So I am here sitting in a haunted house in the middle of the woods. We are recording our new record. I have no idea what we are gonna name it and I am just gonna have to wait till the right idea comes to me. I have been so stressed lately trying to get all the lyrics together for this thing. I think people will be very surprised with the stuff i am writing, seeing as the last record was written when i was 19 and im 22 now. So a 3 year difference in a person means a lot. Especially when you have been through the shit i have been through in the last 3 years.

The record will mostly be about the last year of my life. Where I had a mental break down and basically lost all sense of reality for alittle bit. A member of my family died in 2005 and it was someone who was very close to me. I had been shutting out all emotion for almost 10 years and i couldn't shut it out anymore. So when i found out that she died, i had absolutely no reaction at all. I was on tour and decieded that i couldn't let it get in the way of playing shows. So I basically put off dealing with it for 2 months. When i got home i was smacked in the face with the fact that, the person i had known all my life was dead. I started having life altering panic attacks where i thought the world was gonna end. I thought I was litterally going to expolde on the spot. It was probably the worst thing I have ever been through in my life. It happened right before we had to go on our Vagrant european tour. I was absolutely terrified of going over to Europe and being away from my family and girlfriend. So i went and the first day I started freaking out and demanded that i go home, i was so upset, I couldn't handle it. Thankfully everyone talked me out of going home. I went through about a week or two of really tough days but when we got to France i started to settle in and realize that this panic attack shit would not break me. So we spent about another 3 weeks in Europe and the UK and then came home. I had a fucking awesome time in the Europe. When i look back on it I am sooooooo happy that I stayed because i got to see some of the most amazing stuff i have ever seen.

I got back from tour and it was the fucking holidays. If anything is gonna bring on a panic attack it is going to a NJ mall during the holidays. So i continued to be plauged by anxiety through the winter. I started seeing a pyschologist who helped me intially examine the things that were troubling me. I eventually decided i had enough of the anxiety attacks when i tried to go with my girlfriend to New Orleans and could barely get on the plane. So when i got home from New Orleans, I decided to go on an anti-depressant called Lexapro. The idea of being on a drug made me even more anxious for about the first month I took it. But i was in desperate need of relief. So it eventaully kicked in, right when we left for last years Taste Of Chaos. I basically was insanely depressed the whole tour. The anxiety really took a toll on my health and I weighed at the time about 140 lbs. I was skin and fucking bones. I shut myself off from everyone in my life for about 4 months and was a recluse on TOC. I sat in the back of the bus and played video games 8 hours a day. I only came out to play shows and eat. I did have an awesome time on that tour because there were some amazing people that i met, that hepled me through a lot of the shit i was dealing with.
After TOC the panic attacks stopped, thanks to the anti-depressants. But i knew I was different, I knew the medicine was changing the way i was. Instead of having ups and downs like normal people do, i was just a flat line. Neither angry or sad, excited or withdrawn. It really didn't bother me too much as long as i didn't have panic attacks, I was ok. Warped tour came and went. Then it was time to really get down to business and write this record.

At the begining of the writing process I was still on the medication and I wrote a bunch of lyrics I loved. I did find the the medication stopped me from taping into a part of my mind that allowed me to release alot of emotion into the songs. I think it also kept me subdued on stage. Which, when i look back on it really bums me out. So right before we started recording I decieded to stop taking the medication. I had not had a panic attack in over a year. I was tired of having a drug control who i was. I have stopped taking it and I must say that I feel more alive than I have ever felt in my life. I forgot what is was like to feel emotion. I as trapped in a sterile body that wasn't allowing me to feel anxiety but it also stopped me from feeling anything. Right now as I speak I am in the best place I have been in years. I am writing things I am so proud of and I am so proud of what we have been working on. Im not really sure what the purpose of this story is. Maybe it will help people understand me more or maybe it will help people who have been through something similar not feel so alone. Thanks for listening. Peace