Phish Frontman Reflects on DUI Arrest That Helped Him Quit Opioids & What His Wife Said When He Went to Jail (Exclusive)

“I’m so grateful that it didn’t kill me,” Trey Anastasio — who just lately opened the Divided Sky residential restoration heart — tells PEOPLE of battling opioid dependancy

• Phish rocker Trey Anastasio struggled with opioid dependancy for years earlier than getting sober in January 2007

• He obtained assist after he was arrested for heroin possession and driving whereas intoxicated in December 2006

• Now he’s hoping to assist others, opening the Divided Sky residential restoration heart in Ludlow, Vt.

appears again on his darkest days with gratitude.

The frontman just lately opened , a residential restoration heart in Ludlow, Vt., to assist different addicts combating the identical demons he as soon as confronted.

After first taking prescription painkillers for dental surgical procedure, Anastasio received hooked on OxyContin by 2000.

“Everyone stored saying it was protected. They’re so addictive, it’s such as you’re down the rabbit gap earlier than you realize it. It simply fully received uncontrolled,” Anastasio, 59, says, including docs would hand out prescriptions “like sweet” backstage at exhibits. “I attempted to cease a thousand occasions. I’d look within the mirror and inform myself, ‘What a loser.’ ”

By 2004 “I misplaced my band, then I virtually misplaced my household,” he says of how his points pressured Phish to go on hiatus and brought on pressure at residence together with his spouse Susan, 58, and their daughters Isabella, 27, and Eliza, 29. “Ingesting and drugging, for me it was a sluggish dying of isolation.”

Anastasio lastly received the assistance he so desperately wanted after Dec. 15, 2006, when he was pulled over in upstate New York for heroin possession and driving whereas intoxicated.

“The minute I received arrested, I used to be relieved,” Anastasio says, rising emotional when interested by how he may have harmed somebody whereas beneath the affect.

As he was cuffed, “I knew it was over,” Anastasio provides.

The rocker pleaded responsible to a diminished drug-possession cost and spent 14 months in conferences and group service ordered by drug-treatment court docket.

There have been some bumps within the highway, although. On Thanksgiving Day in 2007, Anastasio discovered himself behind bars as a result of he’d by accident missed a court-mandated restoration assembly whereas he was doing volunteer work with the homeless.

“I needed to go to jail,” Anastasio recollects. “It was three days and two nights, which is lengthy sufficient.”

When he was launched, he says, “my spouse was leaning on the automotive like Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas,” with their younger daughters by her facet. “I used to be type of like, ‘Did you need to take the youngsters out of faculty to see Dad popping out of jail?’ And she or he mentioned, ‘Should you don’t need your youngsters to see you popping out of jail, you higher cease going to jail.’ ”

The regimented program helped him get sober; he hasn’t touched a drink or medication — or been again to jail — since.

“I’m so grateful that it didn’t kill me,” he says of dependancy. “It may have.”

Anastasio credit his assist system — together with his Phish bandmates and his household — for serving to him keep sober the previous 17 years after opioid dependancy almost stole every little thing from him. Now at Divided Sky, a nonclinical, abstinence-based heart that follows the 12-step program.

“I’ve seen individuals in dire conditions come again from this. It’s by no means too late to have hope,” Anastasio says. “Households might be saved.”

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Opening the 46-bed facility is a significant full-circle second for Anastasio: Melanie Gulde, his caseworker from almost 20 years in the past, .

“She saved my life,” Anastasio says of Gulde. “She’s a badass, however she’s additionally very loving.”

Gulde shares a mutual admiration for Anastasio and believes his story might help others.

“I hope individuals take away the truth that people are resilient. Restoration is the best present we may give ourselves,” she says. “Divided Sky happened as Trey’s need to offer again on a much bigger scale. I’ve had numerous individuals inform me that Trey has been an inspiration for their very own restoration. We should do the work, and that’s precisely what he does.”

Anastasio — who launched a brand new Phish album, Evolve, earlier this month — started elevating cash for Divided Sky in 2020, when he performed his “Beacon Jams” digital residency on the Beacon Theatre in New York Metropolis. Now with Divided Sky open, he has a message for households dealing with dependancy.

“This may finish. Anybody can get off medication and cease consuming,” he says. “Your beloved is a sick individual attempting to get effectively, not a foul individual attempting to get good.”

For extra from Trey Anastasio, decide up the newest problem of PEOPLE, on newsstands in all places now.

Should you or somebody you realize is combating substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

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