There's a pattern when tours start - a pattern of infighting, of making up, of breaking up, of addiction. There's a pattern of going to jail. There's a pattern of passion for music.

Life is like a long ride to nowhere in particular.

For me, I never knew what addiction was. I just knew my heroes, like [New York Dolls guitarist] Johnny Thunders, did heroin. I didn't have a father, it looked good to me. If I had read Johnny Thunders' book The Heroin Diaries, I don't think I would have done heroin.

Darkness can be funny. It can be quirky. There are different ways that that stuff comes out as a creative person. But the actual conflicted, twisted, decaying, rotting soul? That's not me. No more.

When you can't climb your way out of such a hole, you tend to crouch down and call it home.

I sort of have a dark, twisted, offbeat way of writing, which I see coming up in my kids. It's funny, on Halloween, one of my daughters said, "Halloween isn't supposed to be happy, dad, it's supposed to be dark. " No smiling pumpkins at the Sixx household!

There is nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home. When you've lost it all, that's when you finally realize that life is beautiful.