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Stone Sour Guitarist: Maintaining Sobriety While Touring Is “Difficult”
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Stone Sour guitarist Josh Rand revealed that staying sober on tour has been “more difficult” than he ever expected. Earlier this year, Rand sat out the Canadian leg of Stone Sour’s Hydrograd tour in order to receive treatment for alcohol and Xanax abuse.
During a recent interview with Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3, Rand admitted that adjusting to life on the road hasn’t been easy.
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“Europe, for me, was really trying,” he said. “When I was touring in the U.S., it was easy for me to have structure, and that’s one thing that I learned on both of these tours—the U.S. one and then the European summer tour—I’m a guy that needs structure.”
He added that while he faced “temptation” a number of times while in Europe, he made it through.
“I have a great support group within the band and the people that work for us, and then my fiancée came out midway through, so that was the extra support,” he noted. “But it was a little bit more difficult than what I thought going into it.”
Rand said that “nobody had any idea” that he’d been on the prescription anxiety medication, Xanax, since 2010. (He’d been prescribed the drug for anxiety related to flying.)
“And then, over the course of the last couple of years, I started drinking, and when we started touring, I was basically day-drinking,” he told 103.3. “But [I was] not drinking to get messed up, but just to maintain, I guess. Or to be able to cope, to have this buzz.”
Eventually, Rand found himself feeling “horrible and miserable” and left his bandmates shortly after the ShipRocked cruise in mid-January to get treatment.
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In a June interview with Loudwire, Rand observed that while maintaining sobriety on the road remains difficult, the decision to get sober was something of a no-brainer: “In January, I just hit a wall with things, felt just terrible and decided that it was in my best interest and the band’s best interest to step aside and get stuff sorted,” he said.
The guitarist further detailed his decision, claiming that it didn’t take an intervention to get him into treatment. Instead, he made the decision himself.
“To be quite honest, everybody had went through check-in at the airport and they were already through when I made the decision that I wasn’t going to fly to Canada and I was flying back to Des Moines,” he told Loudwire. “I had just spun into a funk, depression thing. I just wasn’t happy and so that’s why I made the decision. I just felt like every day was a burden. I was just like, ‘This is crazy. I know I don’t have to feel like this.’”
Following treatment, however, Rand has found solace in his exercise routines (“Sometimes I’ll go to the gym twice”) as the band continues to find success.
“We have a very open communication with the five of us and truly a brotherhood,” he said.
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Paul Fuhr lives in Columbus, Ohio with his family and two cats, Vesper and Dr. No. He's written for AfterParty Magazine, The Literary Review and The Live Oak Review, among others. He's also the host of "Drop the Needle," a podcast about music and addiction recovery. More at paulfuhr.com. You can also find Paul on Linkedin and Twitter.
