Tommy Lee says he drank two gallons of vodka daily before sobriety

Tommy Lee has discussed his old hard drinking past and his new sobriety in a revealing interview with Yahoo! Entertainment.

The Mötley Crüe drummer said that he will celebrate the first anniversary of his getting sober “in two weeks.” He explained that there was an “idle” period after the completion of the last Mötley Crüe when he got so heavily back into drinking that he realised 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. “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].’

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“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 Lee, 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.”

It’s been a busy time for Tommy Lee. His third studio album, Andro, is scheduled for release on Friday, October 16th. It’s his first record in 15 years.