Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong Released From Rehab!

Back in September, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong made headlines for an unfortunate outburst, in which he clarified that he's not Justin Bieber (lest there was any confusion).

"One minute left, one minute (expletive) left. You're gonna give me (expletive) one minute? ... I'm not (expletive) Justin Bieber, you (expletives)!" he yelled during a performance at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, before smashing his guitar.

And now, in a new Rolling Stone cover story, Armstrong opens up about the incident that led him to seek treatment for years of alcohol and prescription drug abuse.

Armstrong started taking pills for anxiety and to help him sleep, but adds, “I started combining them to a point where I didn’t know what I was taking during the day and what I was taking at night. It was just this routine. My backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle.”

"I couldn't predict where I was going to end up at the end of the night," he tells the magazine. "I'd wake up in a strange house on a couch. I wouldn't remember how. It was a complete blackout."

His substance abuse almost led to the group canceling a string of European shows last summer, when Green Day’s manager realized Armstrong was in trouble.

"I remember tiny things," Armstrong, 41, says of the meltdown in Vegas. "The next morning, I woke up. I asked [my wife] Adrienne, "How bad was it?" She said, "It's bad."

The singer recalls, “I got a text from my manager: ‘Come on down, we have to talk about the Reading Festival’. I went down there… and he goes, ‘We’re getting on a plane. We’re canceling the rest of this tour, and you’re going to rehab.’ I was like, ‘What the f– are you talking about? I’m not going to do that.’

“We got to this theater gig we were playing in London. I said, ‘I don’t want to cancel these gigs. It just can’t happen. Tell you what, as soon as we get home, when we’re done with the press and stuff, after iHeartRadio, the week following I’ll go to rehab, but I can’t cancel any of this s– now.’
“It turned out I was a week ahead of schedule.”

Though the band postponed the start of their 2013 tour in order to focus on Armstrong's well-being, they bumped up the release of new album "¡Tré!" in December and have since added new tour dates for March and December.

"I just wanted to thank you all for the love and support you've showed for the past few months," Armstrong wrote on his Instagram account in December. "Believe me, it hasn't gone unnoticed and I'm eternally grateful to have such an amazing set of friends and family. I'm getting better everyday."

Armstrong checked into rehab the day after his Las Vegas meltdown at the iHeartRadio festival.

Billie finally checked from rehab in the past 2 weeks and is finally clean.

Now, the musician insists he's on the mend and no longer drinking. "I want to put on good shows," says Armstrong, who will resume touring with Green Day on March 10 in Pomona, California. "I want to be reliable."

Armstrong also admits on maintaining his sobriety will be a challenge. "There is still the obsession for alcohol," he says. "There's also sleepless nights. But I have to work on it every day. Because I know what goes on out there … I've got to watch my step."