Alice Cooper Says Crack ‘Almost Killed Me’ Ahead Of New Memoir

Alice Cooper has looked back on the period of drug addiction he says came closest to killing him, ahead of the release of his new memoir Devil On My Shoulder.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Cooper reflected on the years when cocaine followed an already serious problem with alcohol.

“This was at the very beginning of crack, and crack is the most addictive drug there is, by far,” says Cooper. “That was really the thing that almost killed me.”

Cooper had already been through rehab by that point. He first checked in for treatment in 1976 to address his drinking, spending four weeks in a facility before later drawing on the experience for 1978 album From The Inside.

He eventually relapsed, with sobriety only sticking in 1983.

Cooper says the turning point came when his wife, Sheryl, gave him a choice: get clean and return to the Christian faith they shared, or leave.

“So I did,” says Cooper. “And that put us back together, you know. And it was almost a relief to get back to church.”

40 years and counting

More than 40 years later, Cooper also sees little resemblance between the touring culture he came through and life on the road now.

“If you’re in a touring band, nobody gets high, nobody ever drinks, because now it’s a big business and you can’t afford to have a guy that’s doing that,” he says. “In the Seventies, you didn’t hire the guy unless he got high, so everybody was on the same level.”

Those years sit at the centre of Devil On My Shoulder, which revisits Cooper’s rise, addiction, marriage and faith while separating some of the man’s real history from the mythology that has followed the Alice Cooper character for decades.

For Australian readers, the trade paperback arrives October 6th through Ebury Spotlight, with ebook and audiobook editions following on October 8th.

Cooper will then take the book on the road in the UK, beginning an eight date run in Cardiff on October 11th before returning to touring later that month.

After decades spent turning horror, excess and death into theatre, Devil On My Shoulder finds Cooper going back to the years when some of it stopped being an act.