Araya Diaz/WireImageIn the fall of 2004, Creed's Scott Stapp experienced a very public meltdown, posting cryptic videos on Facebook and claiming he was broke all while being "under some kind of pretty vicious attack."
Six months later, the 42-year-old lead vocalist revealed he was suffering from bipolar disorder and admitted, "I had a psychotic break that was brought on by alcohol and drug abuse."
Now, sober and on medication, the rocker and his wife Jaclyn, with whom he has three children, have signed on for season six of VH1's reality show Couples Therapy, which premieres on Oct. 7. Opening up about his struggles and his effort to rebuild his marriage, the Grammy-award winner sat down for a revealing interview with Billboard magazine.
"I had a very public relapse, and it was extremely humiliating to me, my family and my friends," Stapp admits to the publication. "I took [an excessive amount of a] prescription for a diagnosis I had, had a bad reaction and went into an actual psychosis. I was out of my mind, unstable, and at risk of putting myself in danger."
"Our family thought, 'This is just another drug-and-alcohol relapse,'" added Jaclyn. "I looked at it as selfish: He's choosing drugs and alcohol over us. I had to leave; it was heartbreaking. A few weeks later I saw how mentally ill he was, so I stayed in communication."
Asked to share the scariest part, he replied, "I remember desperately trying to convince my wife that what I was believing was real—that I was being followed, that I was involved in some type of mind-control experiment. I couldn't understand why she couldn't believe me."
Stapp also revealed why it was important to him to publicly discuss his struggles. "Due to the nature of the relapse and the episode being national news, world news, it put us [Jaclyn and I] in a position to have to continue the story and share publicly what happened and what we were doing to treat it. We felt an obligation to not only the world at large, but to my fans."
And he admits their decision to appear on Couples Therapy was not one they came to lightly. "We consulted our therapist, our psychiatrist, our psychologist, our pastor," he said. "We felt like we made the right decision after [that]."
While Creed has been inactive since 2012, the singer revealed his plans to make new music and he said there's been talk of getting the band back together. "This journey I've been on over the last year has inspired a lot of writing. I'm going on tour next year, and we're starting a campaign to raise awareness for mental-health issues based upon a song I wrote. And Creed has a retrospective coming out in November."
He added: We all are busy working on our other passions, but there's definitely going to be some Creed in the future, starting with this retrospective. So when the time's right in the next year-and-a-half, I'm expecting some new Creed music.