Tom Chaplin was playing ”Russian roulette” with his life at the height of his drink and drug problems.
The 37-year-old singer-songwriter – who is best known as the lead singer of the band Keane – saw his life spiral out of control in the mid-2000s due to his addictions and Tom admitted he came close to death after relapsing two years ago.
He shared: ”Death was coming to say hello. I could easily have copped it. It’s Russian roulette.
”When you’re going on binges that last four or five days, with no sleep and crazy amounts of drugs – and you’re also on your own.
”I pushed my family right to the edge, to the point where they were kind of saying their goodbyes.”
Tom explained that cocaine proved to be his downfall after he’d spent many years enjoying the party lifestyle.
He told The Sun newspaper: ”There were periods of my life during the Keane days, two or three years, where I didn’t touch coke but I was doing other things.
”I was doing party drugs and was the life and soul.
”But as soon as I went back to coke – particularly that drug – it seemed to have a very isolating, self-destructive hold on me.”
In October, Tom said he had overcome his drug abuse problem and was ”prepared” for the dangers of the music business after launching his solo album ‘The Wave’.
He previously said: ”Music is fraught with danger and I have thought about that very deeply. I am savvy enough to realise you are never out of the woods. But this time I feel prepared.”
Tom also claimed that his reliance on drugs came from trying to suppress what he called a ”real darkness” in his soul.
He explained: ”The environment is intoxicating: the money, the adoration, the sense of people around you singing your praises all the time.
”One the one hand, [my voice] is a beautiful instrument and I am in sole charge of it. But it seems to suggest a kind of pure and angelic quality in me as a person.
”And there is a real darkness in my soul. Crushing that part of myself, it came out in peculiar ways: panic attacks, anxiety and depression. It ended in addiction.”
