The legendary Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler dealt with depression for decades until he finally managed to get better. As the musician, who is currently promoting his biography “Into The Void”, said in an interview with TalkShopLive (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), it was just in the 90s that he finally found a doctor who could help him.
The musician recalled that back in the 60s and 70s people were afraid to go to the doctor and talk about mental health because they were afraid someone could put them in a mental institution. So he had to deal with depression for decades until he was finally medicated properly.
Geezer Butler recalls how he overcame depression
“Unless you’ve experienced true depression, you can’t describe it. It’s like you’re going to this awful black hole. 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. So the only way I could express myself was writing the lyrics for ‘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 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.”
“(I’m doing) 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,” Geezer Butler said.
Butler helped to form Black Sabbath back in 1968 and was part of the band until 1984, returning in 1987, 1990 to 1994, 1997 to 2006 and 2011 to 2017.
