The legendary Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash has had to deal with smoking addiction. It has now been reported how he quit smoking and hasn’t smoked since 2009, and how Cher was involved.
Slash gives crucial advice
In a new interview with Germany’s Antenne Sylt he gave some advice to the millions of smokers who are trying to quit. He responded:
“Quitting smoking is the hardest thing I’ve ever quit. I can think of a lot of stuff that was hard to quit and smoking was the hardest. You just have to make that decision and then stick to it.”
He went on to share his own experience of quitting and it turns out that it was quite hard for him and had to suffer from some illness as an affect of quitting smoking. Here is what he revealed:
“I have to admit, when I quit, I had pneumonia, so for two weeks I couldn’t breathe, let alone smoke, so that got me over the hump,” he continued. “And then, from that point on, I used the patch and then I used Nicorette and then I was doing snus [a moist form of smokeless tobacco which is usually placed under the upper lip] and then regular gum. And I’m still chewing regular gum. And it’s been [more than] 12 years. So you just have to make the decision and then you have to do it. But it’s not easy.”
Back in 2018, Slash said that watching Cher perform in concert helped him quit smoking more than a decade ago.
Slash was “dragged” to the Cher show in Las Vegas by his ex-wife Perla and “her buddies.”
“I had to leave for every song and go outside and smoke. And I think I’d worn myself down from smoking so much, and Cher just took me over the top. Every time she revisited one of those periods [during the concert]… She had a closet on stage and she’d go in the closet and she’d come out and she’d be the Indian. Every single thing that she’s been over her career… When she started with the Sonny & Cher thing, it just killed me — I couldn’t take it. So I would smoke… I just didn’t have any fond memories of that show or any of the other stuff.”
