John Mayer Botox: Singer Gets Injections To Help Heal Voice After Cutting Last Tour Short, Back in Action for 'Born and Raised' Concerts

In order to come back from a 10-month vocal cord rest, John Mayer had gone through many procedures including Botox injections. As the songwriter completed his last album in the fall of 2011, Born and Raised, he received the career changing diagnosis of severe tissue inflammation on his vocal cords known as a granuloma. This could have been the end of his singing career. Luckily, John reached out to Boston-based laryngeal expert, Dr. Steven Zeitels, who recently helped Grammy award winner Adele come back from vocal cord problems.

In a recent interview with Billboard, Mayer opened up about his vocal condition and the steps he had to take to get better.

"I actually referred [Zeitels] to Adele, and he did a great job with her," Mayer said. "My situation was different, however-more complex, and a lot more ambiguous. I thought I'd just take a pill and it would go away, but the problem got worse and worse, and grew and grew."

Zeitels' use of Botox was to paralyze the vocal cords in order to let them heal. This and the addition of surgeries did not help, however.

"I spent so long being terrorized, I had all but shut down the fantasy of playing music again --- just so I could, you know, survive.I was forced to type on my iPad to communicate anything. It wasn't liberating. Is breaking your leg liberating? No. All complexity is gone when you don't have a choice."

But Mayer sought out Dr. Gerald Berke, an otolaryngology specialist at the UCLA Voice Center for Medicine and the Arts. Dr. Berke took a different approach: he pretty much drowned Mayer in Botox until his vocal cords were completely paralyzed for long periods of time, allowing them to heal more efficiently.

Mayer recounts his road to recovery, saying:

"I probably had contiguously three, maybe four months of not saying a word. The endurance was tough for me, but I started a new life. It's hard to believe that I'm healed, but just to make sure, I keep going back every two weeks for a look, and it's the same-if not better [...] We got to a point where we thought we were out of the woods, and then it came raging back. I felt I needed to take six months off, just to regain my sanity, really."