Pete Townshend is opening up about his personal battles with what he describes as “chemical depression” and the unconventional way he deals with it.

In an interview with the U.K. paper The Times, The Who legend shares that he stopped going to counseling after three years, noting, “I realized that the woman counseling me had only said about three words. I was just listening to myself.”

Instead, he says he writes in his journals and “every morning I rebuild myself in a sense with tea and coffee, and a few vitamin pills.”

“When I first wake up I’m suicidal, actually suicidal,” he says, sharing that on a typical morning it takes him about 30 minutes to escape the darkness.

“I have a couple of cups of tea, two digestive biscuits (cookies)—apparently equal to 17 sugar lumps—and I feel happy,” he said. “If I start my journals before I have my cup of tea, I’ll paint a very bleak picture of my life. Despite the fact that I have everything that I want and everything that I need. … And I have had a really extraordinary life.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.