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 Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:09 am
This is taken from the Kerrang magazine, sold in the UK.
For the first time, MCR's enigmatic bassist reveals the private agony that drove him to the brink of suicide.
Mikey Way has been wandering around bacstage in Las Vegas for a while now. It's a few hours before his band, My Chemical Romance, are due onstage to healine a free show at The House Of Blues. At first he's chatty, proud that MCR have risen from opening these kind of shows a few years ago to now being the main attraction. In part it's due to the astonishing success of 'The Black Parade'. More than that, it's due to the strange and alluring charisma of this band, a darkness operating beneath the surface. Thinking about this is when Mikey starts to sound nervous.
As he paces around, it's clear there's something he wants to get off his chest. He begins to talk about the making of 'The Black Parade', the record that's put him where he is now. He mentions the shadowy forces the band say drove them to the edge of disater during the recording process, hinting that the band member most troubled during those tense months was, him.
While his brother Gerard Way has been open about his battle with drink and drugs, Mikey's struggle has been less publicised. Yet he says, "I was pretty bad, I was two steps away from the Betty Ford Clinic. When Gerard stopped drinking [in 2004], it put me on the road to recovery - it's just that my road took a couple of years. Well, I stopped doing the drugs, so much but it was more the drinking that I latched onto. I didn't have a problem because it wasn't making me depressed. But then, later on in life, I realised I had a real problem."
As he speaks it becomes clear just how difficult life has been for Mikey in the last year. Quietly, as he talks, he reveals how he became paralysed by depression to such an extent that he was close to leaving the band, leaving his friends and more worringly, how he even thought of suicide.
WHAT WERE YOU GOING THROUGH DURING THE RECORDING OF 'THE BLACK PARADE'?
"It was a mixture of being 25 and taking a cocktail of anti-depressants and drinking on them. I had stopped doing drugs, but I was really depressed. There were a lot of traumatic events that I had been through that I hadn't properly processed or accepted. Also I moved to Brooklyn just after we got home from touring 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge' [in late 2005] and it was the first time we'd had the chance to be home for any length of time. It was the first chance we'd had to be normal hunman beings for a while. That was a hard hit to me. It felt weird. I just couldn't get used to being home for two or three months. I just didn't get it."
WAS THAT CONFUSING?
"Yes, everything was supposed to be stable and great - but it wasn't. On top of that I had all these chemical dependencies and I had just turned 25, which depressed me. Life was getting to me."
WAS THERE A LOT OF PRESSURE ON THE BAND THEN TO WRITE A SUCCESSFUL FOLLOW-UP TO 'THREE CHEERS FOR SWEET REVENGE'?
"Yes, there was the pressure too. People were saying, 'You guys are making your follow-up, you've got to beat the last one.' That was in my head the whole time. Then I started worrying about my own abilities too."
YOUR MUSICAL ABILITIES?
"Yes, that and everything else. Everything - life in general - everything was going round my head."
DO YOU THINK YOU'VE BEATEN IT NOW?
"I don't know if I have truly beaten it. I'm a ******** better, though. I'm probably at 80 or 90 per-cent now. Basically what happened was that I left the Paramour house [the studio in which MCR recorded 'The Black Parade']. I left after I had a mental breakdown. I went through some trauma. I left the house to stay with one of my best friends [the band's lawyer and close friend Stacy Fass]. Getting out of the Paramour was the turning point for me. That house has just escalated everything in my head and made everything a million times worse."
WHY WAS IT SO BAD THERE?
"Here's the thing - being in that house was like being in another country. You couldn't get cellphone service and the internet was really bad too so it felt like all my lines of communication were down. I didn't have my driver's licence at the time so I was stranded on the property. It was miles from anywhere. We had these long vigorous practice schedules where we would wake up at noon and play until midnight. If you mix all that with the fact that I was manic depressive then it was as though someone was pouring gasoline on all my problems and setting fire to them."
THAT'S A VERY HARD WAY TO MAKE AN ALBUM.
"Yeah. And I almost didn't get through it."
WHERE YOU CLOSE TO SUICIDE?
