Mark Hoppus Battled Suicidal Thoughts After Blink-182 Broke Up in 2005: ‘I Lost Everything’

Mark Hoppus gets real about his feelings after Blink-182‘s split in his new memoir, Fahrenheit-182.

After the rock band got its start in 1992, it was in 2005 that group member Tom DeLonge wanted to take a year-long break, which concerned Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker. As People shares in a memoir excerpt, after DeLonge exited and changed his number, Blink-182, for roughly four years, was no more.

“When Blink fell apart, I lost everything. I lost my direction, I lost my confidence, I lost my sense of self,” Hoppus, 53, wrote about the band’s breakup. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or who I was supposed to be. I’d hear one of our songs playing in a store and have to walk out.”

Hoppus recalled that he “sank lower and lower” and it was “near the bottom” that the musician found relief in thoughts of suicide. “If it gets bad enough, I can always just kill myself,” Hoppus wrote. “I started talking to a psychiatrist who put me on medications, which helped a lot. It let me take a breath. It allowed me the space in my own head to say, ‘You’re being a dick, Mark. Knock it off.'”

While DeLonge would lead band Angels & Airwaves beginning in 2005, Hoppus and Barker formed supergroup +44, which lasted from 2005 to 2009. Blink-182 would regroup in 2011, with DeLonge leaving again four years later. After nearly ten years, the guitarist would resurface on the ninth Blink-182 album, One More Time…, which released in 2023.

In a recent New York Times profile, it was shared that Hoppus previously had cancer and being on chemotherapy exacerbated his depression. The illness also made him reconnect with DeLonge.

“I was very quick to say, ‘I’m all in, Mark,'” DeLonge told the publication. “‘When — not if — you’re done with these treatments, the north star is we’re going to play again. Let’s do that for each other.'”