Ed Sheeran has admitted he “didn’t want to live” after the death of his best friend Jamal Edwards.
The music entrepreneur and YouTuber, who set up new music platform SBTV, died of a cardiac arrhythmia brought on by cocaine use last February. He was 31.
Jamal went out of his way to help Ed when he was starting out in his career, and Ed made regular appearances on SBTV.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Ed revealed the death of Jamal and another close friend of his, cricketer Shane Warne, sent him into a depression.
The singer said: “My best friend died. And he shouldn’t have done. I’ve always had real lows in my life but it wasn’t really till last year that I actually addressed it.”
“I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. And I have had that throughout my life.… You’re under the waves drowning. You’re just sort of in this thing. And you can’t get out of it.”
Ed described his thoughts as “selfish, especially as a father. I feel really embarrassed about it.”
Ed’s wife Cherry, who was diagnosed with a tumour just before Jamal’s death, encouraged him to go get help and he started seeing a therapist.
The 32-year-old said: “No one really talks about their feelings where I come from. People think it’s weird getting a therapist in England.… I think it’s very helpful to be able to speak with someone and just vent and not feel guilty about venting.”
“Obviously, like, I’ve lived a very privileged life. So my friends would always look at me like, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’ ”
“The help isn’t a button that is pressed, where you’re automatically OK. It is something that will always be there and just has to be managed.”
In the same interview, Ed got candid about his past issues with drink and drugs – which inspired his hit song Bad Habits.
The father-of-two explained: “I was always a drinker. I didn’t touch any sort of like, drug, until I was 24.”
“I remember just being at a festival and being like, ‘Well, if all of my friends do it, it can’t be that bad.’ And then sort of dabbling. And then it just turns into a habit that you do once a week and then once a day and then, like, twice a day and then, like, without booze. It just became bad vibes.”
He added: “I would never, ever, ever touch anything again, because that’s how Jamal died. And that’s just disrespectful to his memory to even, like, go near.”
