He’s the pop mega star who is showing no signs of retiring anytime soon.
But Robbie Williams has opened up on the time he did retire for three years, following a ‘breakdown’ after an Australian tour in 2006.
The 43-year-old wrote in his newly released autobiography Reveal, that he was in the grips of drug addiction and wasn’t sleeping by the end of his Close Encounters world tour, Sunday Herald Sun reported.
‘I didn’t go to sleep’: Robbie Williams reveals he broke down following his 2006 Australian tour as he battled drug addiction
He said he felt ‘paranoid and crazy’ during his final show in Melbourne on December 18, and arrived on stage with no sleep.
‘Australia was really tough. I didn’t go to sleep,’ he wrote.
‘I’d been given tablets for my ADHD, and, of course, these tablets contained speed, and, of course, I’m an addict, so one wasn’t going to do it, two wasn’t going to do it, three wasn’t going to do it, until I’m having handfuls at a time.’
He then played to 80,000 people at the then-Telstra Dome in Melbourne’s Docklands feeling completely drained.
Breakdown: The 43-year-old wrote in his newly released autobiography Reveal, that he was in the grips of drug addiction and wasn’t sleeping by the end of his Close Encounters world tour (pictured)
Not a wink of sleep: Robbie said he felt ‘paranoid and crazy’ during his final show in Melbourne on December 18, and arrived on stage with no sleep
‘It was just so embarrassing. Letting me down, letting them down, letting the people I work for down. I just didn’t have any energy,’ the Angels hitmaker wrote.
‘I turned up and gave everything that I’d got, albeit in an altered state.’
Robbie flew back to Los Angeles after the tour but couldn’t escape his addictions, and was taken into rehab, the newspaper reported.
‘It was just so embarrassing’: Robbie played to 80,000 people at the then-Telstra Dome in Melbourne’s Docklands feeling completely drained
A three-year retirement followed as he received the treatment he credits as saving his life.
‘I suppose there was …a breakdown. Of course, of course, there was,’ he wrote.
‘I’m not thinking by then. I’ve taken so many chemicals that I’m altered… maybe beyond maybe repair.
‘I’d ingested that much stuff that I was crazy… It was a place where I was… I’d say slowly dying, but I was rapidly dying.’
‘I’d ingested that much stuff that I was crazy’: A three-year retirement followed as Robbie (pictured with wide Ayda) received the treatment he credits as saving his life