DUFF MCKAGAN Explains Near-Death Experience - "I Knew I Had To Get Clean"
October 29, 2011, 12 years ago
Bassist Duff McKagan (LOADED, VELVET REVOLVER, ex-GUNS N' ROSES) has told Nathan Bevan from WalesOnline how a near-death experience saw him walk away from the wild side.
It's 1994 and Duff McKagan is lying critically ill in hospital, years of alcohol and drugs having caused his pancreas to burst and leave third-degree burns on the inside of this body.
His mother, stricken with Parkinson’s and wheel chair-bound, is keeping tearful vigil at her son’s bedside.
And it was at this moment McKagan says he experienced what alcoholics refer to as “a moment of clarity”, realising that he needed to change his life or risk losing it altogether.
“I was drinking maybe a gallon of vodka a day and doing all sorts of drugs, so after a while your body’s just going to rebel,” says the impossibly fit and healthy-looking 47-year-old rocker, who’s appearing in North Wales next week with his latest band LOADED.“I ended up with acute pancreatitis, although there’s nothing ‘cute’ about it, and just got so angry at myself.
“I wasn’t being fair on my mom – I mean, here was this lion of a woman, who was really sick herself, having to worry about me!” he splutters.
“It should have been the other way round, I should have been taking care of her. And, at that precise moment, I knew I had to get clean.”
Read the entire interview at WalesOnline.
Duff McKagan's new tell-all book, It's So Easy (And Other Lies), is out now. Check out the first 80 pages here.
