In a new episode of Bullseye With Jesse Thorn, Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler opened up about his mental health. During the discussion, Butler revealed that he couldn’t talk to anyone back when he struggled with depression because they thought he was ‘moody and miserable.’
The bassist told that when he was on the edge of depression, he went to a doctor, who ended up telling the musician to have a few drinks in a pub. Butler realized this wasn’t the case and went to another doctor many years later, only to find out he was clinically depressed. He opened up about his struggles and shared:
“When I did get depression, people used to think I was moody and miserable. And they’d be going, ‘Well, what’s the matter with you? What’s happened to you?’ And nothing bad had happened. So they were saying, ‘You’ve got all the money you want, you’ve got your house, you’ve got your cars and everything. What’s wrong with you? Cheer up.’ And they couldn’t understand that it’s nothing like that.”
The rocker explained even having everything in the world wouldn’t help:
“You can have everything you can possibly want in the world, but when you get into those dark, depressing days, nothing matters. All you think about is, like, ‘So I’ll just end it or what.’ And luckily, I used to come out of it.”
The bassist also clarified that people thought that being a rock star would fix everything. Moreover, in an earlier interview, he said that he started cutting himself to take his mind off of depression and mental pain, later mentioning that he started taking medications that lifted the depression.
Butler mentioned one of Black Sabbath’s hits, ‘Paranoid,’ and revealed that it was about ‘all mental health stuff.’ Listen to the song below.