Billy Idol had a ''realisation moment'' during his drugs battle.

The 59-year-old rocker endured a long-term fight with drugs and has revealed it took dramatic events for him to start turning his life around.

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 musician said that although his lifestyle was initially fun, he found it tough trying to maintain the enjoyment while he was on drugs.

Billy 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.''

The 'White Wedding' hitmaker - who's admitted to using heroin - got sober in the 1990s and previously revealed his addiction caused him to overdose ''loads of times''.

He recalled: ''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.''