Ed Sheeran Opens Up About His Secret Struggle With Substance Abuse

Ed Sheeran is finally opening up about his secret struggle with substance abuse.

In his upcoming interview on “The Jonathan Ross Show” (via People) which will air on Saturday, Sheeran will share how difficult it was for him to come to terms with his sudden fame. It was also at that time that he started to resort to using substances.

“I think you need to, when you get into the industry, adjust to it – and I didn’t adjust because I was constantly working on tour. All the pitfalls that people read about, I just found myself slipping into all of them. Mostly, like, substance abuse,” he shared.

Luckily, Sheeran got a wakeup call soon enough for him to be encouraged to take on a healthier lifestyle. He also took a year off from making music. “I didn’t really notice it was happening. 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 taking a year off,” he said.

The “Thinking Out Loud” singer also credits his music and girlfriend, Cherry Seaborn, for helping him deal with his issues. The couple now lives together. “I think that was a real help grounding me. I was a 25-year-old in the music industry on tour so I just needed someone to balance me out,” he said.

“I focused on work, and I can’t work under the influence, I can’t write songs under the influence, I can’t perform under the influence – so the more I worked the less that happened,” he added.

Meanwhile, substance abuse isn’t the only thing Sheeran had to stop. In 2014, he told Entertainment Tonight that he decided to stop drinking beer to help with his weight loss. “I’ve dropped 35 pounds, in, like, three months just from not drinking beer,” he said. But this does not mean he has completely stopped drinking alcohol, because Sheeran revealed that he replaced beer with vodka.