In a recent chat with Metal Hammer, Nita Strauss said she wouldn’t compare herself to Nikki Sixx.
“I wouldn’t say I hit rock bottom,” the guitarist said of her issues with alcohol and substance abuse. “I’m not like Nikki Sixx, but I was a dangerous addict because whether I was doing drugs or drinking, I was very highly functional.”
She went on to say, “I was doing all these things that could have got me in trouble, but I never played a bad show, I was never falling-down sloppy. But it was really insidious, because it was bleeding into my personal life.”
Strauss then shared what his partner told him, “Some of the guys in the band had noticed it, but it took my partner Josh, who is now my husband, saying to me: ‘If you’re gonna be like this, I don’t know how long I’m going to be with you. I can’t watch you destroy your life like this.'”
“This was the highest point of my professional career so far, and it just seemed unfair – I couldn’t understand why I was getting picked on, and why I had to be boring and go to sleep early,” Nita also stated.
Strauss got sober during a tour in 2015. In a 2021 interview with Matt Stocks, the guitarist shared advice from Zakk Wylde on getting sober, explaining, “So I was going around, seeking advice. Got on tour with Mötley Crüe, so I asked Nikki Sixx questions, and then we did a festival where Black Label was playing, I was chatting with Zakk, and I said, ‘What can I do? How can I get over this feeling of missing out? How can I get over this feeling that everybody else is having fun and not me, and I was just sort of ranting.'”
She continued, “He put his big giant hand on my shoulder, and he said, ‘Listen, little hurricane, don’t be a f*cking p*ssy.’ He gave me this real locker room pep-talk. ‘That liquid means nothing, it doesn’t f*cking control you. You control yourself. You’re a strong badass b*tch, and nothing controls you. Only you control you.'”
Strauss recently stepped down from Alice Cooper’s upcoming tour. Orianthi, who played with Cooper from 2011 to 2014, will perform with him from late January to mid-February 2025.
