Close the curtain and smile: in a new book, Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction uses photo-booth strips to chronicle a strange year.

The past year has been sweet for Dave Navarro, Grammy award-nominated guitarist of Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. Last November he married former Baywatch babe Carmen Electra; their nuptials spawned MTV's hit reality show 'Til Death Do Us Part. He has new musical outlets, including the all star party band Camp Freddy, which features members of Guns n' Roses, Velvet Revolver, and the Cult, plus guest vocalists from Robbie Williams to Kid Rock. "We just do old cover songs, and it's always a blast," says Navarro. "It makes us all feel like we did when we were 13 years old, playing in the garage."

To top it all off; he's just published his first book: Don't Try This At Home, his page-turning collaboration with Neil Strauss (coauthor of Marilyn Manson's and Motley Crue's best sellers), documents a different year of his life, between the summers of 1998 and 1999. A rotten year. Navarro had split from the Chili Peppers and his girlfriend. Completion of his debut solo album was stalled. His heroin and cocaine consumption reached such monumental proportions that he suffered liver failure. Track marks and abscesses scarred his tattooed forearms.

Did Navarro go the obvious route and check into rehab--or check out "altogether? Nope, although he flirted with both options. Instead, to document his misadventures, he bought an old-fashioned photo booth and insisted that everyone--pop stars, prostitutes, plumbers--who crossed his threshold step inside (and sign a release). His Hollywood hills living room was transformed into a lurid cross between a bordello, a crack house, a late-night talk show, and Andy Warhol's Factory.

Aside from collecting the countless photo strips that illustrate the text--compiled from therapy sessions, phone messages, interviews, and dimly remembered anecdotes--there was no set game plan. "We didn't know what the story was going to be," Navarro confesses. "Fortunately, I got my life together at the end of that year. I did not initially have any intention of putting together a book to help other addicts." (His portion of the proceeds will benefit the Musicians' Assistance Program.)

Today, Navarro has replaced his bad habits with more positive ones. "I'm as obsessive with health as I was with destruction," he says. "I'm either shooting nine grams of coke a day or spending two hours at the gym. There's no middle ground."

Looking sexier than ever, Navarro still has to fend off amorous groupies despite his high-profile marriage. And it's not the ladies who give him the toughest time: "Men are much more aggressive about their advances. Ninety-eight percent of the women on this planet are afraid of my wife, so I rarely get approached by women!"

In one especially racy passage of Don't Try This, Navarro recalls making out with former Nine Inch Nails guitarist Richard Patrick during the first Lollapalooza tour. He's also swapped spit with Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis (in their "Warped" video) and locked lips frequently with Perry Farrell during Jane's heyday. Alas, the hard rocker claims these experiments have never gotten him rock-hard.

"I've tried to dabble in that world, and it's just not me," he admits with a shrug. "I've never been sexually aroused by a man. But I have yet to kiss Johnny Depp, so you never know ..."

Reighley is the author of Looking for the Perfect Beat (MTV/Pocket Books).