Former Metallica Bassist Jason Newsted Opens Up About Painkiller Addiction

Ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted is opening up about a "serious" painkiller addiction he faced for more than a decade.

The musician, who also revealed in May that he battled throat cancer, is detailing his journey in an upcoming memoir.

"In the mid to late '90s, I had a lot of pretty serious neck and spine issues," he told Spin on Thursday (June 25). "It's easy to see the map of why this is f---- up. In that time, I would start taking Vicodin and get through some days. I kept going and going and going. The injury was in a place that couldn't really be repaired."

The rocker shared that the height of his addiction from 2004 to 2008 resulted from back-to-back surgeries within that timeframe.

"I finally got off that s---, 16 years ago in May 2010," he admitted, while noting that he's currently in the editing stage of the upcoming memoir. "It's all just going to be hand, in my language."

Newsted joined Metallica in 1986 and played with the iconic heavy metal band until his departure from the group in 2001. In 2009, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, along with his former bandmates, in which they performed together for the first in nearly a decade.