It doesn't invalidate it. Mary is closer, but also angrier. I would imagine there is truth in both pieces.
I have said that I think Scott only had two long stretches of sobriety--after jail touring No. 4, and the Contraband era.
The era this guy is talking about, roughly 2010, I think shows that he was on something or another to varying degrees. Take the painful English Laundry interview where he can't string two words together
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgvYqkTRR7o which was in the same year as this interview, where he slightly slurs but is much more with it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUacFQ692hsBut on Stern promoting the book, he seemed pretty good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWWRqjzX7YE That interview was four years ago. And he said he wanted to give up drinking, though I wonder if that was water in the bottle.
But then the Christmas album came out and he was audibly drunk on many of those tracks.
Even last year he sounded good, just looked like shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CSc2Gepmwk But then we all saw the interviews where he sounded really bad.
It just caught up with him. Mary saw a lot of it. This writer saw some of it.