Steven Adler was an important part of Guns N ‘Roses early in the band’s career.
The drummer was on the band’s first two albums, including the gigantic debut album Appetite For Destruction (1987) and also helped compose some of their hits.
It turns out that in 1990 he was fired from the band because of heroin addiction, and now in a participation in the program “Mom, It’s Not Devil Music!” He talked openly about it, and Blabbermouth transcribed some of the most shocking parts.
Read what he said:
“One day I just went, ‘This isn’t cool. I don’t wanna do this anymore,'” he said of his decision to quit doing drugs. “And I didn’t realize that if you’re doing heroin and then you stop doing it, you get violently sick — violently sick. Like, the inside of your bones ache — the inside of your every bone, it aches so bad and you just wanna die.”
“And I called my manager and I said, ‘Dude, I’m so fucking sick. I don’t understand what’s going on.’ So he came and picked me up, he took me to this doctor, and the doctor gave me an opiate blocker. Well, you’re not supposed to take an opiate blocker while you have opiates in your system or you get even more violently sick.
“Three days go by, and I’m calling a doctor and I’m going, ‘What the fuck did you do to me?’ And, like, four days go by, and [GUNS N’ ROSES guitarist] Slash called and said, ‘Well, we’re going in the studio to record ‘Civil War’.’ And I said, ‘Dude, I’m so sick. Please, can we just wait one more week? I’m so sick.’”
“And he said, ‘We can’t waste the money. We’ve gotta do this song.’ So I go in at A&M Records to record, and I’m so weak and sick. And I did my best, but I had to play, like, 25 times. So they were getting frustrated. And I kept telling them, ‘I’m sick.’ And they kept saying, ‘No, you’re not. You’re just fucked up.’ And I said, ‘I’m not fucked up. I’m sick.’ And I got kicked out.”