Five Finger Death Punch’s Ivan Moody “died for three minutes” from alcohol withdrawal

Ivan Moody of Five Finger Death Punch — (Image credit: Travis Shinn)

MHR364 Cover Five Finger Death Punch — (Image credit: Future)

Five Finger Death Punch singer Ivan Moody has revealed that he physically died for three-and-a-half minutes following an alcohol-related seizure.

Speaking in the brand new issue of Metal Hammer, featuring Five Finger Death Punch on the cover, the singer recalled how his body shut down after he quit drinking in attempt kick his addiction to alcohol.

“I died!” he says. “I’d been on a bender for about two years, and I’d gone four days without drinking in an entire year! Which is ridiculous. So, for four days I locked myself inside the house, and the fourth day my daughter came over and I went to hand her a glass of water, and that’s all I remember.”

The singer, who battled alcohol addiction for several years before the incident, says it was a result of his attempt to kick booze cold turkey.

“If you quit drinking without the right medications and whatever else, you will die,” he tells Metal Hammer. “That’s what happened. I was dead for about three and a half minutes, and I became part of something while I was there. I say ‘there’, because I was not in this shell. And for the first time in my existence, I felt peace.”

Moody explains that he was “in a blue haze… it was very quiet and peaceful, and I remember not worrying about anything. I didn’t have an unidirectional view. It was wide, and I could see and feel everything. There was no matter involved, I was pure energy, and I saw this incredibly blue light. It was the afterlife and I was on the edge.”

The singer says it was his daughter who helped pull him back to reality. “The next thing I know, I was laying there with two paddles on my chest, and my daughter was crying in my face. My daughter was the one saying, ‘Please, not now.’ Her voice pulled me back and that was the wake-up call for me.”

The singer re-enacted the incident in the video for Five Finger Death Punch’s 2022 single The Tragic Truth, something he describes as “horrific.” Afterwards, his daughter, who briefly appeared in the video, asked him how much of it was real.

“I said, ‘My love, almost all of it,’” Ivan recalls. “And it was the most refreshing, fearful moment of my life, just telling my daughter, ‘That was your father, and that’s what I did to myself, much less the rest of the world.’”

You can read the full up-close-and-personal interview with Ivan and guitarist Zoltan Bathory in the brand new issue of Metal Hammer, on sale now. Order your copy here.

Five Finger Death Punch — (Image credit: Future)

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