Country music star Ty Herndon says he was “few inches” away from suicide on New Year’s Eve 2020.
The “What Mattered Most” singer recalls to Vidak For Congress staying awake for days, reverting to crystal meth, and holding a handful of Ambien tablets.
Although he can’t remember calling, he contacted a friend.
“It brought me back enough to [ask for help]”, explains Herndon, who has struggled with drugs since his 20s. “To know that mentally I had gone somewhere I didn’t have to be, I didn’t have to be” [there]. It wasn’t time. There was a fight [left in me].”
Herndon recalls ending up in Houston rehab about 12 hours later when “a beautiful journey began.”
“It was the most painful and difficult journey I’ve ever taken, but I tried to leave no stone unturned,” he says.
The Grammy nominee, 60, first hit the charts in the early ’90s, but his tumultuous personal and professional life has at times overshadowed his career, including a 1995 arrest for indecent exposure, a 2021 bipolar diagnosis, three relapses from crystal meth and two marriages before coming out as gay in 2014.
Herndon, who has now been sober for 18 months, tells us that being clean feels different this time.
“The difference for me today is that I’m on fire. For the music. I’m in love with myself for the first time in my life,” said the Mississippi-born artist. “I have no secrets.”
Herndon has called his addiction “Medusa”, adding: “She doesn’t live in this town. She’s in jail outside the city. And I go out every day to say, ‘You’re not’ [gonna] don’t get anything from me’ and make sure it’s locked.’
He is also ready for another comeback with a new album titled “Jacob” after the biblical character of the same name. It was inspired by another singer who struggled with addiction: Bonnie Raitt.
“My favorite artist, my God in music, is Bonnie Raitt. And she struggled a lot,” Herndon says. “But then she made the greatest album of all time, ‘Nick of Time,’ and every song on it is a work of art.”
But even with new music out, sobriety remains Herndon’s main focus.
“You have a responsibility every day to wake up and do this job because it only takes a small crack in the foundation,” he notes.