Billie Joe Armstrong Opens Up About Addiction & Rehab

In an brand new exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, iconic Green Day frontman and AMERICAN IDIOT composer Billie Joe Artmstrong opens up about his battle with addiction and the the road to recovery.

While Green Day has released not one, but three new albums since his stay in rehab - the well-received three-disc rock opera experience of !UNO!, !DOS!, !TRE! - promotional appearances in support of the album have had to be sidelinined so that the rocker could recover on his own terms.

In an onstage incident cited as his "rock bottom", Billie Joe shouted from a Las Vegas stage during a set at the iHeartRadio music festival in September 2012, "I'm not f*cking Justin Bieber, you motherf*ckers!" before smashing a guitar.

In describing his many years battling alcoholism and a dependancy on prescription pills, Armstrong says, "I couldn't predict where I was going to end up at the end of the night. I'd wake up in a strange house on a couch. I wouldn't remember how."

He concludes, regretfully, on the period, "It was a complete blackout."

Armstrong certainly sobered up soon, though, thanfully - as soon as the next morning, as a matter of fact.

Armstrong recalls, "The next morning, I woke up. I asked [my wife] Adrienne, 'How bad was it?' She said, 'It's bad.' I called my manager. He said, 'You're getting on a plane, going back to Oakland and going into rehab immediately.'"

Let's hope we see a follow-up to AMERICAN IDIOT onstage soon now that Armstrong is ready to rock once again.

The new issue of Rolling Stone is out this Friday. More information is available here.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride.

More Articles by This Author...