David Michael Draiman was born to Jewish parents in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on March 13, 1973.

[2] His father, YJ, had worked as a real estate developer and small-business owner before he was arrested for embezzlement and sent to prison when Draiman was 12 years old.

[8] While not personally observant of their Jewish faith, Draiman's parents sent him to Orthodox schools, where he believed he was on the path to receiving rabbinic ordination.

[6] During his freshman year at the latter, he was asked to leave as he "rebelled against the conformity" and "just wanted to be a normal teenage kid", adding that he "couldn't really stomach the rigorous religious requirements of the life [there]".

[6] He has admitted to being "a bit resentful" about his time at Jewish day schools, but nevertheless became trained as a hazzan (cantor) and encouraged his family to observe Shabbat.

[6] Draiman later enrolled at Ida Crown Jewish Academy, located in the West Ridge neighborhood of Chicago, and graduated from high school in 1991.

[6] From 1991 to 1992, he became romantically involved with a girl who used heroin and eventually killed herself, which would inspire the Disturbed song "Inside the Fire".

At the age of 18, on New Year's Day 1992, he attempted to kill himself but says that he instead woke up later to find himself nearly frozen to death underneath a parked 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass.

[2] After high school, he spent a year studying at the Yeshivas Neveh Zion in Kiryat Ye'arim on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

[12] During Disturbed's hiatus from 2011 to 2015, Draiman worked on an industrial metal project with Geno Lenardo, which was later named Device.

[20] In March of 2022, Draiman and Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows criticized the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act.

In 2019, he described former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters and other activists seeking to boycott Israel for alleged human rights abuses as "Nazi comrades".

[22] In June 2024, during the Israel–Hamas war, Draiman uploaded a video to his Instagram, where he signs an Israel Defense Forces artillery shell with "Fuck Hamas".