Chester Bennington’s Long-Time Friend Breaks Silence About The Suicide Of Chester: He Was Affected By Linkin Park Fans Or Not?

Sean Dowdell, who is the longtime friend of Chester Bennington and bandmate from Chester’s early band Grey Daze, talked about Chester’s passing during a recent appearance on Appetite for Distortion.

Chester was one of the most important figures in the rock scene while leading Linkin Park. Unfortunately, the legendary vocalist committed suicide and passed away in July 2017, leaving his wife and kids behind.

In the conversation, Sean stated that he was in touch with Chester all the time and he actually talked two days before he passed away. According to Sean, he didn’t show any signs of depression or melancholy.

While Sean was mentioning the fact that Chester was pretty disappointed by the reaction they got from the fans about their new record, One More Light, Sean stated that this wasn’t the reason why Chester committed suicide.

Sean pointed out that Chester most likely stop taking his medication and this is probably the largest psychological reason why he was on suicidal thoughts. However, Sean reminded that he can not know what happened back in those days and said that this is only guessing about the incident.

Here is what Sean Dowdell said:

“I talked to Chester all the time – I talked to him two days before he passed away. We were supposed to start rehearsing on Sunday; he passed away on Thursday. I saw nothing that would tell me that this was about to happen.

He was super excited, we were laughing, we were joking, we talked for nearly an hour the last time I talked to him on the phone – there was nothing that sounded depressed. He did not sound melancholic, he did not sound sad or upset with anybody. I saw absolutely nothing in the weeks prior to this.

Now, a year or so before this, I did see some stuff that brought it up to him – my wife brought it up to me as a matter of fact, she said, ‘Something’s changed with him. He’s not right, something’s off.’ And I brought it up and he’s like, ‘Oh, no, I’m just going through some personal stuff.'”

He continued:

“And that was really it, but that was a year, year and a half before it happened. And I know some of the fan reactions to his newest record ‘One More Light’ really got him upset because he felt like they didn’t embrace it the way he hoped they would. But I don’t think that was the reason it happened, I think it was a culmination.

I think he stopped taking his medication. And I think quite honestly that’s probably the largest physiological reason – when you cold turkey, the medication that you’re on for antidepressants, it can do really harmful things to your mindset and make you think irrationally.

But I’m not a doctor and I wasn’t inside Chester’s head. You have these people that try to second-guess what he was thinking or why he did it…”

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