Ed Sheeran has come clean about the reason he took a full year off from music in 2016.
Following huge success with his first two albums, Ed decided to take some time away last year, before returning with platinum selling album Divide earlier this year.
The 26-year-old has now revealed that substance abuse was part of the reason that he took time off.
“I didn’t really notice it was happening,” The Galway Girl singer told Jonathan Ross.
“It just started gradually happening, and then some people took me to one side and were like, ‘Calm yourself down.”
“All the pitfalls that people read about, I just found myself slipping into all of them. Mostly, like, substance abuse.
“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.
“I can’t write songs under the influence. I can’t perform under the influence. So, the more I worked, the less [that happened]”
Ed recently was forced to cancel some gigs from his current tour after injuring his arm in a road incident last week.
