Songfacts®:

• In "The Tragic Truth," Five Finger Death Punch frontman Ivan Moody gives us an intimate look at his life as an alcoholic. The first line reads like a cry for help:
  
  I'm drowning in the bottom of a bottle
  Running from a man I swore I'd never be
  
  When the song was released in 2011, Moody was in rough shape - he'd been battling addiction for years. It got worse. A lot worse.
  
  Moody was nearly booted from the band in 2012 when he became very erratic, often performing visibly drunk and not remembering any of it the next day. This went on for a while and got progressively worse. In 2016 it was so bad, the band replaced him for eight concerts with Phil Labonte of All That Remains. In the summer of 2017 Moody couldn't complete their European tour and was replaced with Tommy Vext of Bad Wolves. Moody did multiple stints in rehab and finally got sober in 2018.
• 5FDP recorded the song in 2011 for their American Capitalist album but didn't have it ready in time for the pressing, so it was buried as a bonus track on the digital version. The band didn't play it live until 2020, after Moody finally sobered up.
• On January 7, 2022 - Ivan Moody's 42nd birthday - the band released a video for the song recreating some of Moody's lowlights as an alcoholic. We see him throwing up before shows and getting surrounded by demons before finally passing out and getting revived by EMTs. Moody says he really did collapse and was clinically dead before being revived, but it didn't happen before a show - he was home with his daughter and had spent four days going cold turkey when his body shut down.
  
  "It was like becoming a part of the universal hum - complete peace," he said of the near-death experience. "There was no burden of any sort, and for a brief second, I was free."
  
  The band called the video "a celebration of a victory, Ivan's rebirth into a new life," adding, "It is also a message for those who are battling addiction right now: you are more than your addiction, and you are never alone. Seek help, fight back, it's never too late. Ivan came back from the dead, literally."