Burak Cingi/Redferns

He told Noisecreep, "I'm not one of those guys who thinks being anonymous is all that great. I don't have a problem with people knowing that I had a drinking problem. That's who I am and I'm kind of lucky in a lot of ways cause I get to do something about it. I get to grow as a person through it. It's kind of a cool thing. It's not cool to be an alcoholic, meaning it's not cool to go drink and be a dumbass. It's cool to be a part of recovery. This is just who I am, this is what I write about, what I do, and most of my work has been a reflection of what I've been going through in one way or another."

In 2014, Bennington flatly told Kerrang! that he had been a "full-blown, raging alcoholic" at one point.

"I don't drink. I choose to be sober now," he continued. "I have drunk over the last six years, but I just don't want to be that person anymore."

Even more candidly, he said on The Pulse of Radio, "I lived on alcohol. It was either beer, or Jack and Coke, or Jack Daniels in a pint glass with ice. And then it got to the point where my wife said to me about seven months after we got together, she goes, 'I don't think there's been a day since I've known you that you haven't drank.' And I was like, 'What are you talking about? That's crazy'—as I'm drinking a Jack and Coke. That was where my life went."

Meeting his second wife helped pull him out of a period of "absolute self-destruction," he told Bullz-Eye.com in 2009 while promoting Out of Ashes. "I don't know when to stop when I'm in that mode. I'll go through a gallon of Jack Daniels and down some antidepressants in one night and keep on going. I just hated my life at one point. I loved my band, career and friends, but when I got home from tour, I couldn't deal with stuff. I would just begin drinking."