Illenium: Photos From the Billboard SXSW Cover Shoot

On June 29, 2012, Nick Miller regained consciousness in a Boulder, Colo., hospital room. The day before, he’d overdosed on heroin, the final act of a 10-day drug binge. Coming to, he saw his mother and the sadness in her eyes. He was 21 years old and had been sober for 15 months after time in rehab and years of opiate addiction. He’d been doing so well.

But his mom had known something was off after her son had gone quiet over text and phone. She called a friend of his, insisting they go check on him while she packed a bag and booked the next flight to Denver. The friend found Miller unresponsive, thrust naloxone — the opioid overdose reversal medication — up his nose and dialed 911. If not for his mom’s sense that something was wrong, it’s unlikely that I’d be here in Miller’s house on this chilly February afternoon in Los Angeles to talk with him about his incredible success as electronic producer Illenium. It’s unlikely he’d be here at all.

Sitting in the cave-like home studio within his large and otherwise light-filled house, Miller, 33, dotes on his dogs — the regal Belgian Malinois Grace and a small but fierce blonde dachshund whose dedicated Instagram account has 23,000 followers and for whom the house’s Wi-Fi network, “Palace du Peanut,” is named — holding them in arms covered in sacred geometry and Eye of Sauron tattoos. He makes jokes and direct eye contact, speaks in ski-bum parlance (“fire,” “sick,” “chillin’ ”), endearingly giggles and generally comes off as a person worth rooting for.

I ask Miller what he’d say to that hospital room version of himself, given everything that has happened since. His answer is immediate: “There’s no way I would have even believed the possibilities.”

Read the full cover story here.