Billy Idol took 10 years to get clean.

The 'White Wedding' singer, who has previously admitted to using heroin, got sober in the 1990s after ''bad things'' started happening to him but it took him a lot of time before he was completely drug-free.

He said: ''When you see the bad things start piling up, like I had this massive motorcycle accident . . . I started to have to listen. I had to start thinking about what I was doing . . . you get a realisation moment, but then you got 10 years to fight to get clear.''

The 59-year-old rocker initially had a ''lot of fun'' getting ''trashed'' but as addiction took hold, he found it hard to sustain a level of euphoria.

He told the New York Post newspaper's Page Six column: ''It was just a lot of fun to get completely trashed out of your mind, but staying like that was the problem.''

Billy has previously admitted his addiction caused him to overdose ''loads of times'' but even coming close to death didn't make him clean up his act.

He has said: ''I overdosed loads of times. But when you're a junkie even that doesn't scare you off it.

''If the paramedics carted you off, you'd discharge yourself and be back on it the next evening because that was all that mattered to you.

''There was no real rehab in those days either. The Betty Ford Clinic was open back then but if you were a young addict they just slung you in a mental asylum.''