DoctorOz: Scott Stapp's Harrowing Journey Through Addiction and Mental Illness

The harrowing story of Creed's superstar, Scott Stapp. It's a tale of booze, drugs, and mental illness that took Scott to hell and back. Scott Stapp, the raspy-voiced lead singer for the rock band Creed, lived a classic rock and roller coaster lifestyle. In the late 1990s, he was a megastar who scored one platinum record after another, sold 40 million albums, and took home a Grammy in 2001. But there was a darker side to success. For years, Scott struggled with mood swings, battled depression and addiction, and at times even contemplated suicide. August of last year marked the start of a major meltdown when Scott began abusing his Adderall prescription and took a deep dive into a manic world of drug abuse, psychosis, and paranoia. I'm under some kind of pretty vicious attack. He posted videos online pleading for help in his fight against unnamed persecutors. The IRS has frozen my bank accounts two or three times to leave me completely penniless. At his lowest point, Scott packed his truck with guns and disappeared on a road trip, posting videos along the way. You can make any claims you want about my mental stability, and that's exactly what these individuals who've defrauded me and stolen from me want you to think. With these devastating videos, Scott laid out his problems for the whole world to see, leaving his family humiliated, frightened, and desperate as Scott's life continued to spin out of control. Scott, thanks for being here. Good to be here. How are you doing now? I'm doing good, one day at a time. I'm doing good. It's true for all of us. So it was less than a year ago that some of those very disturbing videos that we shared with the audience were posted by you. Take me back to what was going on in your life. I was completely out of my mind. I was abusing some prescriptions that I had for actual conditions that I did suffer from, but once I found out they could be abused, I began to do that. And I began to suffer some pretty horrific side effects. Completely delusional, hallucinating. Conspiracy theories were just swirling all around my brain. And I lost it. I lost it. So you said you were broke, you were homeless. Yeah. You apparently called the White House and threatened President Obama. How much of that was true? I did call the White House. I thought the President had been kidnapped by his Secret Service detail, and I believed it. And I was going to go to D.C. and try to save him. These were crazy delusions that were absolutely real to me. And you've been suffering from depression. Yeah. None of us knew about it, but depression and addictions. Yes. For years. Yeah. When was the first time you deep in your soul appreciated you had a problem? In 1998, right at the height of Creed's success, we had just moved into playing in arenas. So everything I could ever dream of was happening in my life that I wanted. My band was taken off. My financial insecurity was gone. I was beloved and adored by millions of fans. And I woke up one day and could hardly get out of bed. And I didn't know what was going on, but the show had to go on. And so that's when I began self-medicating and putting chemicals into my body to try to change the way that I felt to get me out of this depression. It got so bad that you attempted suicide. Yeah. I'll never forget that day. I had just gotten off tour and was dropped off at my home in my tour bus. And all the medications, pills and other things, basically opiates, as well as decadron, dexamethasone, steroids, corticosteroids that were keeping me going on tour. I no longer had access to because the show had stopped. Well, how were you getting access to them while you were on tour? Anything that I wanted, I just had to ask for. And rock docs, if you will, would provide them for me at the shows. And all they wanted was a picture. And so I was abruptly pulled off those medications. So I went into hardcore withdrawals. And in that kind of psychotic withdrawal state of mind, which I was using alcohol to kind of help me get through that, I thought suicide was a solution. And I had recently purchased some guns and I went and got those guns. And if it wasn't for a picture of my son that I looked at right at the last minute before I pulled the trigger, I would have ended it all. Yeah. You were that close? That close. I turned after I looked at that photo and I shot up my house, the inside of my house. And it was a pretty dark time. There were other times, I understand, even when you weren't trying to hurt yourself, that you almost did kill yourself. Yeah. Like when you fell from the building. Yeah. I had been up for about three or four days using amphetamines and cocaine and was in a psychotic state. I checked myself in to the penthouse at the Delano Hotel in South Beach. And I thought that the police were beating on my door. And they weren't. But I had a delusion, a hallucination that they were. And in an attempt to escape, I thought I would scale from my balcony to the balcony below. And I slipped and fell 40 feet and should have died that day. Should have died that day. Unbelievable. Yeah. That's one heck of a rehab process. It took about a year before I could walk again. A year? A year. And my wife... I had no idea it was so severe. Yeah. I broke my hip, fractured my skull. Tremendously long recovery process. So Scott's erratic behavior eventually got so out of control that he almost lost the most solid thing in his family, in his life. Yeah. Your wife, the kids, everything. Yeah. New Year's 2005. Jacqueline was hailing a cab. Scott offered to help. The rest was history. A year later, they were married. Jacqueline's unconditional love brought new stability to Scott's disorderly life. In no time, they were a family with three children. But it didn't solve Scott's underlying problems. And he continued drinking and drugging. He thinks he's part of the CIA. He thinks they're trying to kill him. Jacqueline's desperation and fear are evident in this 911 call. He collects a lot of weird belongings, Finally, faced with no alternative, Jacqueline filed for divorce. Scott's wife, Jacqueline, is joining us. You've heard the interview. It's pretty emotional to go through it. Yeah. It was just such a devastating, horrific time in our lives. What's it like to watch the man that you love, adore, melting away in front of you, disappearing? Oh, my gosh. It was absolutely horrific. I mean, it was devastating to see someone you love and the father of your children become another person and hear things come out of them so scary. You don't know who they are. I was scared for him. I was scared for myself. I was scared for the kids, what he was capable of doing, the thoughts he was believing. You know, what if he would act out these thoughts or show up at the White House? You know, it was a horrible time. Thank you for watching. 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