Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up.

I guess I do feel the need to repent. I do feel like I owe the world a great album. I don't know why I feel that way. I just do.

When I read about myself and how writers have focused on negative stuff, it hurts my feelings.

I didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid.

I've already had a hard time dealing with some of the trappings of success and turned to some pretty stereotypical escape routes - ways of escaping my own reality and falling into some pretty clichéd situations.

It's not like I had a breakdown, though it kind of felt like it at the time. I agreed to everything that happened. You can't really be at work and be like, "That's it. I've had too much. I'm going home."

You can't show somebody what it's like to experience loss, but you can soundtrack it and help them experience their own loss. I am so lucky to have this venue to be able to say and talk about all the stuff I've been through.