Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler has opened up about his past mental health struggles.
In a new interview with TalkShopLive, the bassist discussed what it had been like to live with depression, noting how suggestions from the people around him at the time weren't always the most helpful due to them not truly understanding the illness.
He explains (via Blabbermouth): "Unless you’ve experienced true depression, you can’t describe it. It’s like you’re going to this awful black hole.
"And people would say, like, ‘Oh, just go and have a drink or take the dog for a walk.’ That’s what the doctors used to say. ‘Well, go and watch television or read a book.’ And, of course, you’ve got no interest in anything.”
Speaking of what he would do to try to combat the illness, Butler continues, "So the only way I could express myself was writing the lyrics for [Black Sabbath’s] Paranoid.
"I mean, I wasn’t depressed all the time, but when I used to get the bouts of depression, you just couldn’t explain it to anyone, and you were terrified that you [would] go to a mental health person, maybe, and they put you in hospital for years, in a mental institution.
"So you’d never go to doctors or anything like that. And so you just had to get on with it. And the only way I could get it out of my system was to write the lyrics.”
When questioned about his current mental health state, the musician responds, "Good now, yeah. ‘Cause in 1999, I was finally properly diagnosed, and they put me on Prozac for six weeks. And the doctor says, ‘It’s not gonna work straight away. Keep taking it for six weeks and eventually you’ll start feeling like normal again.’
“And I said, ‘Well, what’s normal?’ After six weeks, this big cloud seemed to lift off me. It was great.”
Butler previously spoke of his mental health struggles during an interview with NPR’s Bullseye With Jesse Thorn last year, explaining how when he was depressed friends around him would call him "moody and miserable”.
He 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. You can have everything you can possibly want in the world, but when you get into those dark, depressing days, nothing matters."
Recently, Butler appeared in a promotional ad for Birmingham Premier League football club Aston Villa with fellow Sabbath brethren Ozzy Osbourne.
The trailer was released to unveil the club's new home kit for the 2024 season.
