“I buried myself in my own coffin”: Matt Heafy opens up on mental health struggles
Matt Heafy has opened up on his struggles with burnout and mental illness, sharing how in 2024 he juggled around 30 projects at the same time.
His band Trivium released a new EP, Struck Dead, in October, which explores his confrontation with his own mind. Though still super busy balancing the writing of the band’s 11th album with fatherhood, Twitch streaming, and more, Heafy has a new perspective on his mental health, and is trying to scale things back.
READ MORE: This is why Matt Heafy uses a double guitar strap
In an interview with Guitar.com, he shares: “[Last year] I was doing 15 to 20 to 30 projects at the same time. I was producing bands, I was managing bands; I was making all these different products and trying all these different things, like scoring video games and scoring a movie and starting a pop-up restaurant.”
The pressure became too immense, and his bandmates and loved ones staged an intervention. Heafy went on to attend counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy: “What we determined through therapy is that I’m naturally very low on serotonin,” he explains.
“I have to be on SSRIs to help my very low serotonin. Once I corrected that, we realised that I’ve got intense ADHD, anxiety and OCD. I wanted to figure out what makes me tick. Why do I think this way? How can I stop going to such an extreme point every single time?”
Track Six Walls on the new EP is potent with brutal honesty about the darkness that overcame him. He tells us, “I buried myself in my own coffin, and the six walls of this wooden coffin are what I pictured. I’m finally trying to break free. It took, like, a year. It was in January [2025] when I started coming to. On the first tour after treatment – after 38, 39 years of living the same way – I was like, ‘Holy shit! I’m having so much fun!’”
Hear the track below:
Trivium’s new EP, Struck Dead is available now to buy or stream. Find out where you can get support if you’re struggling with your mental health.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
