Chester Bennington was Struggling with Addiction in his Final Days

When Chester Bennington took his own life on July 20, it was a shock. To those on the outside, he seemed to be in great shape. A loving family. A successful band. A new house. A fantastic European tour had just ended and big tour North American tour was about to being. Chester was everywhere, promoting the new Linkin Park album to anyone who would listen. He told people he was “feeling very creative” and that there “was so much to live for.” Even the day before he died, he was emailing Matt Sorum of Guns ‘N Roses, saying he wanted to work again with him in the side project known as Kings of Chaos.

Everything was fine. Except it wasn’t.

According to a new article in Rolling Stone, Chester spent his last days struggling with the demons of addiction and depression. That Chester had these issues is well-known; he talked about them openly and he poured a lot of his pain into Linkin Park lyrics.

The 2006 trip to rehab seemed to be sticking–until a three-day relapse last August. Okay, fine. A slip. But then there was another in October. Heavy blackout drinking.

However, this past June he told a friend he’d been sober for six months. But there appears to have been at least one final slip. A half-empty bottle of booze was found near his body.

Rolling Stone quotes a friend: “We don’t know how much, but it doesn’t take much when you’re that advanced an alcoholic and an addict and you’re battling to the extent he described to me. You don’t need much to lose your mind for a minute.”

His friend Ryan Shuck did notice something about Chester in his final days. “He was describing an hour-by-hour battle with addiction. When I look at it now, it’s horrifying. He was telling me, down to the detail, what he would do in the first hour he wanted to drink: ‘I basically just take it hour-by-hour every day.’ ”

Shuck and another of Chester’s friends don’t believe that his death had anything to do with Chris Cornell’s suicide. The fact that Chester died on Chris’ 53rd birthday is being dismissed as a coincidence.

Read the whole article here.