As part of a ‘My Life Story’ feature over at Teamrock.com, Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen discussed hitting rock bottom with his heroin addiction and how he turned it around:
“I was sleeping on some heroin dealer’s couch clinging onto the one last guitar that I hadn’t pawned yet, and I got this spider bite. The doctor wanted to take my fucking arm off so I looked at him and said, ‘Look motherfucker, I don’t play drums for Def Leppard, I need this fucking arm.’ I was at death’s door: I’d owned a 13-room compound and now I had a $500 a day habit, I’d gone through all my savings and pawned off all but one of my guitars. I’d hit rock bottom. A light bulb went on over my head and it all made sense: shit now or get off the pot. If you want to die, die today.”
On getting clean, he offered:
“To be honest it was easier than I thought it would be. The sickness starts and you think, ‘Gotta get another hit man, I can’t stand being sick.’ But it’s like, ‘Well so fucking what if you get sick?’ Just deal with it. Once I’d done it I thought, ‘Why didn’t I just do this years ago?’
He also spoke of his amputated toe:
“Yeah that’s true. I stepped on the tip of a broken hypodermic needle back when I was using. The needle tip went up into my boot, and the wound got infected. It went gangrenous so they had to amputate. Trust me, there were loads of reasons to quit heroin.”
For more from Jourgensen, head to Teamrock.com.
