Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

According to Johnny Bacolas, Demri was a semiregular visitor at the house. He declined to comment on any specifics of what happened between them during this period but described their relationship as on-again, off-again.

Though Ahern-Crane got a small glimpse of his drug use during this period, Layne’s friend Ron Holt heard and saw more, because of their previous friendship and because Holt was also using heroin at the time. They had a mutual dealer. Holt was a regular, but Layne got VIP treatment. Sometimes the dealer wouldn’t let Holt up. One time he heard Layne was at the dealer’s house. Holt sent word upstairs: “Tell him that Ron Holt’s here.” Layne told him to come up, gave him a big hug, and told the dealer Holt was to be respected. “Fucking Ron doesn’t wait,” he said. The two also had candid discussions about their drug habits, which Holt called “junkie talk.” Layne told Holt he was using three grams of heroin a day. Based on that, in addition to roughly the same amount of crack he was using, Holt estimated Layne was spending between $250 and $400 a day on drugs.

“Every time I saw Layne, I always told him how proud I was of him, and he always treated me like an authority figure. He always treated me like my work meant something,” Holt said. He tried to take advantage of that respect to convince him to kick drugs. “We were having a candid talk about heroin and stuff. I was on methadone at the time, and I was trying to talk him into stopping. He had this thing where he said if I wasn’t meant to be one, I wouldn’t be one.

“He got mad at me. ‘Don’t bring heroin up. If you’re not going to accept it, don’t try to talk to me about it. Don’t try to talk me out of it.’ That was a bummer to me.”

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While tens of thousands of fans were rocking out at Woodstock ’94 in Saugerties, New York—a show Alice in Chains was supposed to perform at and at which, instead, Jerry joined Primus onstage for “Harold of the Rocks”—Layne went on a camping trip near Winthrop, a small town in central Washington. His goal for the trip: to kick heroin. Also on the trip were Johnny Bacolas and two other friends, Alex Hart and Ian Dalrimper. He would try and detox on his own in the wilderness.

“He was using alcohol to help him with the withdrawal symptoms. During that trip, he was very depressed. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the withdrawal, because he didn’t bring any heroin with him,” Bacolas explained. While on a beach along Lake Chelan at two in the morning, Layne broke down in tears, crying on Bacolas’s shoulder.

“I need help. Would you consider moving in with me and helping me with this? I don’t trust anyone, and I can’t do this on my own,” Layne told Bacolas.

There was a bigger issue: Layne was suicidal. Bacolas said Layne wanted to jump off a nearby bridge. “He was at a very low point and dope-sick. He wanted to die at that time. I believed him.”

Shortly after, Layne and Bacolas met up with Hart and Dalrimper and went on a late-night run to a Safeway. “I remember some kid was giving [Layne] shit in the Safeway,” Bacolas recalls. “And Layne just fucking hauls off and clocks the guy.” Layne’s friends grabbed him and ran out of the store before anyone called the police. They wound up driving into a parking lot packed with partying kids. With Layne riding shotgun, Bacolas parked the car next to a pickup truck that was blasting “No Excuses.” Bacolas doesn’t know if this was coincidental or not—there may have been gossip that Layne was in the area. There were three or four kids in the pickup, and another dozen or so standing around nearby gawking at the celebrity in their midst. “They were cranking the song, and everyone’s like ‘No way, that’s not Layne Staley.’” Layne couldn’t resist. “All of the sudden, Layne just starts belting out the chorus of ‘No Excuses’ and nails it,” Bacolas said. “Right when the chorus kicks in, he just belts it, one chorus, and that’s it. It just shut everybody up. There was no question that that’s him now.”

Michelle Ahern-Crane hadn’t heard from Layne in a few days when she got a message on her answering machine. “Hey, sorry I haven’t been in touch. I went out of town,” she recalls him saying. “I’ll see you as soon as I get back.” Layne didn’t tell her what he was doing or where he was, but Ahern-Crane may have had some idea. “I’m kind of guessing maybe it was some attempt at kicking or something along those lines.” It’s possible the call happened during this camping trip.