Korn’s Jonathan Davis Opens Up to Steve-O About Past Meth Addiction

Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis recently guested on Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast, opening up to the Jackass star about how he quit meth. Davis reveals he was doing the drug before Korn got big, and he eventually quit after recording 1998’s Follow the Leader.

“It started before Korn blew up. 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,” Davis begins. So on the first album [1994’s self-titled], we have a title called ‘Helmet in the Bush‘ – it’s about meth. [Laughs] I started doing meth there, that was the first record.”

Davis continues, “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."

“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.”

Though Davis quit meth, he continued to struggle with substance abuse issues, becoming a “raging alcoholic” and occasionally doing cocaine while on tour. He also claims to have never been a full-on tweaker.

“I was always smart enough to know when to put it down. [Laughs] When I start getting paranoid or weird, I’d just go to bed, but I saw a lot of people do that shit,” Davis describes.

“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.” [via MetalSucks]

Korn bandmate Brian ‘Head’ Welch also struggled with the drug in his past, eventually kicking his addiction well over a decade ago. “It ruined everything in my life,” Welch told Metal Hammer. “It ruined my mind, my emotions, my relationships, my sanity.”