Slash has always been upfront about his battles with drugs and alcohol, but in a recent episode of the podcast WTF With Marc Maron he got real about how he quit smoking cigarettes.
The Guns n' Roses lead guitarist says it's been nearly 10 years since he quit, spurred on both by his mother's death from cancer in 2009 and by a bout of pneumonia he'd contacted when his now ex-wife Perla made him attend a Cher concert with her in Las Vegas. Slash claims he didn't enjoy the show at all and ended up stepping outside a number of times to smoke. That's where he caught pneumonia.
By the next day his breathing had gotten so bad he couldn't smoke In fact, he could barely breathe and spent the next two weeks on his back where he quit cigarettes. He used the patch to help him "get the edge off" once his breathing returned to normal, and eventually moved on to smokeless tobacco for a long time, though he's since switched to nicotine gum. He says he still gets cravings for a smoke from time to time.
Elsewhere in the interview, Slash also recalls how, before he quit, he would get fined a hundred pounds a cigarette by venues in Britain for smoking on stage. He says he had to make up stories about why he needed to smoke in order to avoid paying the fines.