Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes has spoken out about his battle with drugs, and how it felt to admit to the world that he once had a problem.
Earlier this summer, Sykes shocked fans and the rock world when he used his acceptance speech for Album Of The Year at the Alternative Music Press Awards to admit that he was once addicted to ketamine.
Now, speaking to Gigwise, the frontman has admitted that the speech was cathartic after believing that his addiction would see the ruin of the band.
"It wasn't something I was ever going to talk about to anyone, and I had nothing else to say," Sykes told Gigwise. "It was kind of like a verbal diary - it just came out. I hadn't planned it because I didn't know I was going to win. It felt like an important thing to say. I think a lot of people go through stuff like that all the time and don't know that other people do. It's just an incredible thing to me, to have gone from two years ago to now - it was such a change.
"I never thought I'd be stood on stage, accepting an award for an album, I didn't think our band were going to continue. You only get these certain points of realisation where you stop and think 'oh shit, what's happened, how have we got here?' That was one of those moments."
He added: "I couldn't watch the video back, but it was like someone else took over and said it.2
Watch our interview with Oli Sykes below
Accepting the Album of the Year for the band's record Sempiternal back in July, Sykes said: "I want to say something that I never thought I'd actually talk about: before we wrote 'Sempiternal' I was a fucking drug addict. I was addicted to a drug called ketamine, I was on it for years and I was fucked off my head."
During his acceptance speech the vocalist added: "My band wanted to kill me, my parents wanted to kill me, my fucking brother wanted to kill me, everyone wanted to kill me. They wanted to fucking take me to hell, but they didn't. They stood by me, they supported me through all that shit and we wrote 'Sempiternal' because of it."
Bring Me The Horizon are gearing up to release a new album in 2015, after performing their largest UK headline show to date with a massive gig at London's Wembley Arena earlier this month.
