Brian "Head" Welch, lead guitarist of the metal band Korn, grew up in a family where alcohol and substance abuse were passed down like a surname. His father drank. His family normalised self-medication. By the time Brian was famous, wealthy, and touring the world, he was deep in methamphetamine addiction — spending thousands of dollars a week, unable to stop, and watching the same destructive pattern that had defined his family play out in his own life with amplified intensity.
Fame Made the Curse Louder
Success did not break the pattern; it accelerated it. Brian had money to fuel his addiction without limits. He had enablers everywhere. His marriage collapsed. And then the thought that terrified him most: his young daughter Jennea was watching. She was growing up in the shadow of the same curse — a father lost to substances, absent even when physically present. Brian could see the generational cycle about to claim another victim, and the horror of that realisation cut deeper than any amount of meth could numb.
A Bible and a Breakthrough
In 2005, Brian picked up a Bible on a whim and started reading the Gospel of Matthew. Something in the words gripped him in a way nothing else had. He described it as feeling electricity running through his body. He cried out to God and asked for help. Within weeks, the methamphetamine addiction that had consumed him was gone — not managed, not tapered, gone. He experienced no withdrawal symptoms. The craving that had enslaved him simply vanished.
The Daughter Who Got Her Father Back
Brian left Korn, devoted himself to raising Jennea, and rebuilt his life from the ground up. The generational pattern of addiction and absent fathering that had run through his family ended. Jennea grew up with a present, sober father. Brian eventually returned to Korn as a transformed man, using his platform to share what God had done. His story reached millions of people who recognised the same generational chains in their own families.
What This Means for You
If addiction has been your family's inheritance — the thing that takes your parents, your siblings, and now threatens to take you — Brian's story is proof that one encounter with Jesus can do what rehab, willpower, and money cannot. The generational pattern does not have the last word. Jesus does.