"I was really close. I knew that I was going to leave the band, or maybe just leave planet Earth altogether. I felt like it was either one or the other. I just thought, 'I can't deal with this'."
WHO HELPED YOU THROUGH IT?
"Oh - everyone. My band, my brother, my parenst, my finacee, all my best friends. My friend Stacy saved my life. SHe got me out of the house, she put me up at her place and kicked me out of bed and made me go to my therapy appointments. She made me get active help."
WHERE YOU SEEING A LOT OF THERAPISTS?
"I was seeing four different doctors a week. They were two steps away from putting me into a hospital. I think Gerard wanted to check me into somewhere."
IT WAS THAT SERIOUS?
"Yes, it was really bad but I knew that being checked into somewhere wouldn't help. I was stronger than that."
IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE FEELING BETTER NOW.
"I'm on medication and that helps. My brother and I have a history of depression, it's a genetic thing. People aren't all wired the same. Me and him were born like that. So I take medication. And everything is great for us now. I'm happier than I've been since I was 14. I'm on top of the world, I really am.
I wanted to type that out, because everyone had a different thing to say about Mikey's depression. Now here's your answer.
Opinions?
EDIT: Please excuse any spelling errors I may have made xp
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Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 10:03 am
Thanks for posting this, it clears some stuff up.
I'm really glad Mikey is getting through all this okay. Depression is a nasty thing to have to deal with.
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Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 10:59 am
System Virus Thanks for posting this, it clears some stuff up. I'm really glad Mikey is getting through all this okay. Depression is a nasty thing to have to deal with.
I'm glad he's getting through it alright too. Also, I had no idea Mikey once took drugs, until I read this.
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Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:37 pm
Thanks for posting this, I can't get kerrang here. n__n
Unless I wanna pay tons. .__.
Anyways, I heard him and frank used to do a lot of pot but stopped quite some time ago.
.__. I didn't know he was still doing them.
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Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:47 pm
I knew most of this. It breaks my heart. :[
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Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 5:29 pm
Right after I found all this out, I went through a period where I was on the verge of tears about it off and on for about a week. Now I'm just glad Mikey's doing better. He looks way ******** happier, to use his word, which I am now going to use all the time. It seems he and Alicia are doing very well, and I think she's very good for him. I'm glad he has such a sweet fiancee, whom he obviously loves very much.
And I'm grateful to Stacy, too. She's the awesomest attorney in the world for what she's done for those boys. She deserves some sort of award for awesome attorneys. I think I'd send her a card if I could. Or a cake. Or maybe flowers.
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Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:59 pm
Thats Sad..But I'm SO happy He's Happy!
^___^
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Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 6:27 pm
It's freaking heartbreaking to read that.
I'm just glad he's better.
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Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 7:23 pm
I knew most of that, but i really didnt know the full extent of it. Its really sad an hartbreaking to read all of that, especially for Mikey. He's my idol....and to know that he's gone through so much, it makes me love him all the more. You ROCK Mikey....
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Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:30 pm
Depression is a terrible thing.
my dad is Bi Polar and my mom is manic so I can really feel for what Mikey is/was going through. it's hard as ********.
I myself (thankfully not as bad as my parents) have minor depression (ontop of that silly thing we call teen angst) and it blows.
But I'm happy for Mikey that he can sort out his demons and become a happier person.
It takes a really strong person to do something like that.
*hugs this thread*
Now I wanna give mikey a hug. O.O
haha.
Oh well.
I'll just hug the thread again.
*hugs thread again*
Thank you for posting this.
heart
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I EAT BRAINZ! Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 4:02 pm
fcktard. It's freaking heartbreaking to read that. I'm just glad he's better.
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Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 11:21 am
Too much too late or just not enough of this Yeah, I knew about some of that. But I didn't know that Mikey did drugs... Probably just Anti-depresants but I didn't know... Aww I feel sad for Mikey and what he was/is feeling... But I'll probably beat myself up for this later... heart sweatdrop stare crying Pain in my heart for your dying wish
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Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:33 pm
i'm so proud of mikey for getting through that. he and gerard both have been so amazingly strong. *wipes away tear and hugs the way bro's* they are my heros heart
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