Papa Roach singer Jacoby Shaddix says sobriety and faith are the two things he spent most of his life trying to avoid and the two things that ultimately changed him.
“The two things I never wanted to be in my life was sober and a Christian,” Shaddix said on the “Dumb Blonde” podcast with host Bunnie XO. “Here I am now: A follower and a sober guy.”
Shaddix described a long, messy road that included relapse, doubt and what he called repeatedly ending up in a “deep dark hole” after taking his will back and trying to run his life on his own terms. He framed his turning point as a collapse, recalling the moment he stopped trying to manage change on his own and started asking for help he could not manufacture.
“When I finally put the bottle down, it was like that foxhole prayer, where I’m just like, ‘God, do you hear me? Can you hear me? I need a miraculous change. I need something beyond what I can do,’ because I kept trying to control the change in my life,” he said. “The walls fell.”
Shaddix said a key part of his shift came through someone close to him who walked with him through the process and made faith feel less like a stereotype and more like something lived.
“I had a fella that I was real close with that walked my faith journey out with me,” he said. “I was very skeptical. And then I saw this faith walk alive in front of me — somebody talking the talk and walking the walk — and I saw the transformation, it became alive to me.”
He said that example lowered the stakes enough for him to take belief seriously before he felt fully confident in it.
“I was less fearful of, ‘All right, I’ll try to believe,’” he said. “And then it became like, ‘I’m a full-blown believer.’”
Now, Shaddix said, his faith has moved from an abstract idea to a practical filter for the choices that used to feel normal. He said he is doing a Bible study with a friend and that the process has forced him to confront habits and “little secrets” he once justified but now sees as damaging.
“I’m starting to experience different levels of freedom, bondage of self and things that maybe I once thought were acceptable in my life,” he said. “Now I’m like, ‘That ain’t serving you, man.’ It’s hindering your growth. It’s messing up relationships.”
Shaddix said the deeper he goes, the more he feels like honesty, surrender and “walking in the light” are what actually produce freedom.
“The more that I purge these things and turn it over and just walk in the light, I feel like it’s the way. It’s the path,” he said. “Because I’ve tried the other way. And it wasn’t it.”
Check out his full conversation below (warning: strong language is used throughout the episode).
Comentarios