Book Review #11: The Heroin Diaries

The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star (2007)

Before I get into the review for The Heroin Diaries, I have to address this books construction. I originally intended to read this along with Tommyland, but due to the horrible binding of this book, it literally fell apart in my hands when I opened it. I had to take it back to the library and ask if I could get another copy. She said that it wouldn't be a problem as they had multiple copies floating around at other branches. When she did further research on the book, she saw that all the copies had suffered the same fate and all had to be repaired as well. The current copy I just read had a few pages that started to come apart, but I manage to actually get through and finish the book without any further damage.

This is hands down the worst and most ill conceived book put together of all time. Just looking at the binding "new", you can tell it would and will eventually fall apart. Just horrible. Since I'm talking about the construction of the book I should at least mention the actual design itself. It's different from your typical paper stock as this is all glossy paper. And on top of that the pages are designed to represent the chaos of what Nikki Sixx was going through with his doping. I think it's actually a pretty cool look and feel to it, although there are some pages that were extremely hard to read when it was red text on black pages.

So for the construction of the book, this gets....

For the design elements within the pages, this gets...

Now onto the book review. Heroin Diaries is kind of what Hit Hard by Joey Kramer wanted to be and it makes perfect sense that Nikki Sixx did the forward for Joey's book. It's another "self help" book as it deals primarily with Nikki's year long battle with heroin, coke, and every other drug you can think of during 1987, or the Girls, Girls, Girls Tour. How is this like Hit Hard? Well, Heroin Diaries is dealing mainly with the root problem of his childhood and his relationship with his Mother. To say that Nikki had a pretty messed up childhood is an understatement. His broken family led to his depression which eventually led to his constant need to self medicate to mask this problem.

Now why does this get a better review then Hit Hard then if it's basically the same topic? A lot has to do with how it's written and constructed. This book literally plays like an episode of VH1 Behind The Music. Just think of the diary entries as the reenactments and the Guest Author's describing each entry as the "on-camera" testimonials to bring it into context of what was going on at the time.

This is a pretty engaging read and I couldn't put the book down at all. It's these testimonials that actually save the book and it's cool to get input from a lot of different people that were involved at one time or another through his year long downward spiral. Those that lend a hand with their insight are: Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Doc McGhee, Vanity (this one is the trippiest by far), Rick Nielsen and Slash just to name a few.

One thing I have to mention here is that when I was reading this book, Nikki mentions a lot of the time that he could never be in a room full of people he didn't know if he was sober. He couldn't relate to other people and would literally run out of the room because it was almost claustrophobic in a way when trying to be social. So obviously when this kept coming up in the book, I was left remembering the time I met and talked to Nikki once before and at no time did he hint at being uncomfortable. So either I am such an awesome and cool cat to talk with, or he was strung out and did an amazing job of hiding it, which I never would have guessed because he was very articulate, engaging and cool when talking with me. I'm just gonna say that this was one of those rare sober moments that he could talk in a social environment. 

Now, Tommy Lee on the other hand had to have been high, because no matter how awesome and cool I am, even he couldn't be THAT happy to see and talk with me. Haha. Both were really cool and down to earth, so I have no idea if they were high or not.

I can definitely recommend this book if you can look past the redundancy of his drug use. It does get repetitive in hearing about him scoring, hallucinating and then vowing to quit. But because of the other's input in telling the story, it keeps you engaged throughout.

I need to take a break from reading Rock Biographies for awhile. The whole drug thing is making me ill just reading about it. Blah. Gonna hit some Baseball Biographies and Comedy books for the foreseeable future. 

Rating: 4 1/2 Stars out of 5

Review by Chiprocks1

Nikki Sixx Talks About The Heroin Diaries