Billy Idol opens up about his “California sober” lifestyle

Billy Idol is opening up to People about his path to sobriety, revealing that he’s currently “California sober.”

The rocker says he decided “not be a drug addict anymore” after he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in 1990, but his sobriety didn’t happen overnight.

“It took a long time, but gradually I did achieve some sort of discipline where I’m not really the same kind of guy I was in the ’80s,” he says. “I’m not the same drug addicted person.”

“I mean, AA would say, ‘You’re always a drug addict.’ And that may be true, but I don’t do anything that much anymore. I got over it somehow,” he adds, noting, “I was really lucky that I could get over it because a lot of people can’t.”

Idol says his “California sober” lifestyle means he’ll have the occasional glass of wine, sharing, “I don’t have to do nothing.”

“I just tell myself I can do what I want, but then I don’t do it,” he says. “If I tell myself I can’t do anything, I want to do it. So I tell myself, ‘You can do anything you like.’ But I don’t actually do it.”