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

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

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

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

“Did you really?” Maher asked, and Idol replied, “It worked. It worked,” with a laugh.

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

“I had it all, and I lit it with butane,” he told The New York Times.

While building his successful career, Idol took many risks with his life, battling an addiction to heroin while also speeding through the streets on his motorcycle, driving way too fast, saying, “I’m super lucky.”

In an interview with the Associated Press in April 2025, Idol shared that the rock and roll lifestyle “embraced drugs” and that he took his first hit of acid when he was 12 years old. “There’s a point in my life where I was very drug addicted,” he added, later acknowledging how lucky he is to be alive.

“Once you’re trying to get off heroin, what do you go to? You go to something else. I started smoking crack to get off heroin.”

— Billy Idol

“I’m lucky that I’ve kept the brain I’ve got, because some people went brain-dead and some people ended up in jail forever. Or dead,” he told the outlet. “Imagine if it was today. If I was doing what I was back then today, I would be dead because I would have run into fentanyl.”

When speaking with the New York Times, Steve Stevens, Idol’s longtime guitarist, explained that he “learned a lot” when watching the documentary, including just how bad his addiction was back then, with the documentary explaining that much of his bad behavior was hidden from the public at the time.

Idol moved to the United States in 1981 to try and make it as a solo artist after parting ways with his band in the U.K., Generation X. His drug use ramped up as his popularity increased. According to People, Idol discussed a near-fatal overdose he suffered in 1984 when he went back to England to celebrate the success of his second album, “Rebel Yell.”

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“I was coming back in triumph and I nearly ruined it,” he said in the documentary. “We flew to London where we met a load of our pals that we knew. They had some of the strongest heroin. Everybody did a line or so and they all nodded out except for me and this mate of mine.”

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

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

“I kind of, eventually we did pass out and then when people, other people in the room came too, I was going blue,” Idol said. Maher asked why he was turning blue after doing heroine and Idol said that’s what happens when you’re dying. 

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

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

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

“I’ve always flirted with death, in a way. Even riding motorcycles, you’re staring at the concrete,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s right there, you can come off that thing and get horribly messed up. And I’ve done it. It’s horrible. You find out how human you are, how vulnerable. There’s lots of things about my life that, yeah, I did kind of call death at times. Not really mean to, but you just were living like that.”

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

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The motorcycle accident combined with being 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 I should try and go forward and not be a drug addict anymore and stuff like that,” he told People in May 2024. “It took a long time, but gradually I did achieve some sort 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.”

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

“Billy Idol Should Be Dead,” first premiered at the Tribeca Festival on June 10, and had its wide release on Thursday, Feb. 26.

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