25/05/2025
The Raw Truth About Touring and Mental Health
Touring breaks people in ways that most donât talk aboutâand the industry rarely admits.
At its core, touring is chronic displacement. Youâre always somewhere else. No routine, no grounding, no permanence. Your nervous system never lands. You live in fight-or-flight: travel delays, high-pressure shows, interpersonal tension, constant overstimulation. Thereâs no decompression. No off switch.
And emotionally? Touring swings between extremes. One night itâs 15,000 people screaming. The next, itâs a silent hotel room. You go from deep connection to total isolation, over and over again. That kind of cycle burns out even the most resilient people.
But the culture of touring rewards stoicism and punishes vulnerability. Youâre expected to power through. Joke about it. Drink through it. Avoid it. And the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to admit youâre unravelingâbecause your whole identity is tied to the road. Your worth becomes about being needed, useful, reliable. So when your body screams âI canât,â your mind says âyou have to.â
Thereâs no roadmap for recovery. No built-in support. No decompression protocol. And when you finally make it home, you donât feel home. You feel disoriented. Numb. Out of place. No one around you quite understands what youâve just been throughâand honestly, you donât either.
The truth is, touring can be beautiful. But it can also dismantle you.
And pretending it doesnât is why so many are suffering in silence.
Admitting the toll doesnât make you weakâit makes you honest.
And that honesty is where real change begins.
