Matty Healy is opening up about his battle with heroin addiction.
In an interview with Billboard, The 1975 singer admits that he was high for most of 2017, and the turning point that made him seek treatment came in November of last year.
He was having dinner with his bandmates, whom he's known since high school, and accidentally went on a benzodiazepine-based ego trip in front of them shortly after revealing he was smoking heroin again.
The next morning, Healy woke up mortified with his actions. “I realized that was absolutely f***ing bulls***,” he recalled. So he went downstairs and told his bandmate George Daniel, “I should go to rehab.”
That same month, the 29-year-old checked himself into a facility in Barbados and went through seven weeks of rehab. He hasn't touched the drug since, but Healy confesses staying clean is “something I [will] struggle with for the rest of my life.” To help hold him accountable, the musician volunteers to take weekly drug tests in front of his bandmates.
The band has begun to roll out singles off its forthcoming album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, including the politically charged "Love It If We Made It," and though Healy confessed some of the tracks reference drug use—he called “It’s Not Living If It’s Not with You,” “the big heroin one”—it's not something he wants to consciously romanticize.
“I don’t want to fetishize it, because it’s really dull and it’s really dangerous,” he explained. “The thought of being to a young person what people like [William S.] Burroughs were to me when I was a teenager makes me feel ill. … I still risked it.”
While in rehab, Healy came to the realization that self-confidence doesn't really have to do with what you think will make you happy, like material things, and that like with anything else happiness comes and goes.
"Thinking that the goal is to be happy is a bit mad," he admitted. "It’s more about fleeting moments of joy and knowing that life is hard.”
“Self-esteem requires esteemable actions," he continued. "Telling the truth. I think this focus on truth is what’s in the record.”
Read the full interview here.
Photo: Getty Images