STARS CONFESS THEIR SECRET STORIES

"I wanted to kill myself"
BENJI MADDEN - GOOD CHARLOTTE

Christmas Eve 1995 was a night Benji, lead guitarist for the hot band Good Charlotte, will never forget. That's because it was the night his dad walked out and never came back. Soon Benji, his twin bro Joel, their sibs and mom were evicted from their house and left temporarily homeless. They lived with relatives for a while until the family could find a place of their own. Making matters worse, Benji's mom suffers from Lupus, a stress-related disorder, and she often was hospitalized. To help out, the twins worked just about any job they could get. It was definitely a low period and Benji admits he considered suicide. "I did come to certain points of my life where I thought that [suicide] was an option," he says. Instead of giving up, though, Benji faced his problems through his music. "Growing up definitely sucked," he says. "But if it wasn't for all that stuff, we wouldn't have started our band."

Many of Good Charlotte's songs are about real-life problems. Check out the lyrics from the band's hit "Hold On": "But we all bleed the same way as you do, and we all have the same things to go through. Hold on if you feel like letting go. Hold on, it gets better than you know." The group wrote the song in response to fans who, like Benji, had thought about suicide. "We want to give those fans hope, just to let them know it's never worth taking your own life," he says.

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