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In an interview with Rolling Stone, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day finally opens up. He talks his outburst at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, and about his addiction to alcohol and prescription medication.
You may remember a "medical issue" that shortly before the iHeartRadio Music Festival, put him in the Hospital...“We were playing some shows in Europe. I was at my pill-taking height at that time, medicating the s— out of myself because I couldn’t sleep,” Armstrong said. “One night, I called a friend of mine who was in the hotel room next door. I said, ‘Come over, have some coffee.’ It’s 7 a.m. I’m like, ‘I just took all of this stuff, I can’t sleep.’ It was all normal talk, like how we’re talking now. Afterward, I’m sitting in my room, and I get a text from my manager: ‘Come on down, we have to talk about the Reading Festival.’ I went down there, he was sitting there, and he goes, ‘We’re getting on a plane. We’re canceling the rest of this tour, and you’re going into rehab.’ I was like, ‘What? What the f— are you talking about? I’m not going to do that.’”
Wanting to keep his obligations to the shows and the fans, Armstrong resisted the idea at first. “I said, ‘I don’t want to cancel these gigs. It just can’t happen. Tell you what. As soon as we get home, when we’re done with the press and this stuff, after iHeartRadio, the week following I’ll go to rehab. But I can’t cancel any of this s— now.’ It turned out I was a week ahead of schedule.”
