TheAlterBridgeNation.com

In 2015, he sat down with PEOPLE in his home shortly after returning to his family. At the time, his emotions remained very raw. “I was still very shaken and fractured and broken when I spoke to you,” he recalls now. “Things were still so new. It was a painful time.”

He credits a lot of his recovery to the love of his life. “I couldn’t have gotten through it if it weren’t for my wife, Jaclyn,” he says. “She has always been there for me.”

Today, Stapp, 43, has an aura of confidence and serenity as he embarks on his newest chapter. “After that shattering, a new person has emerged,” he says. “It’s still a work in progress. I haven’t arrived by any means, but there’s a clarity in my mind. I’m able to experience love and joy and happiness with my wife and children. All the things I love about life have slowly come back into my reality.”

Now healthier and happier, Stapp says that he’s channeling his former pain into his music. “I learned so much on this journey. It’s really taking the act of creating music and writing songs to complete the process of healing and enable me to completely process all the various traumas. I’m sharing everything that I’ve learned, good and bad, in getting hold of myself mentally as well as my sobriety.”

The result: a new authenticity in his music. “I wanted to do something special to commemorate my 20th anniversary in the industry and of the My Own Prison album,” he says. “But I’m different than I was back then, and I want to share that process. I’ve really learned and grown a lot, and I think an acoustic tour is a good way to show that. It will be very intimate. I’m really excited to share this part of me with people.

The guy is out of his mind, like he thinks he's a better human than everybody. He claims all this spirituality, this super killer guy doesn't give a damn about any of his fans, he ignores everybody. He walks by his dressing room, his people they look at you and they go "you do not approach the band, you do not talk to the band, you do not look at the band". And you're just like "What is the deal with this guy ?". He's in his videos, doing the Jesus Christ thing, and he's all "Hey, man I am badass". It's like "Come on, put your feet on the ground, because one of these days, that's gonna go away and nobody's gonna have anything to do with you if you act like that".

I think their music is dope, they're a good band. I just think anybody acting like that doesn't deserve to be a rock star.