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Korn's Jonathan Davis Details Past Meth Abuse

Korn frontman Jonathan Davis on getting sober after using meth in the ’90s.

Korn's Jonathan Davis Details Past Meth Abuse
Photo:
Jonathan Weiner

In a new interview with Steve-O, Jonathan Davis opened up about his past meth abuse, and how he got sober after battling with a four-year habit in the early days of Korn's career.

The vocalist admitted that he started using the drug before the band "blew up" in 1994, during their self-titled album era; he got clean after 1998's Follow The Leader.

"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," he said on Steve-O's Wild Ride! podcast, pointing to the song Helmet In The Bush actually specifically being about meth.

Read this: The 20 greatest Korn songs – ranked

"…I got sober right after we did the third record," Jonathan continued. "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. 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."

The frontman added that it would have been "impossible" to fully tour while doing meth – "It wouldn't work" – explaining that he then started drinking instead. "…And then I became a raging alcoholic – and cocaine occasionally when I could find it," he said. "But yeah, they go hand in hand."

Remembering his experiences on meth, Jonathan added that he "never got the weird, crazy psychosis, but I met a lot of people that did, and that was when it gets scary".

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