This Is Gonna Hurt

Nikki Sixx confronts addiction, art, and survival in an unfiltered chronicle of life beyond rock stardom.

This is Gonna Hurt is music, photography, and life through the distorted lens of Nikki Sixx, bassist for heavy metal rock band Mötley Crüe's and the New York Times bestselling author of The Heroin Diaries.

The text follows the bassist inside his Los Angeles studio, Funny Farm, confronting the roots of his self-destructive past.

Sixx pairs candid journal entries with raw street photography, documenting marginalized figures across Vancouver alleys and European cities.

Weighing thirty years of rock brotherhood against the grief of family loss, the volume traces an unvarnished search for creative rebirth. A combination of powerful prose and dramatic photographs, This is Gonna Hurt is an arresting, deeply personal look through the eyes of a real rock star at a stark, post-addiction world.

• Raw Honesty: Sixx confronts the long-hidden truth about his sister Lisa Marie, institutionalised since childhood with severe disabilities.
• Against the Odds: From surviving a homeless youth in Seattle and burning down an apartment on Sunset Boulevard to enduring near-fatal overdoses, Sixx charts his brutal path out of active addiction.
• Behind the Scenes: The bassist pulls back the curtain on band turmoil, from staging an intervention to save guitarist Mick Mars to launching the Sixx:A.M. side project with James Michael and Dj Ashba.
• Pop Culture: Working with antique dental moulds, bone saws, 1920s crucifixes, and an 1890s wet-plate camera, Sixx crafts disturbing, compassionate portraits that dismantle commercial definitions of beauty.
• Also by This Author: The Heroin Diaries.