From the streets to fronting Rancid

Tim Armstrong, who went by the name Lint in his early days, was the guitarist and singer of the East Bay punk band Operation Ivy. The band's final release came in 1988 and it dissolved the following year. According to an East Bay Express profile, it broke up because its members were uncomfortable with growing popularity, and not because of fighting among themselves.

What followed for Armstrong was a hard period. The article says he fell into a heavily publicised bout of depression, and that dyslexia, poor grades and low self-esteem had left him with no sense of direction without his music. It adds that alcoholism and heroin addiction took control of him. He wound up living on the streets. The profile does not name the city, give his age, or say how long this lasted, though it places the time after the band's end, so around 1989 onward.

The turning point came through a friend. Matt Freeman, Operation Ivy's bassist, was unwilling to watch his friend kill himself. He took Armstrong in and got him sober enough to stay in a halfway house. According to the article, Armstrong eventually cleaned up, aided by the formation of the band Rancid.

Rancid grew out of the friendship between the two. The band became one of the best-known American punk groups of the 1990s, and Armstrong fronted it. The profile does not quote Armstrong directly about the time he spent on the streets.