Nine years sober for Silverchair muso: ‘few little bumps along the road’

Silverchair star Ben Gillies has opened up about his battles with mental health and his psychotic episodes over the years.

Nine years sober, former Silverchair band member Ben Gillies concedes he’s had a few “little bumps in the road”.

The musician husband of Real Housewives of Melbourne star Jackie Gillies went cold turkey as he “felt my drinking escalating”.

“I just started drinking more and more,” Gillies said in the latest episode of the Mental As Anyone podcast.

Silverchair band Chris Joannou, Daniel Johns and Ben Gillies.

“I could be a social drinker and then all of a sudden, it was like someone turned on a light, if I had one drink, I’d have to get absolutely written off. I could just feel all my relationships breaking down. That’s such an important part of being human, those connections with the important people in your life. That main one being Jackie and I could feel the strain on our relationship and basically Jackie said, ‘look, I’m not gonna stick around and put up with it, so you need to do something’. And I stopped cold turkey. It was really tough.”

The couple are now parents to young twin boys, Bonham and Rocco.

Gillies spoke openly about his drug use too in the Mental As Anyone podcast, sharing the fact he had been diagnosed with an acute drug induced psychotic episode more than two decades ago.

It was around the time of Silverchair’s release of their album, Diorama.

“That sent me on a mental health journey of 20 years, like seeing doctors and psychologists and on and off medication and just trying to manage it,” he said.

Silverchair – Gillies, along with bandmates Daniel Johns and Chris Joannou, remain one of the biggest Australian music acts ever despite having broken up 23 years ago.

Ben and Jackie Gillies,

They formed as teenagers growing up in Newcastle and enjoyed huge global success.

“There’s only three people that will know what it’s like to be in Silverchair, no one else will ever know what it feels like. We were always very passionate about the music but there was definitely external pressures,” he said.

“I think there was some fallout … there’s been fallout for all of us, for Chris and Daniel and I, we’ve all struggled with it in our own way and we’ve dealt with it in different ways as well.”

•A new episode of Mental As Anyone drops each Tuesday morning at 6am.