Three Days Grace's Adam Gontier Confronts Past Abuse With Unique Tour

Following the release of Three Days Grace's 2003 self-titled debut, and the constant touring that accompanied it, lead singer Adam Gontier endured a long period of substance abuse.

With an album that had sold more than a million copies in the U.S. and had spawned chart-toppers "Just Like You" and "I Hate Everything About You," pressure mounted and pushed Gontier to find a way to deal with the band's sudden success.

"I found myself in the U.S. in terrible cities and terrible parts of town looking for my drug of choice and it got out of control," he says.

"My wife confronted me. She'd seen change in my personality and my bandmates noticed something. So I just realized it was time."

Gontier checked in to Toronto's Centre For Addiction And Mental Health and recalls it being "the worst 10 days of my life."

But music proved to be a therapeutic way for Gontier to vent his feelings and he says "a lot of emotions that I didn't really know that I hadn't felt before came out, and I was just writing them down. After that initial period of being in really rough shape, my life has been the best it's ever been."

As "payment to a system that kept me alive," the band set up the Three Days To Change tour, an integral side project outside the main Three Days Grace tour. The tour has made stops at treatment centres, shelters, detention centres and group homes across North America, including a Nov. 29 appearance at the CAMH, which Gontier credits for helping him get clean.

Bandmates Brad Walst, Barry Stock and Neil Sanderson joined Gontier for an intimate performance of "Just Like You," "Pain," "Animal I Have Become," "Never Too Late," "Get Out Alive" and "I Hate Everything About You" in front of about 250 high school students and centre patients.

After the set, Gontier went solo and took questions from the audience. He closed the Q&A period with an acoustic rendition of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game," a song he recorded for an online show called Stripped.

"At any point I could've overdosed," he told the crowd. "For quite a few years I was seeing things, I was looking through a blurred set of eyes. I was a zombie."

Gontier says the Three Days To Change tour has been good for him and, he hopes, for those who attend the sessions.

"It gives me a chance to talk to people who are going through the same thing I was going through, and it's sort of a therapeutic way for me to get things out."

Now that Gontier is clean, his whole outlook on life has changed. He believes that he's "definitely been given a second chance" and has learned valuable lessons so he won't fall back into his former bad habits.

"There's a lot of temptation on the road for sure. There's a lot of people you don't know that hang out in your dressing room. And for me, I know what sort of environment I need to be in and I can kinda see if I don't want to be around certain people then I normally just take off. I tend to just stay away from the partying on the road and that sort of thing. I'm a veteran of the road now, so I know where I have to be and what sort of environment I need to be in to stay healthy."