B: Yeah, I weighed 90lb. Some of the photos I've seen of myself - which fortunately have never been published - I cannot believe I survived. I look so ill. It makes me start to see these pictures. I was a walking skeleton. I was surviving on green and red peppers and drinking milk.
M: That's a weird diet.
B: There was something in them which my body needed, I guess. I knew I was in trouble in LA. All my dealers were there and I had to get out.
M: And you went to Berlin of all places!
B: Well, living in a place with a wall was a bit like going into rehab! I was just excited by Berlin and the gateway to Europe and the art. But only later did I realise the wall just kept all the heroin in. Unfortunately for Jim [Osterberg, aka Iggy Pop] we decided we'd go there and clean up together. And though heroin wasn't my drug of choice, he had a much harder time there than me... But, Kate, you've had flirtation with drugs... ha ha ha
[a long and difficult silence]. Oh, should I mention this?
M: Yeah, I have.
B: Did you find them devastating? Because I think my presumption looking at you is that you're not touching much now. You don't look druggy to me.
M: No, I'm not druggy.
B: But do you look back at those times fondly?
M: Yeah... No! I mean, dabbling is fine, but when I was bang on it, that wasn't a nice time.
B: I think the first year or two can be a really nice flight and then you get into the excessive phase of it and then life becomes devastatingly awful.
M: I think I was miserable anyway. Drugs enhanced all the misery and I got into this spiral...
B: Yes, I think that's at the bottom of every addictive personality. I'm still addictive... I just do it
with work now - as a way of not thinking too deeply about myself and my situation. I'm not terribly good at that. Iman can go through dinner with just one glass of wine. I can't do that, so I haven't drunk for 14 years.
M: I still drink, but I don't do drugs.
B: The tough one, frankly, is nicotine. That's a nightmare. Let's see: speed was easy. At the moment I'm addicted to tea tree sticks. They're from an Australian tree and I go through packets of them... try one.
M: But speed's horrible anyway... [Moss tries a tea tree stick] Ughh! Not for me.
B: Coke was quite tough, alcohol is difficult. But nicotine takes the cake. There are 437 different drugs in a cigarette all designed to ensure you can't refuse one.
Q: You sound quite sanguine about drugs. Not the usual, "They're awful, never again", line. You sound like you actually got something out of them.
B: I don't know if drugs helped my work. I don't buy into the theory you have to be stoned to create. I think Low, Heroes and Scary Monsters... were my best and they were all drug-free. I slipped around Let's Dance, which some would say was not my best album. And personally I think I found myself again as a writer in the '90s and that's all drug-free... But, Kate, was any of it good for you?
M: Yeah, definitely. I had a great time. But then there's a major low point. But some of it was great, for sure...
B: If I could have held the perception I had in the early part of doing drugs - to realise you are seeing something or seeing or feeling something you never felt before and remember it - then that would be great. Because after that it's just repetition, trying to repeat the high. And that's where excess kicks in. |
