Home Featured FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s IVAN MOODY Recalls His Near-Death Experience

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s IVAN MOODY Recalls His Near-Death Experience

ivan moody sober, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s IVAN MOODY Recalls His Near-Death Experience

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH singer Ivan Moody recently spoke about his past struggles with alcohol addiction in a new Instagram post, even detailing a near-death experience he had.

Moody celebrated three years sober last March and recalls a time when he nearly died due to an alcohol-related seizure which was actually recounted in FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s newly released music video for the song “The Tragic Truth”.

Yesterday, Ivan added a video to Instagram where he answered fan-submitted questions, including ones regarding the video for “The Tragic Truth”.

Ivan said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “The question that keeps coming up more often than not is about my death. First off, was it real? Yes. I tried to quit drinking by myself, on my own, for four days, and the fourth day my body shut down, I went into seizure and I died. I was handing my daughter a glass of water one second, and we’ll get into the next.

“Two, what did I see? Now, for you to hear this, for one you have to ask yourself, do you believe in life after death?” he continued. “I myself grew up a skeptic — very science ridden. Half of my family was Christian and the other half was Catholic, so from the get-go I was confused, and I found holes in the system all the way through it. Organized religion was never something I really bought in to. Needless to say, rebel as I do, I went hunting for answers. Far and wide, theology became my thing. I studied everything from Buddhism to paganism, Wicca — which is still very close to my heart, as a lot of you know — and Satanism. No, not the stuff you see on TV — not sacrificing cats and enchantments and shit like that — the real work; the stuff that actually includes empathy. But that’s a whole another story; we won’t go there. Needless to say, it all became moot at one point when I died. It was nothing like anything that you think or that I thought for that matter or could have imagined. There was no light.”

Ivan added: “I told Zoltan [Bathory, FIVE FINGER guitarist] it was like becoming a part of the universal hum — complete peace. It wasn’t cold; it wasn’t hot. There was no burden of any sort. And for a brief second, I was free. And all these memories, which is, I’m assuming, why people say your life goes flashing before your eyes, started flashing before my eyes. And I saw things from my infancy all the way up to that moment. And I remember thinking, ‘This is too good. And I’m not ready for this. I have more to do.’ And I’m not saying that; I truly remember thinking that. And out of the distance, I heard a voice, and it was my daughter, just like the video, when you see the hand come out and grab mine. And I don’t know how to explain it, and believe me when I tell you this, I don’t think some things are meant to be explained, but my heart lit up, clenched — I could feel it — and I became mass again. And I [felt myself coming] right back into my body. Truth. And I opened my eyes, and it was wet. And I looked up and it was my daughter, holding my head [and] crying on my face. And above me were two EMTs with paddles. And I remember them asking me questions. And the very first words out of my mouth [were], ‘Please don’t tell the fans.’ Documented. My first concern was that I was going to let you down and my bandmates. Not the fact that my beautiful daughter was holding my head or that I was a fucking drunk or I just had this disease and I couldn’t fight through it; none of it occurred to me. The only thing that mattered was that you and my bandmates still had faith in me, because music is all I have; it’s my whole connection to everything.”