James Hetfield Discusses Getting Sober (from Joe Rogan Experience #887)

Hello freak bitches. If you care about what you do, that's just part of the program. Absolutely. And there's a healthy part to that. And then moving on from it, it's easier now than it used to be. It would live in me for a while. Oh dude, you forgot the words to that song. And then it becomes a mental block. When you get up there and you go, oh shit, like a kicker or something. The guy going to kick in field goals, like, oh, I missed that one. I can't believe I did. And the next one, oh my God, now it's a thing. So getting over those mental blocks. When fighters lose a fight and then they come back and then you can see the discomfort. You can see the confusion and the fear. That's one of the hard, I think psychological issues are some of the hardest issues that people ever overcome. And it's just literally like a pattern of thought in your mind. But if you just decide that you're not as good as you used to be, you can manifest that. Even though physically you can do all the same things. That is so crazy. The power of thought, the power of my mind, it's pretty dangerous at times. And being creative, I make up all kinds of crap. Like Lars is doing that just to fuck with me. I know it. And then you talk with him later, it's like, what are you talking about? I just know what to do with your shit. Yeah, that's pretty, it's a curse and a gift, that creativity. How hard was it for you to get sober? Fear was a big motivator in that for me. Losing my family was, that was the thing that scared me so much. That was the bottom I hit. My family's gonna go away because of my behaviors that I brought home from the road. I got kicked out of the house by my wife. I was living on my own somewhere. I did not want that. Maybe as part of my upbringing, my family kind of disintegrated when I was a kid. Father left, mother passed away, had to live with my brother. And then kind of just all, like the family, where'd my stuff go? It just kind of floated away. And I do not want that happening. No matter what's going on, we're gonna talk this stuff out and make it work. My wife's of the same idea, same thought that her family, she was the invisible kid too. So we relate a lot. So there's no way we're gonna let any argument get in the way or just, we're survivors. We're survivors and we're gonna talk through it no matter how much. And she did the right thing. She kicked my ass right the hell out of the house. And that scared the shit out of me. And she said, hey, you're not just going to the therapist now. You're not just talking about this. You gotta go somewhere and sort this shit out. So that's what I did. So rehab really worked for me. How long did you have to go for? Well what worked for me was seven weeks someplace. Basically tearing you down to bones, ripping your life apart, anything you thought about yourself or what it was, anything you thought you had, your family, your career, your anything, gone. Strip you down to just, okay, you're born. Here's how you were when you were born. You were okay. You're a good person. Let's get back to that again. And then they slowly rebuild you. And then I went to another, they call them aftercare places. I went there to a couple different ones and they fine-tuned stuff and get you integrated back into life. Because when you're in this cocoon and you're frigging raw, I mean I was raw meat when I came out and you can see it in that some kind of monster movie, I was pretty raw still. I didn't know what I could or what I should or shouldn't do. So the last place we went to was a place that helps relationships. So they got me and my wife together and we'd see people separately and then come together and talk about what we did. And communication frigging saved my life, saved our family and working through that stuff. So very grateful for my wife. She's the one that didn't ask for this shit. She walked through fire with me and we walked out together stronger, way stronger than we ever would have been before. And my kids know my story, my kids know my struggles and they respect that. They respect me in a different way. I don't have to tell them what to do all the time or just be like, I can say sorry. I can tell them, hey, here's what happened when I did that. They don't need to preach to them. They got their own stuff. But now they goof with me. I ruined my trust with my family. And now by some miracle, they are goofing with me. It's like, dad, shut up. What are you, I'm like, come on. You're over blowing this. You're way out of, dad, you're taking up way too much space here. So they helped me. And I realized that there is help in a loving way. How long have you been sober now? 15, 15 years. Did it start out when you first started doing it? Did it feel like as you broke through and you went to therapy and you got out of rehab and you're going through this whole thing, was there a shaky leg period where you're like, man, do I know who I am anymore? Oh, absolutely. That was it. That is the power of the mind. Here's how my life works and to actually just completely throw that away and start over. It's like, well, wait a minute. Who am I without this? I can't talk to people. I'm anxious. I'm shy. I'm all of the stuff that I thought booze was helping me with or booze, drugs, women, shopping, eating, gambling. There's so many things that can manifest out there that it all goes back to one core thing. It's like, I don't really know who I am. So it took years and years and years to figure out, okay, I like that. That's part of me. And this is part of me, the anger, the quirkiness, the dork part of me, all these little things that make me, I got to hug them. I got to accept them and quit running from them and pretending like I am some immovable object on stage that's tough and nothing can hurt me. But inside, it's kind of a cliche saying that the harder that external shield, the softer the inside and the more vulnerable and balancing that. Almost like you're concentrating so much on the hard outside that you ignore the inside. Totally, totally. And then forget what I really want and then you lose yourself in that other person. And yeah, being in a band certainly accelerated that. There was drink and drug and all kinds of stuff just thrown at you all the time. And it starts off as a fun little thing and then it turns into an escape and then all of a sudden you don't really remember why you're out there doing stuff. I went on tour just so I could go to the strip club, hey, we're going to this place or we're going to drink here and knew all that stuff. But the actual playing on stage, it kind of got forgotten about a little bit. We get caught up in the rock star stuff and there's a song on this album called Moth Into Flame that directly talks about how fame can be this crazy drug and it can completely take you over if you let it. You're searching for that thing that's going to save you and it's you, it's in you, it's already there. You just got to find it and accept it.