Tommy Lee revealed in a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment that he will celebrate the first anniversary of his getting sober “in two weeks.” The MÖTLEY CRÜE drummer, who will release his new solo album, “Andro”, on October 16 explained that there was an “idle” period after the completion of the last CRÜE tour when he got so heavily back into drinking that he realized he “could probably die.”
“It was crazy. [In the past] I’ve been sober for four years, and I’ve been sort of on and off for a long time,” he said (see video below). “I go through these phases where I just wanna live a different life and fuck all the dumb shit. And then I decide, ‘You know what? I don’t wanna live like that anymore. I wanna have fun and play and be fucked up and stupid and all that shit. This particular instance, I had been home. And I’ll tell you this right now: idle time at home, not touring, just being at home, I just enjoyed being home. I literally did nothing. I would just float around drink and just fucking drink.”
He continued: “I didn’t notice it until towards the end of it when I was, like, ‘Oh dude, I’ve gotta stop. This is fucking insane.’ I was drinking just out of boredom. I would just wake up and [drink] just all vodka and just a little eyedropper of cranberry or a lemonade or something. I was drinking two gallons — not pints, not quarts, [but] gallons, the big-handles — a day. That’s fucking crazy. And going to get a full check-up with the doctor, he was, like, ‘Dude, I don’t know what the deal is with you, but you liver’s fine. You’re super healthy. What are you made of?’ For most people, they probably [would] have destroyed a bunch of stuff [internally]… I’m, like, ‘Did you get my papers mixed up with another guy with the last name Lee, because there’s gotta be something [wrong with me].’
“Anyway, that’s not important. What’s important is I just realized, ‘Whoa, dude, you’re drinking enough to, like, you could probably die.’ And it wasn’t even fazing me. I was just, like, ‘Oh, yeah, whatever.’ That’s kind of crazy. I just became sort of immune to it and realized, ‘Woah! This is a lot. This isn’t good.’ So it was time for me to pump the brakes and just get rid of it for a while. I don’t know if it’s a forever thing, but for now, I’m not drinking vodka today.”
According to Tommy, his wife Brittany Furlan was instrumental in inspiring him to seek professional help.
“She was, like, ‘Baby, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen anybody drink that much,'” he recalled. “Like, ‘You’re kind of scaring me.’ Like, not scaring her as in [she thought I was gonna get] violent or that kind of thing. ‘Like, are you gonna wake up? Am I gonna wake up to, like, you not breathing?’ That kind of scaring. And I was, like, ‘That sucks. That’s not cool, to have you worry like that. And it’s worrying me.’ But, yeah, she was definitely concerned, and her concern obviously helped in my decision to just go get outta here. I bailed for over a month and just was, like, ‘That’s it. I’m done for a while.’ … I went to rehab.”
Back in March 2018, Lee‘s ex-wife Pamela Anderson blamed him for the physical altercation that took place between Tommy and their son Brandon, calling the drummer “a disaster spinning out of control” and claiming that she prays “Tommy gets the help he needs” for his drinking problem.” In a lengthy statement titled “Alcoholism Is The Devil,” she also added that her sons had “made every attempt to help [Tommy],” insisting that Brandon was “does not want to see his dad in jail” and “just wants him to get sober.”
In Lee‘s own statement, he denied that he had a serious drinking problem, saying: “Do I drink more than the average Joe? Yes. Have I ever hurt my sons or acted out of turn with them because of my drinking? No. No matter how much people wanna pin me as this deviant alcoholic abuser, that isn’t me. I’m a happy, fun-loving guy.”
Lee and Furlan got married on Valentine’s Day in 2019.
The 58-year-old rocker tied the knot with the 34-year-old social media star one year after they got engaged.
Furlan got her start by making hilarious Vine and Instagram videos and has appeared in films like “We Are Your Friends” (2015), “Dreamland” (2016), “Random Tropical Paradise” (2017) and “The Unicorn” (2018). She also appears in the film adaptation of MÖTLEY CRÜE‘s biography, “The Dirt – Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band”, which was released in March 2019.
In December 2018, Tommy and Brittany appeared in Netflix‘s documentary “The American Meme”, which follows celebrity social media personalities on the ups and downs of fame in the digital age.
