Ivan Moody of Five Finger Death Punch is one of the great success stories of modern rock. Along with becoming quite well-known through FFDP, Moody amazingly managed to change his life after a highly public alcoholism episode. The musician has been sober for four and a half years and told Loudwire the entire account of his journey to rehabilitation.
“The energy I put into being drunk… that was exhausting,” Moody recalls. “In the mornings I would wake up on the bus and I could always judge how my day was gonna go by the reaction of everybody in the front lounge. I’d walk out in the front lounge and I’d kinda peek my head through. If everybody kinda gave me the scuff look or a dirty look, I knew something happened the night before.”
Onstage meltdowns from a few of those difficult nights’ episodes were captured on camera by audience members and published on YouTube and social media. In a 2015 incident in Memphis, Moody and the drummer at the time, Jeremy Spencer, got into a heated argument, and Moody repeatedly left the stage while doing so. The year after, before FFDP finished their act in Worcester, Massachusetts, Moody announced that his mother was “passing away today” and exited the stage. Later, Ivan’s sister Sandi stated, “No one in our family is sick or dying today,” and she attributed her brother’s actions to drinking.
These were just a few of the problems that necessitated Moody’s temporary replacement by Phil Labonte and Tommy Vext during live performances. However, Moody only understood he needed to stop drinking after having alcohol-related seizures, being forced into a coma, and flatlining for two minutes.“The biggest part of it is my legacy,” Moody shares one of his main motivations. “Just seeing peers of mine, Chester [Bennington] included, people that fought with addiction — Scott Weiland, Layne Staley… the list goes on and on. I didn’t want to be one of those headstones where people walked by and took pictures in front of it and had some lost fucking idea of who they thought I should be or was. It really came down to legacy. How did I want to be remembered? How did I want my kids to go through the rest of their lives answering for me? Not being proud of who their father was.”
At the height of his addiction, Moody recounts, his bandmates as well as his family and childhood friends stopped communicating with him. Rob Halford, who has been in recovery for decades, was the only one open to taking Ivan’s calls.
“When I was in my fifth recovery center, Rob Halford [reached out to my manager]. He said, ‘I really want to meet this gentleman, I want to know this kid. I want him to know there’s somebody out here who understands.’ When I was in this center, we got four phone calls a day, five-minute intervals. I made it a point to call him once a day … That’s one of my heroes. Taking those phone calls meant so much to me, that somebody of a different status was reaching down for me and saying, ‘It’s okay, dude. We’ve been there. I’ve been there.’”
Going on nearly 5 years of sobriety, Moody delivered some advice to anyone who is struggling with substance abuse. “Nikki Sixx once told me, ‘It’s an honest program.’ That’s really fucking cheesy but it’s very, very, very true. You have to be able to identify with yourself, confront yourself and embrace the goods and the bads of yourself. You have to be willing to commit everything you’ve got to it. And when I say hate [alcohol], I’m talking worse than anything you’ve ever hated in your life. When I smell booze from across the room, I get bile in my stomach. I hate it so fucking deeply … Make it your worst fucking enemy.”
