Former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley recalled the phone call that led him to finally step away from alcohol 13 years ago.
He’d begun drinking at the age of 13 and battled with addiction issues since the ‘70s before a conversation with his daughter in 2006 persuaded him that he had to stop.
Frehley recalled how his last drinking session had involved Slash and Eddie Trunk, telling the SiriusXM presenter in a new interview: “I ended up with five girls in my room in Vegas. I think I kept it going for another month. And then I got a phone call from my daughter, Monique, and she was living in Florida at the time.”
He continued: “A lot of alcoholics talk about how they had that moment of clarity… Monique called me up and she goes, ‘Dad, I heard you been drinking again.’ I go, ‘Yeah, but I haven’t done anything else bad, you know? I haven’t done any coke yet, I haven’t done any pills.’ She goes, ‘Dad, it’s time to stop.’ She goes, ‘You better call your sponsor and tell them to take you to a meeting tonight.’
“And I looked in the mirror and I looked like shit. I just said to her, ‘Alright, honey, I’ll give Jimmy a call.’ … he came and picked me up right after dinner, he took me to my first meeting, and that was 13 years ago. He’s like my guardian angel on earth; I got a lot of them floating around me – after 10 car accidents, someone’s got to be helping me!”
Frehley responded to Trunk’s suggestion that people still thought he was “loaded” by paraphrasing an Abraham Lincoln quote. “If you want to find the bad in people, and look for the bad in people, you surely will.” He went on: “There’s always those people who want to see somebody fall, and people who want to look at the best in people. I always try to look at the good in people. The glass is half full, not half empty.”
He noted: “[E]very time I perform a concert I usually have meet-and-greets after the show… at least one person comes up to me and says, ‘Ace, I’ve been sober two years,’ ‘Ace, I’ve been sober five years.’ I’m helping people live longer lives, more fruitful lives, because I’m a power of example. Go figure!”