Lamb of God's Randy Blythe recently dropped his memoir titled Dark Days: A Memoir, which covers the ups and downs of his life as a musician and a person, on July 14. Blythe has been doing a ton of press to promote the book, most notably kicking off his whole tour by sitting in on the RIP a Livecast for 90 minutes last week. It was a great interview, and Blythe, in general, has been giving a lot of great talks lately.
The day after his book was released, Blythe was at Huntington, New York's Book Revue. Blythe sat down and answered some questions for Artisan Press (video below). One of the things he talked about was getting sober and it's a surprisingly cut-and-dry story.
"Most people, when they stop… It's entirely individual… Some people hit bottom because they wake up in jail, because their wife has left them, because they don't have any money left, because they lost their job, or because they just can't… they can't take it anymore."
"When I woke up the morning… I wrote about this in my book; I wrote about the last night I drank and the first day of sobriety. I woke up, and I was on tour. I was in Australia. I was opening up for the biggest band in metal, in the world — ever, in the history of metal. I was in a beautiful place. I had money in my bank account. My wife hadn't left me yet — and she still hasn't, somehow amazingly. And everything on the outside of my life, to anyone looking at it, beyond the fact that I looked kind of busted, everything would look good. Like, this dude is in this band, he's on this tour in this beautiful place. It's Australia, it's paradise. He's getting paid…. Not millions of dollars; don't get me wrong. But he's making money. I woke up one day and I just did not want to do anything. It's the strangest feeling to not want to… I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to do. I didn't wanna eat, I didn't wanna sleep, I didn't wanna read a book, I didn't wanna go to work, I didn't wanna… drink. I couldn't imagine not drinking. I didn't want to do anything. I felt completely empty.
"So, for me, it was a very emotional flatline… like, bottom. It wasn't anything traumatic whatsoever. I just reached a point where I was, like, 'I've gotta do something else, or else I might as well be dead.' And I firmly believe I would be dead [by now if I hadn't stopped]. So it was just a weird thing. I don't know why. I drank 22 years — heavy — and finally I got enough pain where it's, like, 'Okay, this sucks. I've gotta stop.' But it's different for everyone. Anybody who's ever had a drinking problem can tell you that it's different for everyone."
Interesting! I wonder if he'd ever tried and failed before that or if this was just a sudden realization that it was time to cut the shit and enjoy being in the band? Or the fact that drinking your ass off every single night gets old after a while and you realize that you're an adult, which is entirely possible.
Video Content Presented by Qello Concerts:
