Tommy Lee describes injecting Jack Daniels into his veins
Tommy Lee describes injecting Jack Daniels whiskey into his veins during a harrowing confession on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast, recalling a late-night low with bassist Nikki Sixx after their heroin ran out. The Mötley Crüe drummer said the moment made him realize someone could die.
Key Takeaways
- Lee told Armchair Expert he and Nikki Sixx injected Jack Daniels after running out of heroin.
- He recalled thinking, “This is f—king wrong and somebody’s going to die.”
- Mötley Crüe entered rehab in 1989 amid fear someone would not wake up.
- Lee said his longest stretch of sobriety has been about three years.
- His last public rehab stay was in 2019 after a severe drinking relapse.
What did Tommy Lee say about injecting Jack Daniels?
In a candid appearance on Shepard’s podcast Wednesday, the rock drummer returned to what he called the lowest point of his addiction at the height of Mötley Crüe’s fame. Lee said he was with his bass player and they had been doing “a s—t load of heroin” until their supply ran out.
It was about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, he recalled, when panic set in. According to Page Six, Lee and Nikki Sixx filled a bottle cap with whiskey, pulled syringes, and injected the liquor, hoping to mimic a heroin high.
“We were shooting Jack Daniels,” Lee confessed. He said the act itself snapped him into focus: they could have simply drunk the whiskey, but they were injecting it instead. “This is f—king wrong and somebody’s going to die,” he remembered thinking.
Why does this confession matter for fans now?
The story lands as more than shock value. It is a firsthand account of how far the band’s substance use went—and how close Lee believed they came to a fatal outcome. For readers following celebrity breaking news, it also reframes decades of Mötley Crüe lore around a clear turning point.
Lee said the group would “eat handfuls” of sleeping pills and then head out partying. By 1989, he recalled, the band decided rehab was necessary. “We were zombies and people weren’t waking up,” he said. “We were like someone’s going to die soon.”
Did rehab end Tommy Lee’s struggles with addiction?
Not for long, by his own telling. After rehab, Lee and lead singer Vince Neil marked the final show of their “Mr. Feelgood” tour in 1990 at a strip club and returned to drinking. Lee has said sobriety has remained a fight for decades.
“I think three years is the longest I’ve done [sober],” he told Shepard. He described getting excited after a year clean, then celebrating in a way that becomes the problem. In 2022, the then-63-year-old posted a nude photo while on what he called a “motherf–king bender,” later telling a crowd he had gotten “sideways” during a two-week tour break.
Lee’s last public trip to rehab was in 2019, after a severe relapse with heavy drinking. His Armchair Expert remarks underline both how extreme that earlier whiskey episode was—and how unfinished his recovery story remains.
Where can you hear the full interview?
Lee’s comments aired on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. Page Six’s report collects the key quotes and context from that conversation for anyone tracking the drummer’s latest public reckoning with addiction.