SLIPKNOT Drummer On His Battle With Drugs: 'I Was Basically Dying'

In tomorrow's Kerrang! magazine, SLIPKNOT drummer Joey Jordison speaks frankly about his long-running, and very private, battle with drug addiction for the first time.

"I realized I had a problem with narcotics when I realized that I wasn't just hurting myself, I was hurting the people around me," Jordison told Kerrang! "I had a real moment of clarity last year. My girlfriend at the time, a girl who I thought I was gonna be with forever, cheated on me and I went on a three-week coke binge. I actually wrote some of the riffs for the new album ['All Hope Is Gone'] around that time, which is the only good thing to come out of it. But I just wasn't having fun anymore and my family knew it.

"My sister, Annie, kept trying to call me but I didn't want to speak to anyone. The phone was off the hook," he continued. "I didn't answer my door, the lights were off, and I was just fucking ragingly pissed off all the time. So she sent me a picture of my nephew. He was trying to play drums and he was wearing one of my old masks. And so I called her and she put him on the phone and he said 'I love you, uncle Joey,' and I was like 'Fuck it, I'm done. This is fucking stupid.' I realized I was basically fucking dying. It took that to make me realize what was really important in my life and that I'd done a lot of mean things to people."

Jordison also told Kerrang! that he's already bought his own grave.

"It's over down on Second Avenue [in SLIPKNOT's home town of Des Moines, Iowa]," he said. "That's what being in SLIPKNOT does to you."

For the full no-holds-barred interview, be sure to pick up a copy of tomorrow's Kerrang! magazine.