Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee recalls injecting Jack Daniels into veins with Nikki Sixx: ‘We could just drink this’

Kathleen PerriconeThu, July 23, 2026 at 2:28 AM UTC

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Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee in 2012Credit: Stefanie Keenan/WireImageKey Points -

Tommy Lee says he and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx once injected Jack Daniels when they ran out of heroin.

“We could just drink this, but we’re shooting it,” Lee recalled thinking.

In 1989, all four members of the band entered rehab for drugs and alcohol, but sobriety didn’t last.

When Dr. Feelgood wasn’t on call, Jack Daniels filled the void.

Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee looked back on one of the lowest points of his battle with drug addiction — when he ran out of heroin — on the latest episode of Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard.

At the height of the band’s success in the late 1980s, Lee and the band’s bassist Nikki Sixx “were just doing a s---load of heroin,” he admitted. During one early-morning binge, they had ingested their entire stash of the opioid. “We’re like, ‘F---, dude. What are we going to do?’”

Lee and Sixx, famously referred to as the hard-partying “Terror Twins,” reached for the next best thing: a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, and Mick Mars in 1985Credit: Ross Marino/Getty

After filling up the cap with whiskey, they “pulled a couple of syringes” and injected it into their veins, hoping to replicate the euphoric high of heroin.

“It was at that moment where I went, ‘Okay, what is happening? We could just drink this, but we’re shooting it,’” recalled Lee. “‘This is f---ing wrong. And somebody’s going to die.’”

In that moment though, the two only got more intoxicated. “You could taste it,” he said, “like you can taste heroin,” which Lee described as “oaky.”

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Sixx’s addiction was far more out of control: In his 2007 memoir The Heroin Diaries, the musician estimated he overdosed “about half a dozen times,” including a 1987 incident when he was declared clinically dead for two minutes.

In 1989, all four members of Mötley Crüe entered rehab for their individual addictions, resulting in their bestselling album, Mr. Feelgood. On the advice of their producer, the band got out of Los Angeles (and its temptations) to record in Vancouver, where “it just rains every day,” said Lee.

As they attempted to stay clean, a “band therapist” was brought on to help.

“We’d all get together and talk about how everybody’s dealing with this new arrangement,” Lee told Shepard. “Then that opens up a whole other thing. Once you start getting into therapy with the people that you work with that are also going through the same thing, you’re learning all these other things about them and all of a sudden it’s becoming really complicated at the same time.”

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Mötley Crüe’s sobriety was tested during the Mr. Feelgood World Tour. After the final concert in Hawaii, Lee and singer Vince Neil celebrated at a local strip club, picking up right where they left off with alcohol.

Lee would go on to struggle with sobriety for decades. “I think three years is the longest I’ve done,” he admitted to Shepard. “I get so excited that I’m like, ‘Oh my god, dude, I’ve been sober for a year,’ and I celebrate. That’s the f---ing problem.”

on Entertainment Weekly

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