Billy Idol says smoking helped him quit heroin: ‘It worked’

Billy Idol started Smoking crack to get rid of heroin addictionAnd, spoiler alert, it worked.

During his appearance on “Random Club with Bill Maher.” Idol admitted that smoking allowed him to stop using heroin.

“Once you try to get off heroin, what do you go to? You go to something else. I started smoking crack to get off heroin,” Idol said.

“Is that true?” Maher asked, and Idol replied with a laugh: “It worked, it worked.”

In the new documentary, “Billy Idol Should Be Dead,” the 70-year-old rock legend opens up about his career and the bad boy ways that almost cost him his music career and his life.

“I got the whole thing and lit it with butane,” he said. New York Times.

While building his successful career, Idol took many risks in his life, battling heroin addiction while driving his motorcycle at high speeds through the streets, saying, “I’m very lucky.”

In an interview with Associated Press In April 2025, Idol shared that he “embraced drugs” to the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and that he received his first dose of acid when he was 12 years old.

“There was a point in my life where I was very addicted to drugs,” he added, later admitting how lucky he was to be alive.

“I’m lucky I have the brain I have, because some people are brain dead, and some people end up in prison forever. Or dead,” he told the outlet. “Imagine if it had been that day. If I had been doing what I was doing at that time today, I would have been dead because I would have been on fentanyl.”

Speaking with The New York Times, longtime Idol guitarist Steve Stevens explained that he “learned a lot” when watching the documentary, including how bad his addiction was at the time, as the documentary made clear that much of his bad behavior was hidden from the public at the time.

Idol moved to the United States in 1981 to try to make it as a solo artist after breaking up with his UK band, Generation X. His drug use increased as his popularity increased. according to the peopleIdol discussed the near-fatal overdose he suffered in 1984 when he returned to England to celebrate the success of his second album, “Rebel Yell.”

“I came back victorious and almost ruined it,” he said in the documentary. “We flew to London, where we met up with a lot of friends we knew. They had some of the strongest heroin. Everyone did a sentence or so and they all nodded except me and this mate of mine.”

He went on to recall that his friends put him “in an ice cold bath” and later helped him walk around on the roof of his building, adding: “I was basically dying. I was turning blue.”

In Maher’s podcast, Idol told the story of how he returned to England after the success of his 1983 album “Rebel Yell” and turned blue after snorting heroin with some friends.

“We eventually passed out, and then when other people in the room came too, I was turning blue,” Idol said. Maher asked why he turned blue after playing the heroine, and Idol said that this is what happens when you die.

“If you’re dying, you’ll start turning blue,” Idol said.

Idol noted that he only injected heroin into his body “a few times,” but preferred to inhale it.

In addition to his drug use, the “White Wedding” singer’s wild ways on his motorcycle also cost him jobs. A motorcycle accident in 1990, which almost cost the singer his leg, forced him to refuse a role in “the “Terminator” sequel as the role involved more running than he was capable of.

“I’ve always been flirting with death in a way. Even when you’re riding a motorcycle, you’re staring at concrete,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s out there, you can get away with this thing and make a terrible mess. And I did. It’s terrible. You find out how human you are, how weak you are. There’s a lot of things in my life, yeah, I’ve been calling for death sometimes. I don’t really mean it, but you’ve been living like that.”

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

The motorcycle accident, combined with becoming a parent, led Idol to rethink his lifestyle, telling the New York Times, “There was a voice telling me, ‘You can’t do this forever.’

“I really started to think that I should try to move on and not be addicted to drugs and things like that anymore,” he said. the people In May 2024. “It took a long time, but I gradually achieved a kind of discipline where I’m not really the same kind of guy I was in the ’80s. I’m not the same drug-addicted person anymore.”

Now, Idol considers himself “sober in California.” He told Maher that he takes “pills” sometimes, but he hasn’t done a bunch of cocaine in 20 years.

“Billy Idol Should Be Dead” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 10, and was given a wide release on Thursday, February 26.