Joe Trohman ‘Officially Back’ With Fall Out Boy After Mental Health Hiatus
Fall Out Boy’s founding guitarist is back in the band. On Monday, Joe Trohman announced his return to the group after taking a step away to focus on his mental health earlier this year.
“Hey everyone, I’m officially back! I want to thank everyone for the love and support while I took some time away to focus on my brain and get healthy for my family, my friends and myself,” Trohman wrote on Instagram, thanking “true gentleman and scholar” Ben Young, who took his place during the shows he missed with the band.
“I’m stoked to be back in action and I can’t wait to see everyone on tour this summer,” he concluded.
Trohman had announced he’d be taking a break from the group back in January as the band — which also includes Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, and Andy Hurly — announced their album So Much (For) Stardust, saying that his “mental health had rapidly deteriorated over the past several years.”
Even as he stepped away, he shared that he “absolutely, one-hundred percent” would be returning to the band. (The group ultimately released the LP on March 24, featuring songs like “Hold Me Like a Grudge” and “Heartbreak Feels So Good.”)
Trohman performed with the group at the NFL Draft in April and is set to join the group for their 29-date tour in support of their newest album. The So Much For (Tour) Dust tour is scheduled to begin with a hometown show at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on June 21. Fall Out Boy will stop in Dallas, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Virginia Beach, Atlanta, Toronto, and more. The tour will wrap on Aug. 6 at Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in New Jersey.
In an interview with Rolling Stone last fall, Trohman opened up about abusing opioids in pill form at the band’s peak and previous hiatus.
“I hid it well from a lot of people until it got really bad,” he said. “I was taking pill-form heroin, but not seeing it as that. I was not being very smart with my youth and I was wasting it away, trying to quell these illogical obsessive thoughts with drugs that honestly didn’t seem that harmful because they were made in a laboratory and came in a prescription bottle.”