How Love Saved Max Cavalera

As a young child in Brazil, Max Cavalera suffered a horrible tragedy when his father died. He told me that the loss was not only devastating emotionally but also financially for his family:

My dad died when I was nine and pretty much died in my arms.…He had a heart attack on a lake. We have to drive him to the hospital…he's dying in the front seat. I'm in a back seat holding him. And really like in my heart knowing this is the last time I'm holding my dad.…And then you know, our whole life changed after that. We were broke as f*ck…went out to work all the sh*tty jobs—me and my brother. That's the beginning. I think that's the beginning of Max Cavalera as what I become today. Because before that was just like, just thought a normal kid that likes soccer…going to the beach on the weekend…girls.”

Max Cavalera

Source: Courtesy of Jim Louvau

When someone experiences that level of loss and financial hardship, finding connections to things that one truly loves can be a terrible and daunting challenge. But, soon, Cavalera recognized that he had two loves. The first was music. In particular, Cavalera found that he connected to the raw intensity of hardcore punk and heavy metal music. He saw listening to and eventually playing that music as a “weapon” that he could use to release his intense feelings: “That's when music came in like a f*cking a weapon…Sabbath album…Discharge album…Cro-Mags album,” he recalled. “And when we start playing that…now I really have a weapon.…That's a great feeling.”

Eventually Cavalera became a founding member—along with his brother Iggor—of the legendary thrash metal band Sepultura. Thrash metal is an explosive blend of heavy metal and hardcore punk music. Sepultura is generally considered a pioneering band of the genre, and one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time.

This accomplishment was impressive not only because of the quality of Sepultura’s music but also because they helped build the thrash metal scene both in Brazil and worldwide. “We created the scene pretty much. And then…all of a sudden, our city became the best scene in the whole of Brazil, which is kind of mind-blowing. A lot of labels and people started moving to our city, to Belo Horizonte, because there was a scene there,” Cavalera described. “That's something I'm proud of, we created that from nothing. Man, that was cool…be part of something that wasn't there 10 years before. Now, all of a sudden, you have something like that. It's pretty amazing.”

In addition to music, Cavalera’s other love— something that gave him a great feeling—was alcohol and other drugs. And just like his music, Cavalera liked to be intense with his substance use. “I f*cking like to get f*cked up man. I just liked the feeling,” he said. “I could never be one of those people who have two, three beers and they stop. I was always mesmerized by these people.…Because when I started drinking, that's it. It's a f*cking all-nighter; I'm blacking out. Next morning, I'm gonna hear about the sh*t I did the night before.”

For much of the time that the Cavalera brothers were building Sepultura, Max was building up his use of alcohol and other drugs such as cocaine. Oftentimes, he looked back on those experiences fondly. “I remember one time…I did the best coke you could probably do,” Cavalera recalled. “I ended up going to the rooftop of the building and I sang the entire [Sepultura album] "Beneath the Remains"—air guitar and by myself on the rooftop.…I watched the sun come up super high on f*cking cocaine. It was an amazing experience man.”

But Cavalera’s developing addiction was slowly taking a toll on those around him—particularly his brother Iggor and eventually his wife and business manager, Gloria. He felt that both Iggor and Gloria had to act as caretakers to him when he was drinking or using other drugs.

Eventually, Cavalera had an incident that changed the course of his life and put him on the road to recovery. “I hated hangovers…if they would’ve invented a medicine for hangover, I probably would never stop drinking.…To deal with hangovers, I'll take painkillers during the day because…that will kill the hangover right away…and you get some kind of high going again,” Cavalera said. “But I think the final straw…was some European tour that we're in. And I wanted to drink real bad and there was nothing in the bus to drink. And, well, I ended up going to the bathroom and I was drinking hand [sanitizer]. And, yeah, I got busted doing that. My wife opened the door and…I'm drinking hand sanitizer. You know, I need help.”

Cavalera struggled with recovery for many years without sustained success. But during one stay at a residential treatment facility, Cavalera discovered that his love for his music and family were stronger than his love of alcohol and other substances. “I miss my family a lot. But because of that, because of missing my family being in this place, you can look around and realize what I really love most,” Cavalera explained. “Do I love getting f*cked up drinking doing drugs more than more than my wife, my family, and music? No, I don't think so. I really liked music a lot. And I like my family a lot. So it was kind of like one of those kinds of moments.”

As Cavalera embraced recovery, he recognized that sobriety will be an ongoing life process. He often reflects on how he was able to cope with so much adversity, including his father’s death, poverty, addiction, and the unimaginable odds of becoming a professional musician. And he uses that perspective as a basis for gratitude in his recovery process. “My whole life, man, I've made it out of Brazil. The odds are one in a billion against. I did,” he described. “I did all this when I'm going to throw all this away for f*cking drugs and alcohol? No, man, I don't want to do that.…I'm not totally cured. It's there, always will be there. But I really like to…have this thing. I really love...creating music and being part of my family.”

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But Cavalera continues to be happy that he chose his music and his family over drugs and alcohol. Both he and Iggor eventually left Sepultura and then went on to form Cavalera Consipracy. Their collaboration has continued on and off for decades, and Iggor and Max recently toured together on the “Return Beneath Arise” tour, playing select tracks from two of Sepultura’s classic albums Beneath The Remains and Arise. And Cavalera is thrilled that he continues to be able to embrace the things in his life that he loves the most. “It was a journey…But yeah, like, like, like drinking a lot, like, pills a lot…I wouldn't trade it. I think the experience were just, they're part of it,” Cavalera said. “What I get from playing music—it is like a drug.…And there's no other drug that I did that gives me what music is.…I'm not just a musician. I live this music, man…

“Without this music, I don't exist.”

Listen to the full conversation with Max Cavalera on The Hardcore Humanism With Dr. Mike Podcast here.