Joe Tracini splashed out £2,500 a week on cocaine during the height of his drug addiction.
The former ‘Hollyoaks’ actor has been drug-free for eight years and sober for five years, but the 32-year-old star has admitted he was forking out all of his earnings on illegal substances during his earlier years.
He said: "All of the money I had went on drugs. I was spending about two and a half grand a week on cocaine."
Before turning to acting, Joe tried out comedy and magic.
The star made his first joke aged 18 months at the end of one of his dad Joe Pasquale’s sets, in which he pulled on his hair and said: "This is a trick Paul Daniels can’t do."And while he tried to forge a comedy career like his famous father, Joe later realised he wanted to be his own person.
He said: "I was a real novelty, because I spoke and thought like an adult. I wrote my own stuff and would do five to 10 minutes at the end of my dad’s act when I was seven years old.
"I’ve got hundreds of hours of me on film. And it is essentially me, this tiny little boy, being my dad.
"My adult career has been trying to undo everything that I taught myself growing up about how to be like my dad."
Joe – who played Dennis Savage on the Channel 4 soap – has been outspoken about suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD) and attempting to take his own life in the past, to try to raise awareness of mental health issues.
He is now in a relationship with professional dancer Holly Houseman, and admitted their romance has "given [him] something to live for".
Joe added to the Guardian newspaper: "It’s given me something to live for more. Having Holly in my life has made me feel more capable of some sort of future, though I can’t think long term."
The former ‘Oaks’ star celebrated his 32nd birthday last month, and the actor admitted he used to "convince himself" he was going to die before he was 25.
Speaking in a video, he said: "For me every day is a celebration of being not dead again but today I get a badge.
"When I was 24 I was a massive drug addict and I lived on a diet exclusively of drugs, wafer thin ham and drugs.
"On my 24th birthday I went to get drugs and then to Waitrose to get the wafer thin ham, and while I was in there I farted and fully s*** myself, not just a bit, full poo in pant.
"And I just stood there and I thought, ‘This is it, you’re going to die, you’re literally dying inside,’ and I was convinced on that day I would be dead before my 25th birthday.
"My point is that things change, not necessarily always for the better, but I was convinced I was going to die before I was 25.
"Today I am 32, I am not dead, I am eight years clean and I am not covered in my own s***."