Cage The Elephant singer Matt Shultz has spoken to NME about the three years he spent in psychosis and the arrest on gun charges that resulted and the new album ‘Neon Pill’ – which came out of the nightmare.
Shultz was detained in a hotel in New York in January 2023 for carrying firearms which were only licensed in Kentucky and Tennessee. The arrest, a court found, was the result of psychotic delusions which Shultz had been suffering from as a side-effect of medication he’d been prescribed. After eight months of treatment, he now believes himself to be fully recovered.
“It’s a lot better now than it was, for sure,” he told NME. “The things that happened in the past three years, I never would have dreamed of or imagined. I was prescribed the medication and never could have guessed that there would have been the adverse effects that there were. I slipped into psychosis, unknowingly, and was in psychosis for three years because I believed that the medication was saving my life, and it was actually destroying my life.”
Paranoid delusions that he was being chased or poisoned led directly to the arrest, Shultz explained. “The arrest, without a doubt, was a miracle,” he said. “It saved my life. Following the arrest I was hospitalised for two months. Then I had six months of outpatient therapy afterwards and I feel completely recovered. But obviously, with recovery, it’s a lifelong thing. You don’t experience something like that and not deal with the scars for the rest of your life, I’m sure.”
These traumatic events are addressed on new ‘Neon Pill’, based on songs and lyrics that the band wrote during Shultz’s illness.
“These lyrics had meant something completely profound to me, but that was totally based in a reality that was not reality,” he said. “And so to go back and try to make sense of it was really fascinating. I had to start looking for the sentiment that I was reaching for and not so much what I believed was happening or what the songs were about. I’d written a lot of lyrics in code.”
NME caught up with Shultz, to discuss how music and those close to him saw him through, and his hopes for the future.
NME: Hello Matt. What was the root of the issue of what led to what happened?
Matt Shultz: “I think it was the medication. For some people, the medication that I was prescribed, it does a certain thing. And for others, when your dopamine is boosted, it causes extreme paranoia and delusions, and unfortunately I’m one of the few that it affects that adverse way. It was really unpredictable and uncontrollable, unfortunately.”
What can you remember about the arrest?
“I just ended up in New York with some things in possession that I never should have had, definitely not in New York. They were legal in Kentucky, the firearms that I had, and in Tennessee, but in New York you obviously have to have a licence in that state. I was not in the right mind to even really understand those laws. I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but it is the truth. I was so out of touch with reality I didn’t know how laws pertained to me. It was extremely traumatic. Already with my paranoia being heightened and exasperated, to be arrested on top of that, and the things that I believed at that time that weren’t based in reality at all.
“And yet, the thing that happened, in some weird way, kind of supported some of those fears and paranoias that I had. It was terrifying, terrible. It was a wake-up call in the sense of I had to do the things that I was being told to do or else I was going to go to prison. It was as simple as that. There were many times I wanted to go along with my own wants, but I did stick to the plan and went to the hospital and it was relatively quick before I came back into my right mind.
“That’s another thing that’s very strange about medication-induced psychosis. You stop taking the medication and before too long, you come back to your right mind. It was almost like having my mind and my life hijacked. Almost as if I had gone into a coma, and then woken up from the coma and it was like, ‘Oh, and by the way, your doppelganger has been going around doing all these things and believing these things while you’ve been away’.”
What delusions were you having?
“Well, one that I think is pretty ironic is that I thought someone was trying to poison me and tampering with my medication. I had this general feeling as though I was always being chased and that my life was in danger and that was someone was trying to kill me. I was certain that something to do with my medication was destroying my life and the odd thing is the medication was destroying my life.
“I was so close to the truth but so far away at the same time. When I wrote ‘Neon Pill’, my brother Brad [Shultz, Cage The Elephant guitarist] said, ‘The really sad thing is you’re so close to seeing the truth, but you’re just not quite there’.”
When you came out of the hospital, what frame of mind were you in and how did you come back to music?
“It was pretty difficult at first. I felt betrayed by the medical institution and also by myself, because… while I can’t say I was 100 per cent responsible for the things that occurred, I was the person doing those things. It was an easy situation to begin to slip into depression afterwards. Music definitely started to pull me out of it and through that. We started re-engaging with the material about six months after I had been out of the hospital.
“It just started coming together and slowly but surely that light at the end of the tunnel got larger and larger. We were able to come out on the other side with not only another record but a lot of insight on life and experience that I wouldn’t necessarily ever aspire to have but experience nonetheless that gives me a better perspective towards that kind of occurrence, psychosis and any type of mental crisis.”
It’s a surprisingly bright and colourful record
“It could be easy to look at the story as a whole and make judgments of what the material should sound like according to the occurrences that happen. But I think at the end of the day, really it’s people that are enjoying creating music and so the record that came out is what came out. A lot of the material had already been written even while I was in psychosis [and] going back and listening to it, I was like, ‘This doesn’t mean much of anything’. It was more or less like trying to find the sentiments or the emotional meaning behind some songs.”
Is the song ’Float Into The Sky’ reflecting the experience of being on the medication? It has a sense of finding peace within yourself.
“I think so. It was really connected to like this deep loneliness that I felt at the time because it was very isolating. The one thing that I’m very thankful for is that the community around me didn’t it turn into this ‘yes’ community and just tell me what I wanted to hear. I was very often met with healthy confrontation, people telling me that ‘No, that’s not real’. On the flip side of that, there was this sentiment of like, ‘If you don’t believe me, or if you can’t see what I’m seeing, then I’m just going to retreat into myself’.”
Is ‘Metaverse’ about feeling you’re living in an unreal world?
“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that you say it I think that is definitely part of it. Also, I had been having this feeling that I was always on the run and trying to escape something or being chased. I literally was moving around a lot. I would go and stay in hotels if I felt unsafe at home, things like that. I really felt distant from my family and from the ones that I love… I felt like an outcast. That song was written about feeling like I was far from anyone that actually loves me and the people that then started to gather around me were more of these vulture type of people who prey on people who are vulnerable and in a bad place.”
The record ends on a positive note – ‘Over Your Shoulder’ seems to be a forward-looking song?
“Yeah. I guess I was reaching for how I always wanted to see life turn around and just didn’t know how to get there. So that definitely is a song of hope and moving forward and not getting hung up on the things in life that can really get you downcast.”
You’d say you’re in a better place now?
“Yeah, for sure. I would say fully recovered, but I think the more proper way to say it is I’m recovering. Definitely still recovering, recovered. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but I do feel extremely blessed and grateful to have gone through it and come out good on the other side, and to have the career to come back to is pretty amazing.”
How are you going to approach touring?
“I’m so looking forward to touring. We’ve been rehearsing the new tracks, and they’re really feeling great. Also, I’m stoked to write new music because while we were writing the majority of this record, I wasn’t all there. So I feel very much craving that experience again. I’m hoping to set up a little studio on the bus and work on tunes while we’re travelling around and have all the guys together.”
‘Neon Pill’ by Cage The Elephant is out now.
For help and advice on mental health:
- “Am I depressed?” – Help and advice on mental health and what to do next
- MITC – A collective of musician industry therapists
- TONIC Rider – Bespoke training and support for music industry professionals
- Help Musicians UK – Around the clock mental health support and advice for musicians
- Music Support Org – Help and support for musicians struggling with alcoholism, addiction, or mental health issues
- YOUNG MINDS – The voice for young people’s health and wellbeing
- CALM – The Campaign Against Living Miserably
- The Samaritans – Confidential support 24 hours a day