How Alice Cooper Realized He Wasn’t Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper reflected on the conversation that led him to realize he’s a different person from the character he’s portrayed for over five decades.

Once riddled with alcohol and drug issues, he’s been clean for 43 years. But before that, as he told the Telegraph in a new interview, he was losing control of his life – even as a relatively late starter who didn’t start drinking until he was 20.

““I was sort of the Dean Martin of rock and roll,” Cooper said. “I was never drunk. I was always on this golden buzz, and I knew how to keep that buzz going. The problem was it was constant. And pretty soon your body’s going to say, ‘Hey, we’re in trouble here,’ and that’s what happened. I just started throwing up blood, and that’s when you know that you’re not in control.”

But alcohol wasn’t the drug that did most damage – he started using cocaine after he’d been told it wasn’t addictive if it was smoked. “This was at the very beginning of crack, and crack is the most addictive drug there is, by far,” he said. “That was really the thing that almost killed me.”

His first visit to rehab kept him clean for a short time, but one sip of wine reactivated his alcoholic tendencies. In 1983 his wife told him to clean up or move out, and that��s when he finally regained control.

Cooper recalled the light bulb moment that had helped, even though it took several years for him to act on it. “The psychiatrist had a great observation. He says, ‘How much do you drink on stage?’ And I go, ‘I’d never drink on the stage.’ And he says, ‘Well, if you’re in the studio, how much do you drink?’ I go, ‘I don’t drink in the studio.’ And he said, ‘So Alice isn’t the problem. You are.’”

That led him to the revelation: “It’s not the monster – it’s the doctor that’s in trouble. And I never thought of it that way, because Alice was such an easy character to push all the blame onto.”

The 78-year-old added: “[P]eople say [they’re] a carpenter or an engineer or whatever. Well, no, that’s not who you are; that’s what you do for a living. And I got to the point of understanding that Alice Cooper is what I did for a living; I wasn’t him. And putting that into perspective, you get a much healthier view of who you are in your life.

“I can play Alice now tongue in cheek, and have a great time… But being Alice Cooper is just something I do. It’s not who I am.”

Alice Cooper Knows What Kills Most People

He reflected how much had changed over the decades: “If you’re in a touring band, nobody gets high, nobody ever drinks; because now it’s a big business and you can’t afford to have a guy that’s doing that,“ he said. “In the ‘70s you didn’t hire the guy unless he got high, so everybody was on the same level.

“Now, almost everybody’s a health freak. Mick Jagger… does a half an hour on the treadmill before a three-hour show. Come on! He’s everybody’s blueprint for lead singers. Nobody gets better than that.”

He added: “I think stress kills more people than anything. And I have really unstressed my life… [A]ll the ducks seem to be in a row – but it took a while to get done.”

Cooper’s memoir, Devil on My Shoulder, is published on Oct. 8.