In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, singer Ed Sheeran spoke about his struggles with drugs, alcohol and depression after the death of his friend Jamal Edwards last year.
“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 my friends do it, it can’t be that bad’. And then sort of dabbling. 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.”
However the death of his friend Jamal Edwards from cardiac arrhythmia brought on by cocaine use changed his views completely and he has since stopped taking drugs.
Sheeran and Jamal
“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,” he said.
Similarly he stopped drinking just before his wife, Cherry Seaborn gave birth. Cherry had said to him when she was pregnant, “If my waters break, do you really want someone else to drive me to the hospital?”
“Because I was just drinking a lot. And that’s when it clicked. I was like, ‘No, actually, I really don’t.’ And I don’t ever want to be pissed holding my kid. Ever, ever. Having a couple of beers is one thing. But having a bottle of vodka is another thing. It’s just realization of, ‘I’m getting into my thirties. Grow up! You’ve partied, you’ve had this experience. Be happy with that and just be done.”
Depression
Sheeran then developed depression as a result of his friend’s death as well as his wife being diagnosed with a tumor when she was six months pregnant with their second child.
“I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. 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.”
NOTE: The photo above is from a YouTube screen grab