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In a July 31’st Forbes article, contributor Cathy Applefeld Olson writes about how Maroon 5’s founding drummer had a mental break on the road. Now he’s a therapist with insights on how self-care benefits both artists and Industry.
Below is an excerpt from that article, to read the full article go: HERE
As the founding drummer of Maroon 5 during the band’s meteoric rise, Ryan Dusick had achieved what most musicians only dream of. He was playing sold-out arenas and touring the world as a member of one of the hottest music acts of the time. He was also headed for a serious mental break that would alter his life’s trajectory.
“It was very confusing at the time,” Dusick says of the whirlwind tour supporting the band’s debut album Songs About Jane. “We were having huge hits on the radio, our video was in heavy rotation on MTV and VH1, and we were playing arenas. All of these wonderful things we had dreamt about for a decade were coming true. But I was really starting to struggle and break down.”
“Being someone who always puts a lot of pressure on myself and feeling like I had to perform at such a high level every day, it was a ticking time bomb that would lead to this physical problem I was having—pain in my right shoulder—becoming a full nervous breakdown where my nervous system decided I had pushed myself too far and it wasn’t going to allow me to play the drums anymore.”
At the time, Dusick had trouble expressing what he was experiencing. “I would tell everybody I was getting exhausted and worn down, and people knew I was having physical pain and were aware it was starting to affect my playing. But this was 20 years ago, there wasn’t a public discourse about mental health there’s starting to be now. For a lot of reasons, it was easier for me and others to ignore it,” he says.
He now relates to the experience that eventually ended his time with the band in 2006 as “a slow-moving trauma, which I had a hard time doing at the time because I felt like, ‘Who am I, a rock star with troubles on the road, calling my life a trauma?’ But trauma is relative to context and relative to the individual and the things that shape us and affect the way we relate to ourselves and our experience living.”
After leaving Maroon 5, Dusick largely isolated and fell into addiction and substance abuse. “Over next decade I went through all the stages of alcoholism—the illusion of control, trying to show up and seem OK, but it creeps up on you,” he says of the years before he spent time at an in-patient facility—and found his new purpose.
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“I got better quickly once I got the substances out of the way. Within month or two I started to realize how much of a maker of my own misery I had been, and how I needed to just get out of my own way and walk forward with humility,” he says.
“I discovered a passion for service and that became a driving force in my recovery. I had been feeling sorry for myself, and what was driving my addiction and anxiety at that point was not having any real connection or purpose in my life. All of a sudden I felt this intense connection with people around me who were going through something similar. Feeling inspired by the people who were a little ahead of me who could offer me some guidance and recognizing that I could do the same thing for the people who were just a little bit behind me was a really powerful awakening for me. It started to give me my confidence back. Feeling that connection and feeling my spirit lifted by it, I just wanted to hold onto that feeling and follow it wherever it took me.”
The journey has taken Dusick to a powerful new stage. He volunteered at a recovery center for two years, went back to school to get a master’s degree in clinical psychology, studied to become a therapist and began writing down his story in what became his new memoir, Harder To Breathe. Today, a large part of his practice is focused on helping musicians, and a large part of his life is focused on self-care.
“Addiction kicked me in the ass so much it’s not even something that is tempting. I don’t feel like on a daily basis I have to prioritize my sobriety because it’s not even on the menu for me,” he says.
To read the full article go: HERE