and his band Poison were no strangers to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in the 1980s, but the hair metal lifestyle was hard on Michaels for a different reason. Michaels, now 61, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was just 6 years old, meaning that he had to be extra-careful about partying hard with the band. “When it first starts to happen, things happen day by day as you’re going along,” Michaels exclusively told ahead of the release of .
“First, you’re living in a warehouse in a sleeping bag behind the back of a dry cleaner for three years. You’re trying to make a record deal. No one’s signing you.
There’s all that. And there’s moments that were absolutely life-threateningly tough.” Michaels’ family helped him track down insulin on the road, but it wasn’t always easy to get his hands on the medication he needed to stay alive.
“We’d go to the free clinics, and they had to make sure I wasn’t a junkie,” he recalled. “Because they’re not just gonna hand you a syringe. .
.. They go through, they test, they check, and it is an absolute struggle that I knew was coming.
So I just learned to deal with it. But I had some absolutely really tough days.” Things famously came to a head in 1987 when Poison played their first show at the legendary Madison Square Garden in New York City — and Michaels collapsed on stage.
“Every band I ever loved I went to see there,” he explained. “And I was like, ‘This is it.’ And about maybe four .