Billy Idol Recalls Near-Death Overdose: “I Was Going Blue”
Photo by Dario De Marco, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A Dangerous Night During the Rebel Yell Era
Billy Idol recently shared a story about the moment he came closest to dying during the height of his fame in the early 1980s. The singer spoke about the incident during an appearance on comedian Bill Maher’s podcast, Club Random, where he reflected on the heavy drug use that surrounded parts of his career.
Idol said the episode happened shortly after the success of his 1983 album Rebel Yell. At the time, he had become a major figure in rock music, especially in the United States. When he returned to England, the trip felt like a victory. “I went back to England in triumph with the album Rebel Yell,” he remembered. “I was going to do it on Top of the Pops in England. You know, kind of returning to England. I’ve had this big record in America.”
Friends were waiting for him at the airport when he arrived. According to Idol, the group soon gathered in a hotel room and began using drugs. “So a load of friends of us met us at the airport, and they had a bunch of heroin on them,” the singer said. “So, of course, somehow everybody else in the room passed out, except for me and the other guy, you know, who was chopping the lines out.”
The Moment He Almost Died
Idol explained that he avoided injecting heroin with needles. Instead, he chose to snort it, something he linked to his upbringing. His mother worked as a nurse, and he said that influenced how he used drugs during that time.
As the night continued, people in the room slowly lost consciousness. Eventually, Idol also passed out. When some of the others began waking up, they noticed something was wrong. “When people, other people in the room came to, I was going blue.”
The color change meant his body was not getting enough oxygen. Idol later understood how serious the moment had been. “If you’re dying, you’re going to start turning blue,” he explained to Maher. His friends quickly tried to help him. They carried him to the bathroom and ran water over him in a bathtub in an attempt to revive him.
The effort worked, and Idol regained consciousness. Looking back, he described the outcome in simple terms. “I survived,” he flatly noted.
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Struggles With Addiction and Recovery
Idol later spoke about how difficult it was to stop using heroin. He described the process of quitting as physically painful and emotionally draining. The withdrawal effects were severe and made recovery extremely challenging.
He described the feeling in vivid terms, explaining what the body goes through when the drug leaves the system. Idol said the experience felt “like a skeleton is trying to get out of your body” when you come off the drug. “[Heroin] is really great. It’s just the worst thing is getting off it,” the singer remarked. “It’s just getting off it. It’s terrible. And that’s what stops me going back to doing it, is the thought of getting off. It’s so terrible.”
Turning to Other Habits
Heroin was not the only substance Idol used during that period. In fact, he admitted that another drug helped him stop using heroin. “Once you’re trying to get off heroin, what do you go to? You go to something else,” he explained. “I started smoking crack to get off heroin… It worked.”
The singer spoke honestly about how he felt during those years. “It was a lot of fun,” Idol confessed. “I liked taking drugs back then, I’d really, I enjoyed it. It took me a long time to put them in the rear view mirror, but at some point I realized you had to do that.”
Today, Idol says he is “California sober.” He is also a nominee for the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class and has a new documentary film titled Billy Idol Should Be Dead.
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