Jeff Becerra of Possessed shared a deeper insight about “the five dark years” of his life

In a recent interview with Sense Music Media in Australia and reported from blabbermouth.net, frontman Jeff Becerra of Possessed talked about the 1989 incident in which he was paralyzed from the chest down after a botched armed robbery attempt, which led to a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse. He was questioned about how being shot by two masked assailants affected his outlook on life and how other people saw him.

Oh, yeah. [Everything changed] immediately. Immediately I lost all my friends. I lost my girlfriend. Nobody [stuck] around, ’cause, to be quite frank, I was fucking miserable. I call it the five dark years, but they’re also really special years to me where I just didn’t deal with it well. I dove deep into drugs and alcohol for those five years, essentially trying to commit suicide via intoxicants. And when that didn’t work — it’s pretty fucking hard to die, actually. And so when that didn’t work, I dropped that… I rolled down to the local community college, and by the grace of Satan or whatever, they sent me down to social services where I had to take an IQ test. I passed — I don’t know how, ’cause I was wasted. And they waived my tuition. I checked myself into a 47-day rehab, and then the rest is history. From that day on, every day has been a blessing. But there was a grace period where, I guess they call it PTSD. What they used to call inner demons, now they call it trauma, and it was hardcore trauma. Getting shot twice is not a pretty scene. It’s very ugly. And it took me a second to get over that. What’s weird, though, is I was never scared while it was happening. What my fear was was society. And so once I jumped over that, I kind of reacquainted myself with society through college, and it was a real lifesaver… These days people just go online for college, but back then you had to go out, you had to politic and nobody’s nice to you. In fact, I love that, because people will underestimate you. I made straight As through college. I was the president of my class, made a web site, and I went on to work at the hospital to retire and get the band back together. But it was a process. It was definitely a process…. And so you learned you’ve gotta get over your fears, get out there and do your thing.

Jeff agreed when one of the interviewees mentioned that the disabled are the most patronizing individuals on the earth.

Everything’s a fucking joke. People don’t realize people in chairs are 10 times tougher than the natural man. And I’m not joking ’cause I’ve been both. Even when I used to box, it’s tougher being in a chair. Every day is a struggle, and it makes you tough. But the secret is to get tough enough to enjoy life without letting it jade you or make you unhappy or bitter. And a lot of people in chairs can get bitter or they’ll dive into drugs and never come out, or alcohol. And you can’t do that, man. You’ve gotta get busy living or get busy dying.