ALICE COOPER Reflects On Depths Of His Crack Addiction: There Are Three Albums 'I Don't Remember Writing, Recording Or Touring'

Veteran music journalist Billy Sloan was the special guest host for the October 19 stop of Alice Cooper's intimate "Devil On My Shoulder" U.K. book tour at the Glasgow Pavilion Theatre. Fan-filmed video of some of the highlights from the event can be seen below.

Reflecting on the depths of his cocaine addiction in the early 1980s, Alice said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We always did a little coke in our nose. And then somebody came along and said, 'You know, if you smoke it, it's not addictive.' And we're, like, 'Okay.' And it's the most addictive thing on the planet, and it totally takes your life away. You feel that euphoria, your whole body rush, and you're pretty sure you can move mountains, whereas you really can't do anything. I wrote three albums like that, and don't remember recording them. I don't remember writing them. I don't remember touring with them. I remember little bits of it. But that was truly a scary period."

Cooper continued: "People ask me all the time, they say, 'If you could go back and change one thing, what would it be?' And they would think that it would be that. But it taught me so much about myself, going through the alcohol and the cocaine addiction. Now, when I do talks with teenagers about drugs and alcohol, I can talk from a platform that if they say, 'Well, what do you know about it?' I say, 'I used to get high with Jim Morrison, okay?' And they're, like, 'Who?'

"But I think it was planned that way," Alice added. "Now, 43 years later, I've never even had a temptation to have a drink or a drug, and I was the poster boy for that when it was happening, which I consider to be a modern-day miracle. Even the doctor said, 'That's biblical, that miracle, the fact that you're not hiding things around the house.' And I said, 'No, I just have no desire to have a drink.' Even in the most pressure situations, nah, that just wasn't part of it."

Alice's "Devil On My Shoulder" U.K. book tour launched on October 11, following the publication of "Devil On My Shoulder" by Ebury Spotlight on October 8. Each evening featured Alice in conversation with a special guest, followed by an audience question-and-answer session, offering fans a rare glimpse behind the greasepaint and guillotines.

Asked by USA Today why now was the time for him to tell the stories about his drug addiction in so much detail, Alice said: "Because it's just being honest. If you lived in L.A., cocaine was everywhere. It was a commodity at points. People were paying bills with it. I'm sitting there, a guy comes in and we sniffed a little bit and he goes, if you freebase it, it's not addictive. And by far the most addictive thing there ever has been on this planet is crack cocaine. I got way lost in it because it was so easy and it made you feel like you could do anything. The problem was, your basic everyday life disintegrates."

Cooper also talked about "making the rock" — processing powdered cocaine into crack — and how much time was spent on that. He said: "I was the chef. Everybody brought their coke to me because I was the best. I made the best stuff. But you don't realize at the time [the drug] is such a great liar. It tells you that everything's okay and you can do anything. Whereas you basically can do nothing because you're so wrapped up in getting the coke and making the coke and smoking it."

The 464-page "Devil On My Shoulder" quickly became an international bestseller, topping charts across The New York Times, Amazon and The Sunday Times.

The legendary rocker's third memoir comes in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audiobook options — the latter narrated by Cooper himself.

Cooper told Billboard that 90% of the stories in his third book are true, marking a change from his 1976 autobiography, "Me, Alice: The Autobiography Of Alice Cooper", which he dismissed as "a drunken rant," and affirms that this account is more reliable. "Nobody really pushed 'Me, Alice'," Cooper recalled. "Nobody pushed 'Golf Monster'. They were kind of okay, and they were fun. But this was the book we actually took a lot of time on."

No stranger to doing things his own way, Alice Cooper has cast a long shadow over rock music with an unrivaled live show and timeless anthems like "School's Out", "No Mr. Nice Guy" and "Poison". Selling over 50 million albums worldwide, he earned a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in 2003, and the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inducted him as part of its class of 2011. Boasting one of the most influential catalogues in history, Rolling Stone cited 1971's platinum-certified "Love It To Death" among the "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time", while other platinum releases spanned the seminal "Killer" (1971),"School's Out" (1972),the Billboard 200 No. 1 "Billion Dollar Babies" (1973),"Welcome To My Nightmare" (1975) and "Trash" (1989),to name a few. The latter even graced Rolling Stone's "50 Greatest Hair Metal Albums Of All Time."

He's so embedded in generations of popular culture that he not only made a cult-classic appearance in "Wayne's World" during 1992, but he also starred alongside John Legend and Sara Bareilles in NBC's 2018 production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's "Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert" — and also memorably appeared on both "The Muppets" and "That 70s Show!" as well as in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows" film. Beyond hundreds of syncs, everyone from Etta James, THE SMASHING PUMPKINS, MEGADETH and THE FLAMING LIPS has covered his tunes. THE BEASTIE BOYS, DISTURBED, and countless others have sampled him. His collaborators have notably included the late Vincent Price, AEROSMITH, GUNS N' ROSES and Jon Bon Jovi, to name just a few. Plus, he co-founded HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES alongside AEROSMITH's Joe Perry and Johnny Depp. Most recently, 2025's "The Revenge Of Alice Cooper" reunited the surviving members of the original ALICE COOPER band to widespread critical acclaim. After thousands upon thousands of gigs and easily a million miles traveled, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee continues ever onwards into rock and roll folklore.