Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Seeking Treatment For Substance Abuse After Freak Out

When we caught Billie Joe Armstrong‘s outrageous antics on Day One of the iHeartRadio Music Festival, we thought his tantrum was just the usual punk rock posturing. As it turns out, things are a bit more complicated and serious than that.

A statement on Green Day‘s Facebook page says the following:

“Billie Joe is seeking treatment for substance abuse. We would like everyone to know that our set was not cut short by Clear Channel and to apologize to those we offended at the iHeartRadio Festival in Las Vegas. We regretfully must postpone some of our upcoming promotional appearances.”

This, of course, follows his guitar-smashing, Justin Bieber-bashing rant when Green Day’s set at the fest was cut short due to time constraints. (Though apparently that wasn’t the case.)

The news isn’t exactly a shocker — Armstrong often makes a point of noting that he’s drunk at his shows — though he’s been in the game so long, we wonder if the abuse has worsened lately, or if it just took him a very long time to seek help. (Of course we don’t know what exactly this “substance” is, or if it’s a new development.) Billie Joe visited a hospital in Italy earlier this month for undisclosed (but possibly related?) reasons.

Of course, the timing could be better, with Green Day releasing an ambitious trilogy of albums in the coming months, the first of which (Uno!) drops this Tuesday. They’re also supposed to kick off a tour in November, though that could change.

We wish Billie Joe a speedy recovery in dealing with his substance dependence.