Eighties icon Rick Springfield is wrapping his head around a troubling discovery.
The “Jessie’s Girl” singer, 75, recently found out that he still has brain damage from an onstage fall 25 years ago. It was a surprising finding from a Prenuvo whole-body MRI scan.
“I fell 25 feet, hit my head and then wood came down and hit my head, and then my head hit the stage again,” Springfield told People about the 2000 incident at a Las Vegas show.
“I thought I had just broken my wrist, but on the scan I found out I have some brain damage from the fall, so I’m working on trying to repair that.”
Although Springfield said that many people “don’t want to know what’s wrong with them,” he believes that knowledge is power when it comes to your health — a lesson he learned from his father.
“My dad died from not wanting to know,” he says. “He thought he had stomach cancer for years and never got it checked out. When he finally collapsed one day at home, they found out it was an ulcer that burst, and he died from the loss of blood. It could have been fixed if he had gotten it checked out.”
“That was a giant message to me: If you want to live long, you have to be prepared for some bad news now and then,” he continued. “I could find out I have terminal cancer tomorrow and be dead in a year, but I can only do all I can do.”
Now realizing that “I’m the same age as old people,” Springfield stays in shape by exercising every day and following a mostly pescatarian diet. He also cut back on his alcohol intake two years ago.
“I was drinking quite a bit, and as you get older, it’s kind of a natural thing to drop all that s–t,” he said. “I’ll have a couple of sips of vodka or something when I’m onstage, but I don’t drink any other time.”
Springfield has also experimented with ketamine and LSD as treatments for his depression.
“I wanted to see if [ketamine would] open a few things in my brain,” he says. “I did it for as long as suggested, and I wasn’t a big fan. It made me feel heavy and machinelike.”
As for “micro-dosing” acid, “that was actually a little better,” he said. “I hadn’t done that since I was in my 20s, but it was a great high. I don’t mean to push drugs on anyone, but I’m not averse to anything that helps me be happier and a better person.”
While he’s actively working to live a longer life, Springfield is realistic that he can only do so much — and that death is inevitable.
”It’s not a death wish by any stretch,” he said. “But it’s important to be aware of it. I think I have a better handle on dying than I used to.
“You can only put on the party dress,” he added, “but what happens at the party is up to the gods.”
