Duff McKagan was “Drinking 10 Bottles of Wine a Day”
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Written by Rob Sleigh
In a recent interview with BBC News, former Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan spoke about how his excessive drinking during the early ‘90s became so severe that he became seriously ill with acute pancreatitis and was told that he had to drastically change his lifestyle.
In 1994, when he was 30 and still in Guns N’ Roses, Duff’s pancreas ruptured due to frequent heavy drinking. He told the BBC: “They did an ultrasound and my pancreas was huge. A surgeon said ‘we’re going to have to cut out part of your pancreas…’ That’s when I said: ‘Just kill me’. The pain was so bad, the morphine was doing nothing for it.”
Going on to speak about his drinking, he added: “I went from a gallon of vodka a day to… ‘I’ll go to wine, I’ll try to taper off’. But yeah, I was drinking 10 bottles of wine a day.”
In the same interview, the bassist explains how he had originally begun to self-medicate after suffering from panic attacks. The sudden change of lifestyle he had experienced with the success of Guns N’ Roses had made it difficult for him to properly deal with these issues.
Although Duff had made attempts to quit alcohol in the past, this terrifying experience gave him the “wake-up call” that he needed to finally stop drinking: “It was a gentle relapse off the alcohol. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and it gave me time to really think about how I got there.”
After recovering from the pancreatitis, he began a much healthier lifestyle and successfully overcame his addiction.
Earlier this year, Duff McKagan released his autobiography ‘It’s So Easy (And Other Lies)’. It was also recently announced that Duff’s current project Loaded are to support his previous band Guns N’ Roses for dates in the US and Canada later this week.
The full BBC article can be read here. You can watch the full interview on BBC News Channel on Thursday 15th December at 0030 GMT, and Friday 16th December at 0030 and 0430 GMT.
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