Mick Mars Recalls Hallucinations of 'Aliens' and 'Cat People' Due to Substance Abuse and Mold Exposure

The former Mötley Crüe guitarist had deadly mold spreading throughout his Malibu home in the early 2000s

Former Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars is reflecting on a difficult period he faced in the early 2000s while the band was on hiatus and he was living in a mold-infested home.

Mars, who left the rock group in 2022, opened up to Rolling Stone about hitting rock bottom shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks as the band took a break and he "retreated deep" into his Malibu home.

The rocker, 72, said he drank excessively and started taking Oxycontin, Vicodin and Lortab as deadly mold began spreading, unbeknownst to him, through his house. Mars said he didn't venture outside often, as he wasn't on tour and wasn't recording.

"I used to see giant reptile aliens at the end of my bed," he said. "And little hairy aliens. At night, cat people used to come in, the kind my mother used to warn me might come and steal my breath. Luckily, I figured out that I was hallucinating. Other people never do, and wind up jumping out of windows."

Mars, whose real name is Robert Alan Deal, eventually moved out of the mold-infested home shortly before the band’s 2005 reunion tour, and also underwent hip-replacement surgery.

Related: Mötley Crüe's Mick Mars Sues Band After Tour Exit Due to Health, Says They Attempted to Fire Him

For a time, he lived with bandmate Nikki Sixx, who told Rolling Stone that he took Mars to the doctor and "spoon-fed" him because Mars "was so f---ed up."

Though Mars is in a better place now — he married Seraina Schönenberger in 2013 — he told the outlet that he only expects "to live another seven or eight years."

“I'm old enough, man. I’m not going to live to be 85 or 90, I just have a feeling. I don't want to, either," he said. "My brain doesn't want this ugly-ass body that's all f----ed up to keep going. I wish I could just take the information out of my brain, put it on a chip and into somebody else, or a robot. There's still a lot of stuff going on up there."

The rocker is currently locked in a legal battle with his former band, as he filed suit in April accusing them of kicking him out of the group in October after he said he could no longer tour due to illness.

Mars said that his "horrifically debilitating" ankylosing spondylitis diagnosis made it impossible for him to tour, but he still wanted to perform and record with Mötley Crüe. Still, he alleged that band members Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee held an emergency shareholders meeting to "throw Mars out of the band, fire him as a director of the corporation, fire him as an officer of the corporation and take away his shares of the corporation."

When he didn't "go away quietly," they allegedly proceeded to fire him from six additional band corporations and LLCs, where each member splits the profits evenly (Reps for Mars and the band did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment at the time).

“When they wanted to get high and f--- everything up, I covered for them,” Mars told Rolling Stone. "Now they’re trying to take my legacy away, my part of Mötley Crüe, my ownership of the name, the brand. How can you fire Mr. Heinz from Heinz ketchup? He owns it. Frank Sinatra's or Jimi Hendrix's legacy goes on forever, and their heirs continue to profit from it. They're trying to take that away from me. I'm not going to let them."

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