"I Loaded My Gun And Got Ready To End My Own Life"

A couple of weeks back, we sat down with Black Stone Cherry frontman Chris Robertson and chatted about his struggles with mental health. As you'll see from his words below, these are issues that can affect anyone and there is still so much work to be done to raise awareness of the daily battles sufferers endure…

“The crazy thing about depression, or any mental health issue for that matter, is that it’s the only sickness you have to prove to somebody before they believe you, which makes it feels like a battle you’re intended to fight alone. You’ll get told everything will be fine and you’ll get through it. But if it was cancer, for example, the whole world would cry because we all know how that disease affects people. When will it get to where we take mental health with the same seriousness? Because it kills people every single day…

“I was almost one of them. I was too ashamed and scared to say anything to anybody, to the point where my wife would go to work and I’d just sit at home and fuckin’ cry. I would literally pull my hair out because I couldn’t get anything to go the way I needed it to be going. Nothing was working. I had no money, we were barely scraping by and it felt like everything I was doing was in vain. I started to wonder why I was even bothering.

“It got to the point where I loaded my gun and got ready to end my own life. Luckily I didn’t. I got a few steps from my truck and God talked to me, or something happened, and I turned around to go back to the house. I sold the gun and the truck the following week and then started going through the process. I couldn’t take the chance of not turning around next time. I had a family – this was before my son was born, but I still had all these people that depended on me. The day Between The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea came out, I was in a psychiatrist’s office for three hours explaining how bad I hated my life. Then two hours later, I went to do a meet and greet trying to hide it all from everybody, pretending everything was okay…

“But talking is what helped. People need to feel like they can call somebody. If you can’t talk to any family or friends, call the hotlines. Call a stranger. Call anybody! You need to let those feelings escape – you cannot hold that shit in because it will kill you. We’re all a bit fucked up. You just have to be okay with admitting you are too.”

Interview: Amit Sharma
Photo: Paul Harries

If you have been affected by anything in this article, please see youngminds.org.uk

Black Stone Cherry’s Family Tree is out on April 20 via Mascot. The band play Download Festival in June. Check out their latest single, Southern Fried Friday Night, below.