Rolling Stone guitarist’s autobiography details lifetime of excessive drug use
Keith Richards only gave up cocaine use at the age of 62, after he split open his skull falling out of a coconut tree while high. That was just four years ago. His new, remarkably candid autobiography, Life, is choc-a-bloc with anecdotes of a length career as the Rolling Stones’ lead guitarist and a drug user. “I used to walk down Oxford Street with a slab of hash as big as a skateboard,” he writes. In another, he calls speed “the breakfast of champions.” The BBC interviewed addiction expert Dr. Robert Lefever, director of the Promis recovery centre in Richards’ native Kent, for reasons as to why Richards is still alive. His only conclusion: “He must have the constitution of an ox.”