In a recent interview with Metal Hammer, Nita Strauss, the talented guitarist known for her work with Alice Cooper and Demi Lovato, shared a deeply personal story about her battles with alcohol and substance abuse. Despite appearing to have it all, Strauss opened up about the toll her addiction took on her life.

“I wouldn’t say I hit rock bottom,” Strauss said. “I’m not like Nikki Sixx, but I was a dangerous addict, because whether I was doing drugs or drinking, I was very highly functional. I was doing all these things that could have got me in trouble, but I never played a bad show, I was never falling-down sloppy.”

While she managed to keep her professional life intact, Strauss confessed that her addiction was insidious, affecting her personal life in ways she hadn’t anticipated. “But it was really insidious, because it was bleeding into my personal life,” she explained. “Some of the guys in the band had noticed it, but it took my partner Josh, who is now my husband, saying to me: ‘If you’re gonna be like this, I don’t know how long I’m going to be with you. I can’t watch you destroy your life like this.’ This was the highest point of my professional career so far, and it just seemed unfair – I couldn’t understand why I was getting picked on, and why I had to be boring and go to sleep early.”

Strauss admitted that when she first attempted to become sober, she did so on her own, rather than seeking help from organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous. Her shyness played a significant role in her reluctance to reach out for support. However, she now acknowledges that maintaining sobriety on the road presents its own set of challenges.

“It is difficult, it really is,” she shared. “My husband still drinks, my friends still drink, Alice has been sober a long time but he doesn’t mind if people drink, so there’s bottles of wine in the dressing room and bourbon on the tour bus. The only thing we do differently on my [solo] tour is that we don’t put alcohol on the rider and don’t stock it on the bus. People can have a beer on the bus, but I say, ‘Please don’t keep a bunch of beer on the bus.’ But it’s hard. It puts your ethics and morals into perspective – I have every opportunity to drink and no one would know, but sobriety, for me, is what you do when no one’s looking.”