Temptation is all around in the music industry, and beloved British singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran has opened up about the dangers of substance abuse, and how he focused on work to stay away from temptation.
Sheeran told the Jonathan Ross Show that he took a year-long break when he realized he was “slipping into” substance abuse. “All the pitfalls that people read about, I just found myself slipping into all of them. I started slipping into it, and that’s why I took a year off.”
Sheeran also wrote about substance abuse in the song Eraser, which includes the lyrics, “You know that I’ve got whiskey with white lines and smoke in my lungs, I think life has got to the point I know without it’s no fun. I need to get in the right mind and clear myself up…”
Sheeran says this “started gradually happening, and then some people took me to one said 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…”
Sheeran focused on music. “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]. I’ve worked my whole life to get to where I am and you can’t lose that over something that you do in your spare time.”