Nachtmystiumin Blake Judd kertoi heroiiniaddiktiostaan sekä fanien rahojen varastamisesta

Yhdysvaltalaisen black metal-yhtyeen Nachtmystiumin entinen laulaja-kitaristi Blake Judd on hiljattain kertonut Jedbangers-lehdelle henkilökohtaisista vaikeuksistaan. Judd kertoi kuinka hänen heroiininiaddiktionsa sai alkunsa, kuinka hänen uransa suistui raiteiltaan sekä minkä vuoksi hän varasti Nachtmystiumin fanien rahat. Alla on luettavissa otteita haastattelusta, ja haastattelunauhoite on kuunneltavissa artikkelin lopussa.

Huumeaddiktiostaan Blake Judd kertoi:

“It was in 2009 I broke my leg. It was right in the middle of recording Twilight‘s second full-length album, ‘Monument to Time End” and I walked into a grocery store across the street from the studio we were recording at one evening to just go buy some cigarettes and something to eat and I slipped and fell—there was a flower display that had been watered recently and was leaking—there was no caution signs or anything like that, I didn’t see the water—and I slipped and broke my leg. I was given a pain pill prescription for my injuries, which is common.

In the United States especially these—I’m sure it might be true worldwide—there’s a massive heroin epidemic. They say that somewhere between 80-90% of the cases of people in their 20’s and early 30’s who are using heroin, it’s the result of an accident that was treated with opioid pain medicine. Doctors were just passing it out like it was no big deal and these medicines have become very strong. Oxycontin in particular, that’s what I was given for my broken leg.

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I always stayed away from opiate-related drugs when I was engaging in recreational drug use prior to this accident my entire life because I knew that I have an addictive personality. I know I like drugs and I was getting away with doing all the cocaine and the drinking and partying and stuff. It wasn’t costing me every penny I had, I didn’t have to do it every day. I wasn’t physically addicted. It was a bad habit, but it wasn’t ruining my life and it didn’t control me physically and mentally. And I always stayed away from opiates because I knew that they would be the ones to get me.

Heroin is the granddaddy of all drugs and it’s killed so many people and it just ruins life. It’s pretty much a guarantee that if you start messing around with heroin it’s not going to end well. You’re either going to die or wind up in prison either for a possession charge or for doing some kind of criminal activity as a means to obtain money to support your heroin habit, or you’re just gonna live a life of absolute destitution and misery and the latter is what wound up happening to me.

Like I was saying I always avoided those types of drugs. I mean I wouldn’t even mess around with the lighter pain medication—something like Vicodin that is like a Tylenol that has a bit of opioid medication in it, but it’s not as strong as the more serious painkillers that are given to people when they, for example break a large bone in their body, like I didn’t have surgery and everything. I legitimately needed that pain medicine.

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But I was on it for about three and a half months and the doctor was happy to refill my prescription, you know, two weeks before he was supposed to, knowing damn well that I was at home eating way more of them than I should have been and he was unaware of a fact that I’m an addict. And I became severely addicted to those pills and as soon as they were gone I started buying the pills illegally and began injecting them with a needle. This was all in early 2010—right around the time we recorded “Addicts: Black Meddle, Part II” ironically.”

Elämänsä pahimmista hetkistä ja fanien huijaamisesta hän kertoi:

“I wound up homeless. In six months I went from living in a high-rise apartment on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago—which is some of the most expensive real estate in the city of Chicago, which isn’t cheap to begin with. Six months later I was literally on the street with nowhere to go, had lost all of my belongings, most of my clothing. I had a couple of bags and was staying at a homeless shelter at night.

Getting in a line with a hundred, two hundred other guys, to sleep in a big hot room together in bunk beds from 10 at night to 5 in the morning only to be woken up to someone flipping on a very bright fluorescent light, yelling ‘get up, get your breakfast, you have to be out by six.’ And then having nowhere to go, all day. And figure out how I’m gonna afford my drug habit, which cost me at the time, I could really only pull together like many $20-$30 a day.

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My whole day was spent doing that. I didn’t consider buying food. I didn’t consider trying to figure out a living situation, I didn’t reach out for public aid… I couldn’t even do that for myself. I could not do that for myself. All I could do was worry about how am I going to hustle up enough money to get myself high today and buy some cigarettes. Those two things were priority #1 over anything and I just didn’t care anymore.”

“Now I will say this, Neill Kreig wrote a really scathing story about being my friend that Vice published that you may have read online. Now I will say this, 30-40% of what is in that article is not true. He didn’t need to say the things that weren’t true or fabricate the things the way he did. And only he and I will ever know what’s really true in there. And I don’t think anybody will ever believe me saying ‘of course he would want to deny that.’ But he made up some stuff that just straight up didn’t happen and I don’t understand why he did, because the things that did happen, that he did mention, are terrible enough, that he didn’t need to exaggerate.

But in a weird way, Neill—who was my best friend for twelve years—Neill kind of saved my life by writing that. All the shit that I read… Strangers saying about me online, they were just the people I stole money from online. They were an email address. They’re a name on a screen, they’re not a real person. Which is why I was able to do what I did to the fans. I could never take money from a fan that was standing right in front of me.

Much like I’ve never shoplifted, I can’t steal, like even from a business, a big corporate business. I don’t steal from… I wouldn’t steal from McDonalds just because I don’t do that. I don’t pick something up and take something that’s not mine. I didn’t do it as a kid. I didn’t do it as an adult. I did not do it as a drug addict. I didn’t do it when I was desperate, you know? But if you’re just an email address, you’re not really a person standing in front of me. I don’t have to look you in your eyes and lie to you.

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It’s basically the most cowardly way to take from anybody when you think about it. It’s the easy way and you don’t have to have any memory of looking at that person or seeing them excited or seeing them disappointed. No, they’re just an email address and if you don’t want to open their email angry at you, you could just delete it like it didn’t and it was like they were never there. And that was how I operated and it’s so fucked up man.”

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