Ongoing History Daily: The day Michael Stipe went blind

For much of the middle part of REM’s career, singer Michael Stipe suffered from depression. As a gay man who had seen a lot of his friends die from AIDS, anytime he felt the least bit off, he became afraid that he’d become infected, too. It got to the point where he was performing self-surgery on himself in hotel rooms to remove skin lesions that scared him.

For some reason, he also started to neglect his contact lenses. At one point, things got so crusty that one of his corneas tore during a European tour and suddenly couldn’t see. He needed medical assistance and had to travel back to the US with his eyes wrapped in bandages for ten days.

Fortunately, his treatment worked he was able to regain almost all his sight. Seeing sunlight in a brand-new way is what shocked him out of his depressive state.