James Arthur smoked an “ungodly amount of weed” in order to cope with anxiety during his X Factor days. Since winning the ITV show back in 2012 the singer has spoken openly about the impact it had on his mental health and before he turned to therapy he heavily relied on drugs.
James revealed: “I smoked an ungodly amount of weed, I smoked weed every day for like 10 years… A lot of weed, a lot of weed, the paranoia made it worse, and yeah drinking and stuff like that.”
The Just Us hitmaker suffered his first severe panic attack during filming and truly felt that was it. He went on: “It was my first major panic attack where ambulances were called and I thought I was dying and all that kind of s**t. It was all a bit much, it was the contrast from bedsit to national TV, it was at the peak of its powers when I was on that show, like 12 million people a week were watching.”
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(Image: Getty Images for BAUER)
Things didn’t improve after the show either, a couple of years later he was dropped by Simon Cowell’s label Syco, and that left him feeling lower than ever. He shared on the Privates Parts podcast: “I did not want to be here at all. Because the thing that I worked towards my whole life seemingly was gone and there was zero chance of it coming back, one in a million chance of it coming back.”
James went as far to say that if he hadn’t found a new record deal he “probably wouldn’t be here” today. The Middlesbrough-born star has overcome he problems and announced a new album, Bitter Sweet Love, will be released in January.
(Image: ITV)
It’s not the first time James has opened up about his various addictions, admitting in the past that he battled sex addiction in addition to using marijuana. He said: “I started bingeing on sex. I became as addicted to sex as I was to weed. I craved sex, I had to have it and I needed it to fill the void and make myself feel better.
“I was chatting to hundreds of women online or on WhatsApp after swapping numbers with them via Twitter, and I started to sleep with so many of them I lost count.
(Image: GETTY)
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“They were usually the same type — Babestation girls or glamour models. If I saw someone I fancied I’d contact her on social media and tell her blatantly I wanted to have sex.”
His break-up with Rita Ora hit him particularly hard, with James confessing: “If I’m honest, I became a bit of a sl*g after Rita.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
