Avenged Sevenfold Frontman Opens Up About Depression Battle

"All I can say is, I never knew what depression was and you could say the word over and over again to me and I'd never know what the depths of it felt like until I lost Jimmy," Shadows said. "I went through about three years when I couldn't do anything, so I went to go talk to someone and it was the hardest three years of my life."

"I would shake at night and have anxiety of anything I was doing, I couldn't sleep, y'know off the wall, random," he added. "But once I'd been through those three years, I would never ever question someone's mental state, because I went through it."

Shadows went on to say the "stigma" of mental health is "disheartening," and that, "everyone on this planet goes through things at one point or another, so we just have to be there for each other."

"I know how desperate it is and how dark and terrible it is and how you feel like you can't do anything," Shadows said. "Unfortunately, people have to go through that to understand what people are going through."