.”

— Billy Idol

“We’re lucky to keep our brains, because some people are brain dead, some people go to prison forever, and some people die,” he told the magazine. “Imagine if it were today. If I was doing the same thing today, I would have run into fentanyl and died.”

Idol’s longtime guitarist Steve Stevens explained in an interview with the New York Times that he “learned a lot” from watching the documentary, including how bad his addiction was at the time, explaining in the documentary that much of his misdeeds were hidden from the public at the time.

Idol parted ways with his UK band Generation X and moved to the United States in 1981 to pursue success as a solo artist. As his popularity grew, his drug use increased. According to peopleIdol spoke about his near-fatal overdose upon returning to England in 1984 to celebrate the success of his second album, Rebel Yell.

Charlie Sheen gets candid and honest about the moment he calmed down after ‘disappointing’ those close to him

“I came back victorious and almost ruined it,” he said in the documentary. “We flew to London and met a bunch of people we knew there. They had the strongest heroin. Everyone said their lines, and everyone nodded except for me and this friend.”

He went on to recall that his friends gave him an “ice-cold bath” and then helped him walk around on the roof of a building, adding, “I was just about to die. I was turning blue.”

On Maher’s podcast, Idol told the story of returning to England after the success of his 1983 album Rebel Yell, smoking heroin with friends and turning blue.

“I ended up passing out and then the other people in the room came in and I turned blue,” Idol said. Maher asks why she turned blue after playing the heroine, and the idol replies that that’s what happens when you die.

“When you’re about to die, you start turning blue,” the idol said.

The idol revealed that he only injected heroin into his body “a few times” but preferred to snort it.

Click here to sign up for our entertainment newsletter

In addition to drug use, the “White Wedding” singer’s wild riding habits on motorcycles also cost her career opportunities. After nearly losing his leg in a motorcycle accident in 1990, he was forced to decline a role in the Terminator sequel because the role required him to run faster than he was capable of.

“In a way, I’ve always played with death, even when I’m on my bike., “You’re staring at the concrete,” he told The Associated Press, “and it’s right there, you can go out of there and screw it up badly. And I did it. It’s awful. You realize how human you are and how vulnerable you are. There have been a lot of things in my life that have certainly killed me at times. I didn’t mean to do that, but you just live like that.”

Idol became a parent in the late 1980s, first welcoming son Willem, 37, with girlfriend Perry Lister in 1988, then daughter Bonnie, 36, with girlfriend Linda Mathis in 1989.

Like what you’re reading? Click here for more entertainment news

After a motorcycle accident and becoming a parent, the idol started reconsidering her lifestyle, telling the New York Times, “There were voices telling me I couldn’t stay like this forever.”

“I really started thinking that I should move on and not be addicted to drugs or anything like that anymore,” he said. people “It took a long time, but gradually I was able to develop some kind of discipline that I’m not the type of guy I was in the ’80s. I’m not the same drug addict.”

Currently, Idol considers herself to be a “low-key guy from California.” He told Mr Marr that he had not taken cocaine in 20 years, although he occasionally took “pot pills”.

“Billy Idol Should Be Dead” premiered at the Tribeca Festival on June 10th and was widely released on Thursday, February 26th.

Click here to download the FOX News app