Muse Bassist's Addiction Inspires New Album

Chris Wolstenholme, bassist in the UK rock band Muse, has spoken candidly about his battle with alcoholism that inspired two songs on the band's upcoming album. The 33-year-old says his addiction got so severe that fellow bandmates Matt Bellamy and Dom Howard were forced to work on their 2009 record The Resistance without him. "Drinking all day every day is pretty bad. It's when you start getting to that point where you realize you can't function without it, where you wake up in the morning shaking and the first thing you do is go to the fridge and down a bottle of wine,” says Wolsteholme, recalling his darker days. “That's how bad it was. I was incredibly unhealthy, overweight, a mess." He also describes the psychological impact of his daily booze habit. "You've got anxiety 24 hours a day, you feel your fucking life's about to end, you're very scared but you don't know what you're scared of," says the bassist, whose father died from addiction at 40 years old. “I'd just turned 30 and it was that realization that if I go the same way I could be dead in ten years." The bassist quit alcohol with the help of cognitive behavioral therapy, and has written his experience in to several songs on the band’s upcoming album: “Save Me” and “Liquid State.” "'Liquid State' was written about the person you become when you're intoxicated and how the two of them are having this fight inside of you and it tears you apart." he says. "'Save Me' was about having the family, the wife and kids and, despite all that crap that I've put them through, at the end of it you realize they're still there and they're the ones who pulled you through."