Taylor tells Spotify Metal Talks (via Blabbermouth: "I got sober about halfway through the recording process of ["Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses)" in 2004]. Well, I quit drinking. I didn't go in a program or anything like that; I just kind of stopped cold turkey. It was about three months into the recording process. And it was hard; like, it was really, really hard. But I knew I had to do it.

"The last night I drank [in November 2003], I basically found myself hanging off the balcony of the hotel room at the old Hyatt house on Sunset [Boulevard in West Hollywood, California]. I was standing on the balcony, I was just about to fall, and a friend of mine actually grabbed me and pulled me back in. If he hadn't grabbed me, I'd be dead.

"So the next day, I woke up, on the floor, covered in God knows what - just sick, sweaty, gross… I mean, just miserable. And I just said, 'I can't do this… I can't do this anymore. What the hell is going on with me?' And that's when I really kind of started to take those first faltering steps away from everything. And it was difficult; it was very difficult.

First of all, my health was garbage. I gained a lot of weight. My vocals were so shot… I had to basically start over on everything that I had done at the beginning of it. And that's one of the reasons why that album is really hard for me to listen to, because I was trying something different. Because I was, like, 'I'm doing everything else different. I wanna try something different vocally.' And I'm not sure if it worked, to be honest. I mean, it worked for some of the songs, but not for all of 'em. 'Welcome' is one of the songs, I think, it worked kind of well."

He goes on to discuss the difficult adjustment to sobriety, "It was a long time before I could feel comfortable with myself, because all I knew was who I was when I was wasted. I didn't know who I was as a sober person. I knew who I wanted to be, but I knew that was, kind of, a long time coming. It was about, basically, repairing bridges and dedicating yourself to being a better person. You can't be a better person until you just start being a better person. And it takes time for people to get used to that, it takes time for people to treat you that way. It took ten years. And, lucklily now, I'm kind of starting to feel the good part of that. But I'd done a lot of damage to a lot of people, and I'm still trying to make up for it. But it started with that album." -

Slipknot Music, DVDs, Books and more Slipknot T-shirts and Posters Share this article