Recommendations of the Editorial team
With a flower bouquet and handmade greeting cards from his sons Elijah and Zachary, Sir Elton John celebrated an anniversary on Thursday (July 31), which is rarely celebrated in the music business: 35 years of abstinence. Zero alcohol, no drugs.
The 78-year-old held the “Cleanen” anniversary in an Instagram snapshot. “I am grateful for all the love on my birthday of sobriety,” said his commitment, which received thousands of comments from fans and friends. Over the years he has always spoken openly about the depths of his addiction and repeatedly emphasized that he would have lived his life again after the stable state of abstinence.
Elton John: What moved him to become sober
The turning point for him came after Ryan White’s death in 1990, a young AIDS activist with whom he was friends. In the same year, on July 29, John had himself been instructed in the Parkside Lutheran Hospital in Chicago and started a decades of recovery.
Already in 2023 he published a photo of his era of sobriety with the words: “33 years of clean and sober. My life has never been better.”
In his autobiography “Me” and in the biopic feature film “Rocketman”, Sir Elton addresses the dark years of the dependence on alcohol, cocaine and cannabis very open. He remembered absurd experiences under the influence of drugs, for example when he thought Bob Dylan for his gardener.
Despite the initial doubt as to whether he could ever return as an artist, he fought himself for new strength through the recovery phase. Regular visits to the self -help groups “Anonymous Alcoholic” (AA) and “Narcotics Anonymus” (Na) became an integral part of his life, even during his world tours. “I hated myself and just wanted to get well,” he said in retrospect.
A second life
“My abstinence brought me everything I could only want,” he reflected in 1994. “I am a survivor. I have survived a lot. Life is full of pitfalls, even if you are sober. I can now handle it because I no longer have to run away and hide.”
In the TV news program CBS News, he said in October 2019: “It almost destroyed my soul. My soul was black like a charred piece of steak until I said: ‘I need help.’ And suddenly a little light came up in my soul and said: ‘Yes, I’m still there.
He also drew that Beatles guitarist George Harrison, who died in 2001, had joined him during his long fight against the multiple dependency.
Today John supports Straubed musicians in similar cases. So he helped Boy George into abstinence. In his autobiography “Me” he mentions that Eminem’s “mentor” was alcoholics among the anonymous alcoholics.