Stephen Fry has opened up on his devastating drug addiction and how it developed in his early years.
The legendary broadcaster admitted on John Cleese’s Dinosaur Hour to feeling a “vast empty hole” that resulted in him turning to cocaine.
He told GB News that as a teenager, he turned to tobacco in a bid to “fill” the “empty hole”, before turning to cocaine.
Fry spoke of being “prepared” for cocaine as a youngster with different types of sweets.
GB NEWS
“You were given white powder and tobacco”, he said. “And I never could eat enough of that.
“I would break out of school, school bands, go to the village shop and buy all the fruit salads and blackjacks and foamy shrimps and little rice paper flying saucers.
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“I stuffed myself and I couldn’t eat them enough. I still have teeth missing here because of it.
“When I was a teenager, I had this empty hole in me, this vast empty hole that said, ‘feed me’.”
The sugar addiction soon became a dependence on tobacco, which swiftly turned to cocaine when Fry moved into his 20s.
“I couldn’t sit still without sniffing”, he said.
John Cleese spoke to Stephen Fry on GB News' Dinosaur Hour
GB NEWS
“Not everybody has this and it’s an addictive gene, kind of.”
The national treasure has previously spoken out on his drug troubles, including an interview in 2015 with ABC where he admitted to previously referring to it as “pudding”.
Fry soon turned to celibacy, citing mental health troubles and being properly diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder.
“I realised all my life I sort of tried to control my feelings and things, and I’d imagined everything should go into work”, he said.
“I worked at an astonishing rate.”
In his memoir More Fool Me, Fry had admitted to taking cocaine in Buckingham Palace, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, something he later admitted to “regretting”.
He wrote about his 15-year addiction in the 2014 publication, saying “there is no getting away from it”.
“I am confession to having broken the law and consumed, in public places, Class A sanctioned drugs.”