Geezer Butler is opening up about his past battles with depression.
In a new interview, the Black Sabbath bassist said, “When you’re in it, you don’t think you’re going to get out of it. I’d go into this big black hole. And once you’re in it, you can’t remember what normal life was like.”
Discussing his past, Butler said, “Back then nobody ever said anything about depression or anything like that, and people were terrified to mention that you might be depressed because you automatically thought you were gonna be taken away to a mental hospital and be locked away forever. So you couldn’t talk about it to people in case that happened.”
“One day I got a really bad bout of depression and I went to the doctor and he said, ‘Oh, go down the pub and have a couple of pints. Or take the dog for a walk or something. You’ll be all right.’ And it was, like, ‘No, I’m not gonna be all right. It doesn’t work like that.’ And that kept happening,” Butler explained.
“They’d be going, ‘Well, what’s the matter with you? What’s happened to you?’ And nothing bad had happened. So they were saying, ‘You’ve got all the money you want, you’ve got your house, you’ve got your cars and everything. What’s wrong with you? Cheer up.’ And they couldn’t understand that it’s nothing like that.” Butler continued, “You can have everything you can possibly want in the world, but when you get into those dark, depressing days, nothing matters.”
Butler said he wasn’t diagnosed with depression until the 90s. Following the diagnosis, he began taking antidepressants and has remained medicated since. For more insight into Butler’s life, read his autobiography Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath―And Beyond.