JOHNNY KELLY, former drummer of Brooklyn, New York goth rockers TYPE O NEGATIVE and his friend MATT BYRNE have posted about the rigors of touring life.
FROM JOHNNY KELLY (TYPE O NEGATIVE):
My buddy Matt Byrne posted this. It hit home.
The Raw Truth About Touring and Mental Health
Touring breaks people in ways that most don’t talk about—and the industry rarely admits.
At its core, touring is chronic displacement. You’re always somewhere else. No routine, no grounding, no permanence. Your nervous system never lands. You live in fight-or-flight: travel delays, high-pressure shows, interpersonal tension, constant overstimulation. There’s no decompression. No off switch.
And emotionally? Touring swings between extremes. One night it’s 15,000 people screaming. The next, it’s a silent hotel room. You go from deep connection to total isolation, over and over again. That kind of cycle burns out even the most resilient people.
But the culture of touring rewards stoicism and punishes vulnerability. You’re expected to power through. Joke about it. Drink through it. Avoid it. And the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to admit you’re unraveling—because your whole identity is tied to the road. Your worth becomes about being needed, useful, reliable. So when your body screams “I can’t,” your mind says “you have to.”
There’s no roadmap for recovery. No built-in support. No decompression protocol. And when you finally make it home, you don’t feel home. You feel disoriented. Numb. Out of place. No one around you quite understands what you’ve just been through—and honestly, you don’t either.
The truth is, touring can be beautiful. But it can also dismantle you.
And pretending it doesn’t is why so many are suffering in silence.
Admitting the toll doesn’t make you weak—it makes you honest.
And that honesty is where real change begins.
Thanks-Stay Metal, Stay Brutal-\m/ -l-
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