DESPITE A BROKEN arm, Ed Sheeran is on top of the world right now, with a sold out world tour and multi-platinum third album under his belt.

But he has admitted that things weren’t so good for him at the end of 2015, when he announced that he would be taking a break from public life for a while.

Speaking on an upcoming episode of The Jonathan Ross Show, Ed said he decided to take a year off when he realised he was struggling with substance abuse:

I think you need to, when you get into the industry, adjust to it – and I didn’t adjust because I was constantly working on tour. And all the pitfalls that people about, I just found myself slipping into all of them. Mostly like, substance abuse. I never touched anything. I started slipping into it, and that’s why I took a year off and buggered off.

“I didn’t really notice it was happening… Then some people took me to one side and were like, ‘Calm yourself down’,” he said.

It’s all fun to begin with, it all starts off as a party and then you’re doing it on your own and it’s not, so that was a wake-up call and taking a year off.

Hahn Lionel / ABACA Hahn Lionel / ABACA / ABACA

In a profile by Rolling Stone magazine earlier this year, the singer defended his alcohol consumption:

Often I’m like, is it bad that I drink almost every single day? But I don’t wake up and drink. I don’t depend on drink. I can go without it completely. I just enjoy going out and having fun, being 25. And I think that’s a normal thing.

But now, he credits his girlfriend Cherry Seaborn with “grounding” him again.

“I was a 25-year-old in the music industry on tour so I just needed someone to balance me out,” he said. Fair play.

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