Boy George talks ‘the day he became sane’ and a decade of sobriety

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MAN of the Hour –

October 22, 2018 – “In recovery, we talk about rock bottoms, you know? And everybody has their own rock bottom,” George elaborated. “Some people, it could something really mundane. For me, it was literally just one morning, waking up, and just having this kind of overwhelming feeling that I was really, truly unhappy, and I needed to do something about it. I remember one of the things I said to myself was ‘If you’re going to be Boy George, you might as well try and be the best Boy George you can be.’ I have to say that things have got increasingly better and better and better the longer I’ve been sober.”

George explained that the incredible, intoxicating fame he experienced in his early 20s during Culture Club’s MTV heyday — to put it in perspective, he had his own Snoopy doll — contributed to his addiction and mental health issues. “The problem with the kind of fame that I experienced in the early part of my life was so extreme. It’s impossible to even explain what that was like. I wasn’t ready for it,” he said. “It also distracted from what I was doing musically. I was so busy being ‘Boy George’ that I stopped being an artist. And so in the last, I’d say, five years, I’ve really focused much more on what I’m doing creatively.”