Matt Healy of the 1975 revealed his struggles with heroin addiction during an interview today (Oct. 12) with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, admitting that he required a stint in rehab for the problem.
Healy said his bandmates sat him down for an intervention of sorts during work on The 1975’s 2018 album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. The following morning, remembering that he had yelled unreasonable responses back at them, he thought, “Oh my God, not only was that the wrong thing to say, that was so cringe. Because I know that they will get over that, but that’s going to be an anecdote that they’ll take the piss out of me for years for—that’s the first thing I need to think about.”
His heroin addiction was “the first time where there had been anything that one of us was doing, or was into, that the others weren’t. … They weren’t into that, they weren’t attracted to that, [and] for some reason I was. It was the first time I had to tell them something. It was the first time that the idea of a secret existing even came out. It’s almost as if, like, is there anything else that we’ve not known? Because that’s a big thing.”
In rehab, Healy was struck by watching the people around him who’d lost everything as a result of their addictions. He realized, “I’d not lost anything. I’d nearly lost the respect of everybody I loved, but I hadn’t. Hadn’t lost my career. Hadn’t lost my possessions. Hadn’t lost my money. I was just walking a very, very thin line. I think that I was lucky enough in my condition in the way that I am as a person to recognize that what needed to be done needed to be done.”
As previously reported, The 1975’s new album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, will be released on Friday (Oct. 14).
