Liam Payne ‘s death sparked an outpouring of grief across the world as fans mourned his loss.
The 31-year-old singer died on Wednesday (October 16) after falling over 40 ft from his third-floor suite in the CasaSur hotel in Buenos Aires. In the moments before his death, it was revealed he had been behaving erratically in front of staff and guests, telling one woman: “I was in a boyband, that’s why I’m so f****d up.”
But before he sadly passed away, this was not the first time Liam had spoken candidly about his health struggles. Particularly, his battle with mental health conditions proved to be a point of concern for many fans, who wished to see him in a happier mental state.
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So, as the world continues to mourn for Liam as investigations into his death continue, Daily Star looks at some of Liam Payne’s mental health struggles.
Dependency on alcohol
(Image: Getty Images for ABA)
In 2019, Liam bravely opened up about his addiction to alcohol and how it had affected his time in One Direction. In the emotional interview, he explained that he had taken up the booze in order to cope with being propelled to fame at such a young age.
“There was no other way to get your head around what was going on,” he explained. He also said that he would be getting “p****d quite a lot of the time” before he would go on stage, with drinking almost being akin to a pre-show ritual.
Speaking to Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021, Liam opened up again on his alcoholism, saying that the pandemic had particularly affected his drinking habits. He explained that he would gradually get on the sauce earlier and earlier in the day as a way of coping.
“What I’ve found more than anything with the alcohol and stuff is boundaries; there were no boundaries,” he explained. “So, if you’re on Zoom, you quite easily hide that you might be a little bit tipsy at the point you shouldn’t be.”
Loneliness and depression
(Image: Getty Images for Atlantis The Royal)
Speaking to former SAS: Who Dares Wins star Ant Middleton, Liam said that there were points in his career when he suffered with particularly bad loneliness. Chatting with the Channel 4 star in 2019, he explained he intense feelings of loneliness were so strong they “almost nearly killed him”.
“There’s times where that level of loneliness and people getting into you every day,” Liam said. “Just every so often, you’re like, when will this end?”
Depression was also a particularly hard issue for Liam, as he admitted he let things “start to pile on top of each other”, which only made things worse. But when asked on what he did to help him get out of the slump, he had some very easy advice:
“Just get on with it. Just do today,” he explained, “get on with that bit, then there’ll be another hurdle in a few months or a few weeks, or maybe even the next day. You never really know.”
Surprise fears
(Image: Getty Images North America)
The For You singer often spoke about his mental health issues, but left fans surprised when he opened up on a secret fear he had developed. In an interview with Esquire Middle East in 2019, he admitted that fame with One Direction had left him with agoraphobia – the fear of going outside.
“It’s the getting ready and always knowing that you might be photographed; I developed a bit of agoraphobia,” he confessed. “I would never leave the house and I do sometimes suffer with it a bit in the sense that I’ll get days where I just don’t want to leave my house.”
He revealed that he would find mundane tasks such as ordering a coffee or filling a car up tough to deal with. “Unfortunately, it does happen to everybody in this industry. I think you just have to get over it as quickly as you can.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
