Travis Barker Reveals He Was ‘Borderline Suicidal’ in 2004

In Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums, the 39-year-old Blink-182 rocker recalls the fateful day on September 19 2008, when the private jet he was travelling on blew out a tire and burst into flames. My bones were so brittle from so much painkiller use.

Barker admits the plane crash made him take life more seriously and value his friends and family: “I think back, and I was this little punk, someone I’m not proud of, that’s abusing pills every day and taking all this s- recreationally”.

“I went from being like that to getting out of the hospital and refusing to take pain meds home”.

And when asked about how his perspective on life has shifted over the years since the plane crash, he shares, “Unless you’re actually going through something like that, you don’t know how it feels…I’d just see people walking through their day and they don’t realize they’ve never looked death in the face”. That’s just one of the experiences chronicles in his new book, Can I Say, that arrives October 20 via Harper Collins. It was like naw, man. I need to go home and get my head right. “If it was my time, it was my time, but then it wasn’t until when I had kids-everything changed”.

On how the crash affected him, Barker said, ” I was on all these insane crazy bipolar drugs too cause I was suicidal in the hospital, masking everything from the pain of thinking, “Are my friends dead?

“I was completely done”.

Bryan Steffy Musician Travis Barker is a plane-crash survivor and recovering addict. At his lowest point, Travis battled PTSD and survivor’s guilt so severe that he often contemplated suicide himself. “I have the most wonderful kids”.

“The moment I had kids, my life changed”. “I was meant to be sober, man. I had done my time”, he said.

“I paid the price for it, self-medicating for so long”.

“I have the best support system”, he says. “I wanted to be alive and healthy for them”. “I get so much love and happiness out of playing music and playing the drums and my kids”. After quitting hard drugs, by his estimation, eight years ago, Barker says that he also swore off marijuana four years ago when doctors found pre-cancerous cells in his throat.

We are so thankful Trav has been on a successful road to recovery and is able to be an awesome father to his two young ones.