Travie McCoy: “I Ran Through The Flames And Stomped Them…

While the band was blowing up you were dealing with some serious addiction and mental health issues. How difficult was that period, and did the industry exacerbate your problems?“I was a people-pleaser for a long time – I just wanted people to be happy, so I compromised a lot. When I think about how those problems started, I go back to an incident that happened when I was younger and a friend of mine overdosed on heroin. My friends and I went to the funeral, and we were all grieving in our own ways, which largely meant debauchery and getting fucking wasted. We decided to go to a party at a frat house, which was the wrong idea, because me and 15 fucking gutter punks don’t belong at a frat house at all! The minute I walked into the house, I knew something bad was gonna happen. A really good friend of mine, a girl, got hit in the face by a fully-grown man, and I lost my shit. I ran across the fucking room and all I wanted to do was kill him, literally put him in the fucking ground. I hit him, but as I was doing it I slipped on some spilt beer and my foot popped – I tore my ACL and MCL, and broke and twisted my meniscus. I ended up getting kicked and punched a lot and at some point they dragged me out of the house. When I got to the hospital, they put me on Oxycontin, and we all know that can lead to heroin, which is what ultimately happened to me.

“I’ve also recently been diagnosed bipolar, and honestly, I don’t know what that would have done to me had I not had music as an outlet. That said, though, I don’t think the music business helped with any of that at all. I’ve seen first-hand people dealing with mental health and addiction issues, and I’ve seen motherfuckers in the industry cater to that, rather than helping them. It was often a case of, ‘So and so can’t go onstage – we need to get him some pills.’ And it’s like, ‘This guy is having a breakdown right now, but all you want to do is sedate him or get him a bottle of wine so he can temporarily be back where he needs to be.’ That’s when I started realising they don’t give a fuck about us – we’re disposable to them. It’s all about the fucking machine – they don’t give a fuck what they have to do as long as the machine keeps going. But I’ve realised you really don’t have to be a part of that machine. Had a I remained a part of it, I wouldn’t be here doing this interview with you now.”