Nikki Sixx hopes ‘The Heroin Diaries’ musical helps stop opioid epidemic
Nikki Sixx has high hopes for the stage production of his 2007 memoir The Heroin Diaries.
The production is set to launch in spring of 2020, and the Mötley Crüe bassist apparently couldn’t be more excited about the project.
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“The idea is to do with The Heroin Diaries for the opiate epidemic what Rent did for AIDS and HIV — to really shine a light on it and give back to communities locally, nationally and internationally,” Sixx said about the project.
“I’m really happy that the world ‘epidemic’ is attached to this crisis right now, but I’m also very frustrated that it took us this long to get here, and so the timing for us is important, meaning it needs to happen now,” he continued.
Crüe manager Allen Kovac continued, saying that Live Nation and Ticketmaster are supporting the project. He added that they’ve lowered the cost to go to 100 cities instead of sticking to just Broadway and major markets.
The book is more than a decade old and formed his band Sixx: A.M. to make an accompanying soundtrack. After the memoir released, there was a graphic novel adaptation of the story.
Sixx wrote the story in journals in the late ‘80s. He was addicted to Heroin at the time and the book debuted at a New York Times book review non-fiction best seller.
He added that he hopes the musical will inspire more people addicted to opiates to head down the path of recovery.
“It was the sixth day that the book came out, and I was somewhere in America at a book signing,” Nikki recalled. “And it was unbelievable — there wasn’t hundreds; there was thousands and thousands of people coming to these book signings. And there was a guy coming up in the line and he was shaking and he was sweating. And the security came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re a little scared, a little worried about that guy. Do you want us to remove him?’ And I said, ‘No. He’s kicking.’”
“And the guy goes, ‘What do you mean he’s kicking?’ I go, ‘He’s kicking dope right now, dude. You’ve gotta let him come up here.’ And the guy came up and he started crying. And he had his one-day chip from being one day sober. The book had been out six days, and he was in the sixth day of his withdrawal. And 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 can we do with that story.”
You can check out Sixx’s interview below.
Are you excited to see The Heroin Diaries live? Sound off in the comments!
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