For the past two years, Max Bemis has been emo's greatest disaster, a gifted songwriter who looked like he might sabotage his career before it got started. A series of severe meltdowns (one of which ended with Bemis recklessly running into a busy Brooklyn street) landed the 22-year-old in a Texas psychiatric center in October, which delayed the J Records re-release of Say Anything's 2004 confessional, theatrical punk debut ...Is a Real Boy.

The candid frontman, who is now better managing his bipolar disorder, chatted with us from his parents' house in Los Angeles.

Ed. note: What follows is bonus material from Max Bemis' interview in Spin's April issue.

It's interesting because there are people who really own being a "groupie." But when I think of people who are serial daters of emo band guys, I start to wonder: is there's that much of a difference? I don't know if there is.
Yeah, because certain people are. It depends on the type of serial-band-dater-girls. Certain girls are in this to date people in a band, and then certain people are only friends with people in bands. They have no choice. From when they were really young, their only good friends are people in bands. It's the same thing as having friends who are in bands. I feel like it's unfair to hold it against certain girls who are just there because they are there -- that's just how it has worked out in their lives.

With guys it's the same thing. You can't hold it against you that you meet a girl at one of your shows. Most of my friends are in bands. I have a couple of best friends and really good friends from my childhood and from high school. Really, when I go out I tend to meet up with people from bands and we talk about fucking music business and it's pervasive. It just feels comfortable, and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

So let's recap. You were sleeping with groupies, you wrote songs about one-night stands and you theoretically came out of the closest, and now you are in love with this woman. That's a pretty immediate switch.
Yeah. That's what you end up going through to a certain extent. I don't know, this is at least what I went through. When you go through your life and you're 19, 18 years into your life and you're like, "Shit, am I going to be alone forever? Am I a son of a bitch? Am I doomed because of things I've done to never know love?" That was where I was coming from on this record. It was the main motivator. For all of that, I'm just searching for humanity.

I realized that I had to go through all of these things. I had to realize that I couldn't find it in drugs and I couldn't find it in hooking up with people. It's definitely not in performing or anything like that.

Two years ago when you would talk about all of this stuff you would never use the word "bi-polar." Did you finally think, I have to admit that I have an illness?
Well, we weren't that sold on what I had at that point. But it's really been affecting the fanbase, especially over the past six months. We've canceled two tours. They felt, "Wow, these people don't give a shit about us at all." Which isn't the case in any way.

I've never heard the full story of what happened to lead you to the mental hospital in Texas where you spent more than six weeks. So why don't you tell it to me.
Okay. The meds I was taking weren't very affective so I wasn't getting enough sleep. So I was already turning into a manic state before I even stopped taking my meds. So therefore I stopped taking my meds. Me being in a manic state or a semi-manic state from not being medicated good enough made me think that if I stopped taking my meds that I would get better as a person and that I would stopped being paranoid -- or that, perhaps, my paranoias were truths that I need to indulge in order to see things clearly. In reality I was being completely accusatory to everyone around me and I was being an asshole and scary.

It manifested itself into me leaving and walking through the streets with no money and no phone. I ended up in some part of Brooklyn. I got into a little physical altercation with someone and I don't even know why. I still don't remember. I was just like, "This sucks, I might get myself killed." I remember that was the moment when I was like, "I need to get to the hospital." I asked someone to call my girlfriend on the phone and then she helped me get to the hospital.

And I ended up in the hospital there. I was in a serious manic state for a while, probably like four or five days not including the two or three days before I went in where I was already starting to be completely manic.

You've said before people love you because you're a "lunatic." Do you think that people expect that from you now?
No. It was a cause for me writing this album. The whole album was a journey of being insane, because you are searching for something you can't find. It's about addiction and things like that -- those are forms of insanity. I am who I am. All this stuff came from my experience. No matter what, even if I take my meds and I heal myself I'll still be insane. It's, like, an illness that I have had that I've always had, especially since these kids have known me. The weirdness, the quirkiness of the material and how it's very blatant, it's just sort of how I am as a person.

I just read this funny quote from you that said something like, "I have more records by New Found Glory than I do Bob Dylan."
It's true. Well, you know, that's like a half-truth. I do like Bob Dylan and I've seen him and he's a role model. But I would rather, in the end, if I could never listen to either of those bands...the first two records by New Found Glory made such a big difference in my life. Where Bob Dylan, maybe I heard him earlier, but it's something I appreciate more than I viscerally enjoy. I grew up listening to the emo and the hardcore and the pop-punk. When I go back and I listen to that shit it still holds a greater place in my heart. I think there are better songwriters at this point doing what Bob Dylan's doing. It's not like it holds that much of a sentimental value for me. I listened to him, definitely. But I definitely have listened to blink-182 much more than Bob Dylan in my life.