“Basket Case” is one of Green Day’s biggest songs, but it wasn’t always a banger according to frontman Billie Joe Armstrong. In a recent episode of the podcast Song Exploder, Armstrong revealed that he was on crystal meth when he wrote the “embarrassingly bad” original version.

Armstrong explained that in either 1992 or 1993, he bought a new four-track recorder and a guitar amp. “The true confession is, I was on crystal meth when I wrote the lyrics to it, and I thought I was writing the greatest song ever. As you know, with drugs, they wear off, and then I felt like I’d written the worst song ever. I thought that the lyrics were just embarrassingly bad. I had a few songs before that I’d written on drugs, but this one was the most pitiful, I felt, after. And so I kind of let the song go for a while, because I felt so gross about it.”

The demo was shelved until the band conceptualized their 1994 album Dookie, which is about “everyday life and feelings and emotions you go through that people can identify with.” The song later became about panic attacks. “So I think I just got the courage to get into it again, trying to write the lyrics. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made, probably, as a songwriter,” he said.

Take a listen to the 30-year-old, methed out demo below.