11. 1990: MOVING FORWARD WITH A NEW LINEUP

One fine day at Laurel Terrace, Erin showed up. I was watching TV and half-listening as she cried hysterically to Angela. She was begging for pills, sobbing that it was time to end it all. “Shut up already,” Angela said. Erin explained that while driving drunk, she’d tried to crash her car off Mulholland Drive at a spot where there’s a 150-yard drop down the cliff. It’s a perfect spot if you want to commit vehicular suicide—there’s not much left of you after a 150-yard drop. That’s where James Dean and a lot of other people were killed. But Erin didn’t have the guts—she was just vying for attention.

[...]

I went to check out the upstairs bedroom, and sure enough, Erin had disappeared. Angela thought for a minute and remembered that Erin had wanted to visit Steven next door. Erin had already asked me for heroin, but I had told her she wouldn’t find that stuff in my house no more. Erin even offered to give us five hundred bucks if we copped a fix together. If I had been a junkie, I’d have instantly made a $480 profit. But no way! You never introduce no one to heroin—that’s a matter of principle.

At the time, Steven was just about to get sacked from Guns N’ Roses. Angela and me looked at each other and said simultaneously: “Steven’s!” Erin was surely at Steven’s. Suddenly all that talk about suicide took on a whole new meaning, and we realized it was a young woman’s cry for help—a woman who didn’t want to live anymore. Angela instantly said to me: “Andy, you run to Steven’s house right now! Where else could she be? Her Jeep’s still parked in front of our house. Go see if there’s evil afoot!”

I could tell from Angela’s face that she was really worried. She told me to call as soon as I could. I ran over like some motherfucking rapist with the cops after me, fuck, and a pack of bloodhounds, too. I rang the bell for at least three minutes, until Steven Adler came to the door. He looked like an Alphabet City junkie, not stylish at all, the motherfucker, scratching his armpits, shit, even his balls—really fuckin’ disgusting.

He tried to open the door and finally managed to get the safety chain off. I rushed in, like, “Erin, where is she? Is she okay?” “Oh, she’s in the bedroom,” Steven mumbled. “She’s turning blue.” He said it so calmly as if nothing in the world mattered a bit. I became really pissed off and yelled at him: “Steven, how much did you give her?”

Well, at least I had a good idea what she had taken. No answer from Steven. I grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him against the wall. I asked again: “Steven, this could be a matter of life and death! How much?!”

I panicked. I tried to revive Erin. I slapped her face. I gave her mouth to mouth. I kept banging on her chest. Then I remembered what my late friend, my wife’s cousin, Johnny Thunders taught me: If you see somebody overdosing, you must use buprenorphine, or even just salt. Buprenorphine is ten times more effective. It stops the division of heroin in the body, and salt does the same thing to an extent. I finally found a vein and did what Johnny taught me.

I screamed at Steven to call a fuckin’ ambulance. It was useless. That fuckin’ chickenshit was so scared that he couldn’t do anything. He was just like, “No, man, I gotta hide, fuck, I’ll go to the shower.”

Well, no wonder the guy broke a sweat: He had just given our good, mutual friend her first fix of smack, and she was about to die in his house. But I still couldn’t understand how somebody could say something like that, without any sympathy for human life. It made me sick, but I kept on banging Erins chest and everything. Finally she began to breathe, very slowly and faintly, and I could feel a feeble pulse. Then I called Angela: “You call the ambulance now. I can’t do that, I have my hands full trying to save her life.”

I scattered ice on Erin’s half-dead body and tried forcing some strong coffee into her mouth. I tried to walk her around, simultaneously slapping her face. Every once in a while I had to lay her on the floor so I could bang her heart and administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“Erin, Erin, you’re a strong woman! Breathe!”

I prayed to the holy and good Saint Sara-la-Kali, the patron angel of us Gypsies.

Angela came over with Judie Aronson, her actress friend who lived next door. Judie was always around, although she wasn’t a part of the rock 'n' roll scene. Now she surely realized what kind of people her neighbors were. She and Angela both went white in the face. Angela came to help and took care of first aid, I mean resuscitation, while I kept banging Erin’s heart. I didn’t give a fuck if her rib bones cracked, as long as her heart kept beating.

I took a five-second breather. It seemed like, shit, Erin’s panties were down to her ankles. Remember this: Erin never did drugs, she sometimes took a Valium and sometimes had a drink, but never simultaneously. Although you couldn’t deny that her downward spiral had already begun. In many respects she was like a child, a very naive person who always needed somebody around. I think Axl had written their huge hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine” about her for that reason: Erin was like a small child. When I saw her there with her pants down and almost dying, I couldn’t help wondering if Steven had done something to her while she was out cold. What a cocksucker if so!

We could just about feel Erin’s pulse when we heard the ambulance and the LAPD arrive outside the house. The ambulance guys got to work right away, and I mean instantly. Goddammit, I so respect these guys; they dedicate their lives to helping others. That’s something we should all learn, even if it’s just small things, because then this world would be so much better to live in.

I watched them take care of Erin, and she looked almost like a doll. When they asked me what she had taken, I had to tell the truth: “Heroin, I don’t how much, maybe also Valium. I don’t know about the amounts.”

I talked to the cops. Steve was still hiding in the shower. Motherfuckin’ fuck, what a chickenshit! Me, Angela, and Judie, Angela’s actress friend, began to fear the worst. Would Erin pull through?

“We don’t know,” the paramedics said. They tried to kick-start her heart.

First time: “DUM!”

“Pump it, the pulse is rising, the pulse is rising, yeah, we got her. Hey, she’s breathing again!”

They carried Erin out, and the ambulance chief asked me: “Have you taken a first-aid course or something? I’m sure you have.”

“No, man, you’re talking to the wrong guy,” I said.

He took me by the arm: “You’ve just saved a life. Without you, we would have carried her out in a different kind of bag altogether. In a black one, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean she would’ve died?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

A couple of cops came to shake my hand.

“Thanks, man, you saved her life.”

I watched as the cops and ambulances left and took Erin away. I was starting to feel bad. For the first time in my life— although I had already kicked the habit myself—I was struck that heroin is really public enemy number one. It’s first-rate poison. It’s not just a “small personal problem,” you know what I mean, like, “I just have a small cold.” That’s what I used to say before the withdrawal symptoms got so bad that I couldn’t even get out of bed. The craziest thing is I never received any thanks from Erin, although she reappeared in our life later on and naturally messed everything up once again.

Later that night Axl Rose called me and said, “Thanks, Andy, how can I ever thank you? I really owe you big-time. Whatever you need—money, whatever—you only have to call.”