Korn frontman Jonathan Davis has opened up about his previous addiction to methamphetamine during the early days of the band’s success in a recent episode of Steve-O’s Wild Ride, a podcast hosted by the former Jackass star.
“It started before Korn blew up,” Davis explained to Steve-O. “I started doing meth when I moved to Huntington, and there’s a lot of meth there from Bakersfield, and I got hooked up with someone that was giving me tons of it there.”
“So on the first album [1994’s self-titled], we have a title called ‘Helmet in the Bush’ – it’s about meth. I started doing meth there, that was the first record,” Davis revealed.
The ‘Freak on a Leash’ rocker said that it was when Korn began touring he decided he had to quit meth once and for all, explaining that he “couldn’t function” while using the highly addictive drug.
“And then I got sober right after we did the third record [1998’s Follow the Leader]. So I stopped meth when we started touring because I couldn’t function; there’s no way I could be up for two days and tour and keep it together, and I had to stop,” he said.
“So the day we took off on tour, the first tour with House of Pain and Biohazard, we got in our trailer and we built bunks, and I just got on that bunk and I slept for five fucking days, got up and played a show, and that’s when I kicked it.”
“I couldn’t do meth and fucking tour, it wouldn’t work. So I started drinking, and then I became a raging alcoholic – and cocaine occasionally when I could find it. But yeah, they go hand in hand.”
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Asked whether he ever experienced psychosis while under the influence of the drug, Davis said that he “was always smart enough to know when to put it down.”
“When I start getting paranoid or weird, I’d just go to bed, but I saw a lot of people do that shit,” Davis added
“One of my meth dealers, I went to his house and he had holes on the walls where he’s like, ‘There’s cameras in the walls, man!’ And I start talking to people, they’re like, ‘They’re following me in helicopters and I could see the agents in the bushes!’
“And it’s like, ‘Oh my god, you need to go to sleep.’ I never got the weird, crazy psychosis, but I met a lot of people that did, and that was when it gets scary.”
In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, also got candid on his drug use during the release of Korn’s debut record, “I was a meth addict when I was doing that fucking record.”
Check out Jonathan Davis on Steve-O’s Wild Ride:
