Following the release of The 1975’s latest single “Give Yourself A Try,” frontman Matty Healy has opened up about a recent stint in rehab. The confession appeared in the band’s feature with DIY Mag, after Healy was asked about a lyric in the song that referenced drug addiction.
The 29-year-old singer revealed that ahead of recording the band’s third album, he had a drug “problem,” and voluntarily went to Barbados to get clean. “I went and worked with horses for seven weeks. I didn’t get dragged away to rehab, I was fucking exhausted and at the [risk] of being another statistic in that prescription drug opioid crisis that hit America, because that’s the way I dealt with things on tour,” Healy said in the interview.
The video for “Give Yourself A Try” directly confronts Healy’s mental health battles by showing him in therapy, where he shares his goal to “be as earnest as he feels.” The singer shared similar sentiments about sincerity with DIY and detailed the feelings that led him to rehab in the first place. “I loved going out on stage and talking to 12,000 people. I didn’t like going back to my hotel room and sitting on my own for another three hours and then being expected to go to bed when I wanted to, I don’t know, change culture or something ridiculously grandiose,” he continued.
“I knew that I wasn’t going to detox myself, so I went away and I got clean. I wasn’t going there to get straight edge, I didn’t have a drinking problem or anything else, I was just chemically dependent on a substance and I didn’t wanna make a record as a fucking junkie. Who wants to hear that?” Healy told DIY.