Billy Idol opens up about his past struggles with drug addiction and how he managed to get clean “California sober.”
The “White Wedding” rocker recently spoke to People about his drug problems and how a motorcycle accident that nearly killed him in 1990 finally convinced him to quit the addiction.
“I really started thinking, ‘I should try to move on and not be a drug addict anymore,’ and stuff like that,” the 68-year-old idol recalls. “It took a long time, but little by little I gained some discipline.”
“I’m not the same guy I was in the ’80s,” Idol continued. “I’m not the same drug-addicted person.”
“I don’t do anything that often anymore. I kind of got over it,” Idol explained. “I was really lucky that I was able to get over it because a lot of people can’t.”
That being said, Idol explained that he is not entirely sober in the strictest sense, as he enjoys “a glass of wine every now and then” from time to time. But he can control his behavior and is far from the man who indulged in excesses and vices.
“I suppose [I am] “California sober,” Idol said. “I just tell myself I can do whatever I want, but then I don’t do it.”
“When I tell myself I can’t do something, I want to do it. So I tell myself, ‘You can do anything you want.’ But I don’t actually do it,” he added.
The term “California Sober” has been used by a number of celebrities who have managed to overcome serious drug addictions but still engage in behaviors that would not, strictly speaking, be considered adherence to a sober lifestyle.
Demi Lovato raised eyebrows in March 2021 when she revealed in her documentary: Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, that she “smoked weed and drank in moderation” after her drug overdose in 2018.
“I’ve learned that saying I’ll never do this again doesn’t work for me. I know I’m done with the stuff that’s going to kill me, right?” she said in the docuseries. “If I tell myself I can never drink or smoke marijuana, I feel like I’m going to fail because I’m such a black and white thinker. It was drilled into me for so many years that one drink was the equivalent of a crack pipe.”
At the time, Ken Seeley, an interventionist and trauma expert, said ET about why he viewed promoting Lovato’s “California, sober” lifestyle as potentially dangerous.
“[There] is not moderation for people suffering from addiction…You can’t just turn it off,” he told ET. “…It could kill millions of people if you let them know it’s okay to use it in moderation…” Telling people they can be sober and consume in moderation is almost criminal, because I guarantee it You, if this catches on, people will die thinking they are sober in California even though that term doesn’t exist. There is no such thing.”
Lovato later spoke out the following December, stating that she no longer supported the “California sober” mindset.
“I no longer support my ‘California sobriety,'” Lovato wrote in a December 2021 post to her Instagram Stories. “Sobriety is the only way to be.”
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