The day that I wrote "Blackout" I actually had a dream about it, and I was dabbling into
alcohol addiction I was getting into some drugs and it was, you know, months on months
of just straight bender, binge.
And then I got off it thanks to a girlfriend actually at the time and my sister.
When they talked to me, and what really made me realize, is that they've been in situations
right?
The girlfriend I was with just got out of a relationship with someone who was in the
same boat.
And my sister was actually into drugs for a solid two years.
Normally, it’s people who’ve never touched drugs telling you they're bad.
So you kind of, it's like the form of you don't know what you're talking about, but
when you get people who've been in that situation telling you, you need to get out you need
to change, you need to, get away from everything you're doing right now that's kind of when
it really hit me.
I've always been a story teller.
I've always been able to express how I'm feeling with my words.
I think the song itself hit really close to home.
Especially like, I went into the dark place after friends passed away, and seeing family
die first hand.
It was just one of those situations where, if I could turn a negative into a positive
and maybe help out other people going through similar situations.
It could really resonate and help with what they’re dealing with.
I grew up in a small farmhouse, so I always had food on my plate I always had a nice house
where I could eat crime rate was low.
Always had a smile on my face as a kid they called me smiley Joe.
Like I was just a happy kid then all of a sudden it was like...
A voice popped up when I was a kid, probably six, seven, once you start getting the conscious
thoughts.
I never really had like a childhood.
When I was four I had Flesh Eating Disease and Scarlet Fever so they told my mom I was
on death’s bed and I was only four years old.
So I was looking at death as a kid.
Growing up, I was fat.
Like I was really fat I mean I'm still wearing clothes that I bought back in grade 8.
As a child I knocked my teeth off of a coffee table and I lost all the front teeth so people
called me toothless after like how to train your dragon, and I had super bad acne in elementary
school.
So I was getting bullied left and right for all those things.
I grew up with alcohol addiction all around me.
I think most of the family members on my dad's side are alcoholics.
I always grew up seeing it as an escape.
When I was saying I gotta go to bed early anyways, that's when the liquor actually hit
me, I was buzzing but then what we drank already came to full light and we ended up passing
out in his living room with bottles around us and his mom walked in and started screaming
at us and she told my mom.
And then that's when my mom started calling me 'cause I wasn't home and it just ... it
turned into a shit show.
It was anything I could get my hands on.
So if it was Percocets, if it was Coke, if it was Speed, just any powder would be inside
my nose, if I seen it and I knew I could get it, then I would do it, 100%.
The amount of joy that he had on his face when I was calling him, he's like, yeah come
through you can pick it up.
And that's when I wanted to touch on the subject of your close friends are there to fuck you
over in the end game.
If they can make a buck off you and they can pull themself out of the struggle when yours
begins, then they will.
She's a nurse so she sees everything that's coming in related to drugs and she's seen
that I was getting into it.
She was told by other people in town, like my auntie, my sister found out, who was telling
me to stop.
My mom just had a quick chat with me, and says, you can't change unless you want to.
I can sit here and tell you not to do it all day, but that's just gonna make you do it
more.
So she said if you wanna change you can change but no one else can help you but yourself.
When I was deep into drugs the only thing I wanted to do, when I realized I was stuck
in this rut and it was just a circle revolving around it.
The only thing I wanted to do was a gun.
I was scared of sharp objects.
I didn't want to die from pills or a overdose because I don't want to feel my organs shutting
down, so I was dead set on a gun.
Everyone around me, friends, producers, they all wanted me to end it with a gunshot because
it was a sudden end and sounded so good.
But what I did is, I pulled the beat back and put a filter on it 'cause I don't want
to spread that message.
I don't want to idolize suicide.
The thing I wanted to teach is that, when you think of suicide, you think your pain
has ended.
A lot of people think that as soon as it's done, it's done and it's peaceful.
But you've got to think, you're not ending the pain.
You're passing it to someone else.
Well, it's important to tell the story because not many people talk about it.
They're scared to talk about.
It's like how people are scared to talk about race on social media.
People are scared to talk about suicide or about sexual abuse.
It's all this big stigma where it's a trigger, so people are straying away from that.
If I could tell my story, and especially knowing that I'm still here and living my life and
regretting everything that happened, then someone else has hope in theirs.
It was crucial to include that line about regret and not wanting to die as soon as it
happened, because I feel like that can really pull someone back from their
dark thoughts.