Mar 27, 2019 | By Tim Stoddart

Nikki Sixx Is Bringing “The Heroin Diaries” Musical To A City Near You

Addiction & Recovery News

“The Heroin Diaries” musical is coming to a town near you.

Mötley Crüe bassist, Nikki Sixx is bringing his infamous book – “The Heroin Diaries” – into a traveling musical in an effort to spread awareness about addiction.

According to Sixx, The Heroin Diaries was taken from actual journals the star kept in the late ’80s while he was in the grips of a near-fatal heroin addiction. The memoir additionally chronicles perspectives on others close to him at the time, including his Mötley Crüe bandmates. The book originally released in September 2007 and debuted at No. 7 on the New York Times Book Review non-fiction best-seller list.

“The Heroin Diaries” Musical

The artist, 60, and his band Sixx: A.M. also released a soundtrack to go with “The Heroin Diaries.” And, reportedly, this project has been in the works for years.

“It started with the book, which started with … me going to my storage locker to pick up a guitar,” Sixx recently told the Daily News. “I kept journals for years. One of the cardboard boxes had busted and these journals had fallen out. I remember sitting there reading these journals, and by then I was a father of four, sober for many, many years, and it was shocking to read this and what happened behind my addiction.”

Sixx went on to note that he hopes creating “The Heroin Diaries” musical will do for the opiate epidemic what “Rent” did for AIDS and HIV – to shine a light on it and give back to communities locally, nationally, and internationally.

“I’m really happy that the word ‘epidemic’ is attached to this crisis right now, but I’m also very frustrated that it took us so long to get here,” Sixx continued. “And so the timing for us is important, meaning it needs to happen now. And that’s what we’re working on. And we’re very close to having all the pieces together so that it can come out very early next year.”

“We Can Now Go Where The Crisis Is.”

Mötley Crüe manager Allen Kovac said in an interview that the plan is for “The Heroin Diaries” musical to launch in the spring of 2020. “Our lead investor is the CEO of Live Nation and Ticketmaster,” he said. “He put in the first million dollars, and we now have mayors across the United States. We’ve lowered the cost to go to a hundred cities instead of the traditional model of one Broadway or 20 major markets. We can now go where the crisis is.”

The 60-year-old rocker recalled a time where he saw the opioid crisis in full form, six days after his book was released. He says a security guard asked if they should remove a man in line who was sweating and shaking.

“I go, ‘No, he’s kicking.’ The guy came up and gave me his chip for one day. … He bought the book the day it came out and hadn’t done heroin since then,” Sixx said. He went on, “That has never left my mind. I wanna see that over and over and over and over. It’s taken people out in droves – it’s unbelievable – and it doesn’t need to be. And we can get into political angles, we can get into all kinds of angles, but really, it’s all about the heart, and the story is real, and what we can do with that story.”

Sixx remembers feeling “ashamed” when he began his recovery for addiction as he worked through stigmas attached to the battle. He went on to say that he hopes, “The Heroin Diaries” musical will further inspire people struggling with addiction to begin the road to recovery.