Taylor Momsen experienced a “dark period” in her life following the death of two friends.
“I got very heavy into substance abuse and this cloud of depression that I couldn’t shake,” Momsen, 32, shared during her “Call Her Daddy” podcast appearance, released on Wednesday, November 5. “Something that I was teetering with before really took on a life of its own where I essentially gave up. I gave up on life.”
She added, “Everything I love is dead. What’s the f***ing point?”
Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell’s death at age 52 in May 2017 was the first “traumatic” experience that led Momsen down this road. Her band, The Pretty Reckless, was touring with Soundgarden at the time. News of Cornell’s death reached Momsen the morning after their final show on the tour.
“I couldn’t process it at first. I was confused,” she recalled. “That turned into sinking, which turned into the biggest pit in my stomach of devastation and the just the worst feeling in the world. I fell the f*** apart.”
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Momsen was in the “start of a downward spiral” after Cornell’s passing.
“We continued to tour. It quickly came to a place of realization that I was not in a place to be public. I needed some time with this,” she recalled. “I had to disappear and go try to handle this grief that was f***ing eating me.”
About a year later, in April 2018, she lost her “best friend in the world” Kato Khandwala, who died following a motorcycle accident at age 48.
“It floored me. It was a giant one-two punch and because they were not that far apart from each other. And I just went off the rails,” she said. “I didn’t handle that well, to say the least.”
Momsen said she “did a really good job” of isolating herself from The Pretty Reckless band members Ben Phillips, Mark Damon and Jamie Perkins.
“A lot of the time, I just shut off my phone. I was kind of unreachable, and that was very calculated,” she continued. “I knew I wasn’t in a good place. There’s shame that comes with that if you don’t want to be seen.”
Momsen said she had “given up” completely.
“I had to make a very conscious choice at a point. I was either going to live or I was going to die,” she said. “I had to either stop everything I was doing and get my life together or this was going to kill me.”
The former actress recalled feeling like she was in a “hole of blackness,” and she didn’t know how to escape.
“I was perfectly fine staying in that place and fading away into nothing,” Momsen said, noting that it took her “a long time” to recover but music helped.
Writing The Pretty Reckless’ 2021 record Death by Rock and Roll was a turning point for Momsen.
“The writing of that record was something that I had to do for me,” the singer explained. “I think by getting it out, that was the first step of me starting to be able to turn the corner.”
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