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Ed Sheeran Says He Was 'Slipping Into' Substance Abuse Before Taking a Break

Ed Sheeran revealed that he found himself "slipping into" bad habits, namely substance abuse, on a recent episode of The Jonathan Ross Show.

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The singer announced a break from social media and took a year off to pull himself together before releasing his latest album, ÷, in March.

“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," Sheeran said on an episode that aired Saturday (Oct. 14), according to People. "And all the pitfalls that people read 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.”

Sheeran addresses this in the lyrics to "Eraser," the opening track of ÷: "You know that I've got whiskey with white lines and smoke in my lungs/ I think life has got to the point I know without it's no fun/ I need to get in the right mind and clear myself up/ Instead, I look in the mirror questioning what I've become/ I guess it's a stereotypical day for someone like me/ Without a nine-to-five job or an uni degree/ To be caught up in the trappings of the industry."

“I didn’t really notice it was happening. It just started gradually happening, and then some people took me to one side and were like, ‘Calm yourself down. 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,” the singer-songwriter said.

Sheeran got busy making music -- and spending quality time with his supportive girlfriend, Cherry Seaborn, whom he lives with --​ while taking a break from overindulging.

As he explained, “I focused on work, and I can’t work under the influence, I can’t write songs under the influence, I can’t perform under the influence -- so the more I worked the less [that happened]. I’ve worked my whole life to get to where I am and you can’t lose that over something that you do in your spare time.".

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