"Justin was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1997: “He was actually working as a supervisor in a mental health facility. He went through a dark period that year, where he went from an employee to a patient for a few weeks.” Hudson added, “Yes, Justin is on Paxil, but he feels that the brutal honesty of his lyrics are his true therapy.”
He and other members of the band were doing drugs because they thought that was what rockers were supposed to do. But as Furstenfeld told Kaufman, “As I abused drugs I realized they were driving me nuts.” He added, “In October of [the year when I was 21] I realized I had to clean myself up and do something positive. That’s when our lives changed.”
Blue October is the name of the band btw not that’s here or there. The drummer in the band Jeremy Furstenfeld is diagnosed with bipolar, again not that’s here or there but shows how much they accomplished with their mental illness and in life in general. So many songs to choose from… Probably the last that resonated with me.
Blue October is awesome; Definitely one of my favorites.
BTW, I don’t think he (Justin) was ever diagnosed with SZ, just Bipolar I. There aren’t any interviews or anything that would suggest that he was, just that random (and rare) factoid online.
In fact this interview suggests he wasn’t:
“He described the schizophrenic patients as “some of the most magnificent artists, and some of the most mad people in the world. Confused, lost. If you can just try to understand them, and try to get on their wavelength, it is such a different world. Just their style of living and the way they see the world is an art form to me, because it can’t be explained. And people just call them crazy and blow it off because they don’t even want to understand. I think that’s why I try to do what I do. I don’t really understand [them]—I’ll never understand because I’m not in their head—but I will speak about it. I’ll speak about it until the day that I die because I think they’re misunderstood, and I think they’re mistreated.””