Liam Payne is opening up about his struggles with alcohol, and revealed that comedian Russell Brand was a huge help in his efforts to get sober.
Speaking with the Daily Mail, the One Direction singer, 26, says: “I had a thing with drink, and it was a guy called Chip Somers who got me sober. I was sober for about a year and visited Russell Brand. We went down to meetings together.”
Payne also gets candid about his mental health. “As ‘Strip That Down’ came out I was almost as afraid of success as I was failure, which isn’t a comfortable place to be in life because you’re not really sure what you’re doing,” he admits.
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“For anybody who’s having a problem with mental health, the best thing to do is speak to someone,” he adds. “We’re all as crazy as the next person.”
Before he could embrace sobriety, Payne says he had to admit to himself that alcohol was becoming problematic. “I was at a point where I was too young to stop drinking and it turned my social life upside down. It was very lonely,” he says. “Many things in my life went up, but many things went down at the same time. It was about pressing that reset button and realizing you could cope without it.”
