Former Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler has reflected on his longtime battle with depression, saying you “can’t describe” the darkness.

It is not the first time the metal legend has opened up on his struggle with mental health issues. Last summer, Butler revealed that he previously would regularly self-harm to “get relief”. He explained that nobody seemed to understand when he was younger, with the doctor even advising him to drink a couple of pints or take the dog for a walk to alleviate the ill feeling. It shows just how much our attitudes and understanding of mental health have changed.

The musician offered more insight into his battle with mental health issues during a recent discussion with TalkShopLive. “Unless you’ve experienced true depression, you can’t describe it. It’s like you’re going to this awful black hole,” the bassist said, before once again recalling that the doctor would not understand and instruct him to drink, walk the dog or watch TV when actually “you’ve got no interest in anything”.

The iconic musician continued: “So the only way I could express myself was writing the lyrics for [Black Sabbath’s] ‘Paranoid’. I mean, I wasn’t depressed all the time, but when I used to get the bouts of depression, you just couldn’t explain it to anyone, and you were terrified that you [would] go to a mental health person, maybe, and they put you in hospital for years, in a mental institution.”

Due to that reason, he never sought professional help and just got “on with it”. For Butler, seemingly having so few options saw him use his art as the only way to “get it out of my system” and write Black Sabbath’s often dark lyrics.

Butler’s mental health is in a much better place now following a 1999 diagnosis. “Good now, yeah,” he maintained before saying that the doctor put him on Prozac for six weeks. While he was informed it wouldn’t work overnight, he started to feel like himself again towards the end of the duration.

The metal legend concluded: “And I said, ‘Well, what’s normal?’ After six weeks, this big cloud seemed to lift off me. It was great.”

Thankfully, attitudes towards mental health have changed significantly since Butler was first diagnosed, and it’s no longer a taboo topic as it was in the 1970s. However, while depression is rife across the whole of society, it’s incredibly prevalent within the music industry. According to charitable organisation Mind, “Research has shown that people working in the music industry are more prone to mental health problems than the general population, with musicians being up to three times more likely to suffer from depression.”