Billy Idol has spoken about a near death experience he had following a night of heavy drug use in the 1980s.
The singer spoke about this close shave on the podcast show, Club Random with Bill Maher.
“I went back to England in triumph with the album Rebel Yell", Idol said while reflecting on the success of his 1983 LP. “I was going to do it on Top of the Pops in England. You know, kind of returning to England. I've had this big record in America".
Idol went on to speak about how the group found a hotel room where they began to partake in the heavy use of illicit drugs.
“So a load of friends of us met us at the airport, and they had a bunch of heroin on them", he explained. “So, of course, somehow everybody else in the room passed out, except for me and the other guy, you know, who was chopping the lines out".
Idol then revealed that he was the last of the group to pass out from this frenzied drug taking session. “So, of course, somehow everybody else in the room passed out, except for me and the other guy, you know, who was chopping the lines out".
Sharing how close he was to death, Idol added: “If you're dying, you're going to start turning blue".
Idol's friends eventually managed to revive him by running water on him in a bath. The singer had also explained how he preferred to snort heroin, rather then inject it with a needle, which he attributed to his mother having worked as a nurse.
Now, Billy Idol has claimed that he is "California sober" these days, having eventually quit heroin. However, this was far from an easy process, with Idol feeling “like a skeleton is trying to get out of your body” when you give up the drug.
“[Heroin] is really great. It's just the worst thing is getting off it", Idol explained. “It's just getting off it. It's terrible. And that's what stops me going back to doing it, is the thought of getting off. It's so terrible".
Billy Idol also admitted that heroin was not the only drug he would have sampled in his past life. But he did credit another narcotic with helping him to get on the straight and narrow.
“Once you're trying to get off heroin, what do you go to? You go to something else,” he stated. “I started smoking crack to get off heroin… It worked".
“It was a lot of fun,” Idol confessed, looking back on his devil-may-care lifestyle. “I liked taking drugs back then, I'd really, I enjoyed it. It took me a long time to put them in the rear view mirror, but at some point I realized you had to do that".
Last year, Billy Idol released his latest album, 'Dream Into It', his first in more than 10 years, having been inspired to put this album together, after working on a documentary with filmmaker Jonas Akerlund. More on this story here.
Idol has also been nominated for the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class.
