Pete Doherty “needed” to make music to stop himself from dying.
The Libertines frontman has spoken frankly over the years about his drug addiction issues and he admitted staying creative was a lifeline that kept him occupied and also kept him away from those who worried about his problem.
Pete – who has been off drugs since 2019 – admitted to Big Issue magazine: “A lot of the chaos and confusion and extremes that came from using drugs fuelled not my ability to create, but my need to create.
“I’d do a tour or record albums because I f****** needed to or I was going to sit around and die.
“And anyway, I needed the money.”
When you’re using that heavily, you can’t be around your family. You can occasionally manage to make the music thing work.”
The 45-year-old star now gets “satisfaction and pleasure” from his quiet life with wife Katia de Vidas, with whom he has a 20-month-old daughter.
He added: “The satisfaction and pleasure I thought I was getting from drugs I’ve been getting from elsewhere – like family things.
2And I’m trying to make it all work, taking my missus and the baby and the dogs on the road.”
The ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’ singer admitted for a long time after getting clean, he expected to return to drugs one day but now leading a life without heroin seems more “realistic”.
He said: “The more time that passes, the more realistic it seems that I can live without heroin.
“Because I am living without it.
“But for a long time it was very hard to imagine – heroin was always there for so long.
“And even when I gave it up, in the back of my head, there was a sense that eventually ‘I will find my way back to you.’ ”