Lee shot to fame in the 1980s with Mötley Crüe, a band that became known for its hard-partying ways, both on and off stage. Lee and Sixx were famously dubbed the ‘Terror Twins’ due to their excessive behaviour and copious drug taking. 

In 1989 all four members of the band went to rehab to help tackle their individual addictions. Lee spoke candidly about his addiction problems on a recent episode of Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard. 

“In 1989, we all decided we needed to go to rehab or someone was going to die,” he said. “We were zombies and people weren’t waking up. We were like someone’s going to die soon.” Tommy Lee has opened up about his addiction struggles (HELLE ARENSBAK/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images) But for Lee, sobriety didn’t last long and it became an issue he has now battled for decades. “I think three years is the longest I’ve done,” the 63-year-old admitted. “I get so excited that I’m like, ‘Oh my god, dude, I’ve been sober for a year,’ and I celebrate. That’s the f***ing problem.” 

Lee also recalled one particular low point when he and Sixx had run out of heroin so injected neat Jack Daniels instead. “[We] filled up the cap with Jack and then pulled a couple syringes, and were shooting Jack Daniel’s,” he recounted. 

“It was at that moment where I went, ‘Okay, what is happening? We could just drink this, but we’re shooting it. This is f***ing wrong. And somebody’s going to die.” Lee added that he could actually ‘taste’ the alcohol as it entered his blood stream. 

“You could taste it, like you taste heroin,” he said. In an interview on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast in 2023, Lee revealed that during the height of his addiction he was drinking ‘two gallons of vodka’ a day. He said: “Alcohol is a crazy one because it's easy to fall in love with. The way it makes you feel, the way it makes you relax.

Lee said he and bandmate Nikki Sixx once injected Jack Daniels (Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images) “And then all of a sudden you’re like… I’m drinking two gallons of vodka a day. Two gallons a day. I swear to you, dude. I swear to God. Gallons. The big handle. Two." When Maher asked how long he’d kept that up for, Lee admitted that it was ‘a long time’. 

Since his first stint in rehab in the late 1980s, Lee has returned on several occasions, most recently in 2019. In 2023, he told Maher he had been sober for a year and had no plans to break that. “I still can’t believe it, I pinch myself on a daily basis,” he said.