Chester Bennington's Drug Use Might Have Caused Suicide, Some Speculate

Some people wondered if the former drug use and alcohol abuse by Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington contributed to his Thursday death. Twitter users flocked to the social media site Thursday, with the rocker’s name garnering more than 1.13 million tweets.

READ: Chester Bennington Wrote Chris Cornell A Heartbreaking Letter After He Killed Himself

Some of those fans brought up Bennington’s former drug and alcohol use.

“Most people probably don’t related Linkin Park or myself with alcoholism or drug addiction or anything like that but that’s a part of my life,” he said in a 2009 interview with CNN. “It’s been a part of my life since I was a very young boy.”

Bennington became involved with drugs before he was a teenager. “I started using drugs when I was 11,” he said. “I definitely wasn’t making records at that time. I was exposed to it really young and there were a lot of things that happened to me as a young person that were really difficult for me to deal with.” He added: “I found myself alone a lot.”

Because what happened to him when he was younger, Bennington said he was more likely to experiment with drugs, saying he wanted to “escape from reality.”

In the end, it was music that kept him alive “more so than anything else,” Bennington said. “Music is the reason that I’m still here because that is how I get out a lot of the stuff that is going on inside me and that’s how I work through things and reflect on how I feel.”

Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington, pictured May 8, 2015 in Las Vegas, wrote a heartbreaking farewell letter to Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell after he committed suicide by hanging two months before his own death. Photo: Getty Images

Bennington was molested by a “friend” at the age of 7. He kept it a secret for six years. “I didn’t want people to think I was gay or that I was lying,” he confessed to Kerrang magazine in 2008, according to The Sun. “It was a horrible experience.”

His father, a police detective, worked long hours. “It was an awful time. I hated everybody in my family: I felt abandoned by my mom, my dad was not very emotionally stable then, and there was no-one I could turn to – at least that’s how my young mind felt.”

The assault ended when he was 13 years old.

READ: Chester Bennington’s ‘Cowardly’ Death Leaves 6 Kids Alone, Korn Guitarists Says

Bennington abused drugs until 2006 when his bandmates staged an intervention for him. “I was on 11 hits of acid a day. I dropped so much acid I’m surprised I can still speak! I’d smoke a bunch of crack, do a bit of meth and just sit there and freak out,” he told Metal Hammer ten years later.

Bennigton died from an apparent suicide Thursday. He was 41 years old. He was found by his housekeeper in the bedroom of his Los Angeles home. He died from a suspected hanging.

He is survived by his wife and six children.

Follow me on Twitter @mariamzzarella

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