Guns N’ Roses Icon Reveals Disturbing List Of Drugs He Did

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Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan was interviewed on Marc Maron’s podcast recently. On the show, Duff ran down the borderline impressive yet disturbing list of hard drugs he took as a Seattle youth and how the rise of heroin destroyed his earlier band. Alternative Nation reporter Mike Mazzarone transcribed Duff and Maron’s comments. 

Duff: We were the first band to slow things down and we were playing these long, slow down, psychedelic, crazy songs. We got signed to Jello’s thing [Alternative Tentacle Records]. We could have been the thing. This band was serious but then heroin came into the band and just decimated everything and everyone. Our band, not our band. My roommate that I lived with, he got strung out. These are all friends who are my best friends.

Maron: And you just see em’ turn into these zombies?

Duff: Yeah and then it happened to my ex-girlfriend.

Maron: Yeah.

Duff: Seemingly everyone around me and by this time I’m nineteen.

Maron: You didn’t get involved with it then?

Duff: No, dude, I did so many drugs by the time I was sixteen for a year and a half. Like I’d done Quaaludes, valium, cocaine

Maron: Acid?

Duff: Acid, yes! Man, we could walk home from school and pick mushrooms. By seventh grade, I knew how to discern a liberty cap from anything else.   So they’re young. Pot, I had given up because it was for hippies. [I had given that up] by the time I’m in ninth grade.  I hadn’t gotten into heroin because it hadn’t hit ninth grade, I don’t think. At the same time, I was getting very serious about music. By tenth grade I was like: “This is what I want to do. I’m gonna stop doing crime, stealing cars and doing drugs.”