Korn’s Jonathan Davis Details His Past Meth Habit
In a recently-released episode of Steve-O’s Wild Ride, a podcast hosted by the former Jackass star, Korn frontman Jonathan Davis went into detail about his past drug use, including his abuse of crystal meth in the band’s early days.
Asked directly when his drug problem began – an issue he hasn’t been shy about discussing in the past — Davis answered:
“It started before Korn blew up. I started doing meth when I moved to Huntington, and there’s a lot of meth there from Bakersfield, and I got hooked up with someone that was giving me tons of it there.
“So on the first album [1994’s self-titled], we have a title called ‘Helmet in the Bush‘ – it’s about meth. [Laughs] I started doing meth there, that was the first record.
“And then I got sober right after we did the third record [1998’s ‘Follow the Leader’]. So I stopped meth when we started touring because I couldn’t function; there’s no way I could be up for two days and tour and keep it together, and I had to stop.
“So the day we took off on tour, the first tour with House of Pain and Biohazard, we got in our trailer and we built bunks, and I just got on that bunk and I slept for five fucking days, got up and played a show, and that’s when I kicked it.”
Davis said of his inability to tour while doing meth:
“No, it was impossible; I couldn’t do meth and fucking tour, it wouldn’t work. So I started drinking, and then I became a raging alcoholic – and cocaine occasionally when I could find it. But yeah, they go hand in hand.”
Asked if he ever had psychotic episodes while on drugs during which he saw hallucinations, Davis replied:
“I was always smart enough to know when to put it down. [Laughs] When I start getting paranoid or weird, I’d just go to bed, but I saw a lot of people do that shit.
“One of my meth dealers, I went to his house and he had holes on the walls where he’s like, ‘There’s cameras in the walls, man!’ And I start talking to people, they’re like, ‘They’re following me in helicopters and I could see the agents in the bushes!’
“And it’s like, ‘Oh my god, you need to go to sleep.’ I never got the weird, crazy psychosis, but I met a lot of people that did, and that was when it gets scary.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Davis talks about near death experiences, Woodstock ’99, and his severe childhood asthma. You can read transcribed excerpts at Ultimate Guitar or listen to the chat below.
