Tommy Lee recalls injecting whiskey during darkest period of heroin addiction

Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee has reflected on one of the lowest moments of his drug addiction, revealing that he and bassist Nikki Sixx injected Jack Daniel's whiskey after running out of heroin.

Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, Lee said the pair were heavily using heroin at the height of the band's success in the late 1980s. After exhausting their supply during an early-morning binge, they filled syringes with whiskey and injected it in an attempt to recreate the drug's effects.

Lee said the experience made him realize how dangerous their addiction had become. "We could just drink this, but we're shooting it," he recalled thinking. "This is wrong. Somebody's going to die."

Sixx's addiction later proved even more severe. In his 2007 memoir The Heroin Diaries, he wrote that he overdosed several times, including a 1987 incident in which he was declared clinically dead for two minutes before being revived.

In 1989, all four members of Mötley Crüe entered rehabilitation for substance abuse. They recorded their hit album Dr. Feelgood in Vancouver, away from the distractions of Los Angeles, and worked with a therapist to support their recovery.

Lee said maintaining sobriety remained a long-term challenge. He told Shepard that his longest period without alcohol or drugs lasted about three years, adding that celebrating sobriety sometimes led him back to drinking.