Tommy Lee Used to Drink 2 Gallons of Vodka a Day

Tommy Lee can’t believe his doctor recently gave him a clean bill of health, given what he’s put his body through in his 61 years.

The former Mötley Crüe drummer appeared on comedian Bill Maher’s podcast, Club Random in an episode released Sunday, where he revealed that he used to drink two gallons of vodka a day. When a recent full body medical scan came back with a thumbs up, Lee was in disbelief: “Fucking impossible.” And yet, apparently, true.

Lee described his wild times, saying that back in the day his liver was “on crutches” and “barely functioning.”

“Alcohol is such a fucking weird one too because, fuck, it’s easy to fall in love with the way it makes you feel, the way it makes you relax, and then all of a sudden you’re like, fuck, I’m drinking two gallons of vodka a day? This is not … you’re trying to kill yourself now.”

When Maher expressed disbelief at the volume, Lee doubled down.

“Two gallons a day. I swear to you, dude. I swear to God,” he said. “Gallons. The big handle. Two.”

He also shared that he and bandmate Nikki Sixx had an unusual next step when they’d run out of drugs in those years, when he said the attitude was “quick, faster, louder and harder.”

“We would do this shit all the time. We’d run out of coke, well, let’s shoot some Jack,” he said.

As Lee said of his continued existence, “Fuck, it’s wild.” 

Lee recently celebrated one year of sobriety, he said.

“I pinch myself on a daily basis,” he said of his health. “I can’t believe that smoking, drinking, all the fucking dumb shit, the fun shit that I’ve done, the doctor was like, you’re good. I was like, let me see, is my name on there? … I find that fucking impossible. This is impossible.”

Vanity Fair has reached out to Lee’s rep for comment.