“My experience with alcohol and drugs is very strange because I started taking drugs when I was 10. A lot of people in my family smoked pot and I would steal drugs from them. So from the ages of 10 to 13 I smoked a lot of grass and I drank, but I didn’t do it because I enjoyed it. I did it because I wanted to hang out with the older, cooler kids. Then when I was 13, I quit and became a straight-edged punk rocker. When I was 19 I had a very hedonistic period where I drank a lot, and then I stopped for about nine years. And during those nine years I became very involved in the dance scene. So it was interesting in the early Nineties to go out to raves and clubs where everyone was out of their heads on E, and I was the only straight, sober person.â€
“Now my approach to liquor and drugs is, I think, a lot more balanced,†he says. “I’ll drink occasionally, and I don’t currently take drugs, but that’s just because my brain can’t handle them. If I were going out tonight and took a hit of ecstasy I’d be destroyed for the next week.†Bizarrely he believes that rave culture contributed to premature baldness. “I believe that those early rave experiences contributed to me losing my hair,†he says. “It was a really fun period, but incredibly stressful. When I was in the UK in 1991-’92 I’d be doing three shows a night. I’d have a show in Portsmouth at midnight, then a show in Coventry at three in the morning, and then maybe East London at six in the morning. And so I’d be driving around trying to find these places, then setting up my equipment, then break it down and get in the car. I’d finally get back to London at seven in the morning, completely wiped out.â€
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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/music/story.jsp?story=711626
