Photo: WENN
Blink-182's Travis Barker has opened up about the post-traumatic stress he suffered following a plane crash in 2008, saying, "I was suicidal in the hospital."
The drummer was travelling back from an event in South Carolina when the private plane they were in crashed into an embankment, killing the two pilots, Barker's security guard Che Still and his personal assistant Chris Baker. Barker - who was one of two survivors - spent more than 11 weeks in hospital, and endured 16 surgeries to treat his burns.
The other survivor, Barker's best friend Adam 'DJ AM' Goldstein, died two years later of a suspected drug overdose. Speaking of Goldstein's death to Billboard, Barker said, "He was my best friend. It was beyond friendship. It was like there was only one other person in the world. And then losing him and just wondering, "Fuck, is there something I could have done?"
On how the crash affected him, Barker said, " I was on all these crazy crazy bipolar drugs too cause I was suicidal in the hospital, masking everything from the pain of thinking, "Are my friends dead? Do you have to amputate my foot?" I was completely done. "
He also revealed that, as a consequence of his long-standing painkiller addiction, "I woke up during 11 of my 27 surgeries. That wasn't fun. And you wake up, and you don't know what's going on. You just feel extreme pain, and I'm trying to sock doctors and hit 'em. It really exposed what a mess I was."
Barker releases his autobiography, Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death & Drums Drums Drums, on 19 November. Read his full interview with Billboard here.
