Ed Sheeran has revealed he secretly battled with substance abuse.
Speaking on The Jonathan Ross Show that airs on Saturday, Ed reveals he drank too much alcohol and admitted to having a problem with substances, although he didn’t specify which substances.
“I think you need to, when you get into the industry, adjust to [fame], and I didn’t adjust because I was constantly working on tour,” he said.
“And all the pitfalls that people read about, I just found myself slipping into all of them. Mostly, like, substance abuse.
“I’d never touched anything. I started slipping into it, and that’s why I took a year off and buggered off.”
Ed disappeared out of the limelight and social media for a year, returning with a new album this March.
“I didn’t really notice it was happening,” he said.
“It just started gradually happening, and then some people took me to one side and were like, ‘Calm yourself down.’ It’s all fun to begin with. It all starts off as a party, and then you’re doing it on your own and it’s not, so that was a wake-up call and [I took] a year off.”
The 25-year-old said his girlfriend, Cherry Seaborn, helped him get back to his old self.
“We live together now, and I think that was a real help grounding me,” he said.
“I was a 25-year-old in the music industry on tour, so I just needed someone to balance me out.”
Ed also spoke about his issues with drinking, saying he often found himself drinking too much.
“Often, I’m like, ‘Is it bad that I drink almost every single day?’ And then I look at my friends and most of them do the same.
“And they’re actually worse than me. The first thing Americans say is, ‘There’s a problem, and you need to go to rehab.’
“But I don’t wake up and drink. I don’t depend on drink. I just enjoy going out and having fun, being 25 — and I think that’s a normal thing,” he explained.
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