Linkin Park pulled together to tackle drink & drug abuse

News
By ( Metal Hammer ) published

Shinoda says band were on hand to help Bennington through his addiction battle

Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda says the band pulled together to help Chester Bennington through his drink and drug problems.

The frontman dabbled with drugs from an early age and the problems returned at the height of the band’s success as alcoholism took a firm grip of his life.

But fellow singer Shinoda says he and the rest of the group pulled together to make sure Bennington’s personal life got back on track.

He tells the Metro: “When Chester had some problems, everybody jumped up to help him and tell him how supportive we wanted to be and how much it means to us that he was doing something positive.

“We’re lucky to have a band full of guys who have their head screwed on straight. A lot of life experience goes into that, but we just support each other. We have each other’s back. At the end of the day we love what we do. We’re not willing to throw that away on anything.”

On their recent stop in the UK as part of their world tour for new album The Hunting Party, Bennington told TeamRock that he turned to drugs after being sexually abused as a child.

He says: “I’ve done everything. I got really, really bad. When I was 13 to 16, I was doing a ton of LSD and a lot of drinking. Then, when we couldn’t find acid, we turned to speed. I got really bad, really quickly.”

Stef Lach

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.