Liam Payne was open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol through the years.
After being eliminated from The X Factor in 2008 when he was 14 years old, the singer returned to the British reality competition series two years later and was recruited to be a member of One Direction. The group, consisting of Payne, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik, was created by Simon Cowell and went on to become one of the most successful boy bands of all time with such hit songs as “What Makes You Beautiful.”
While traveling the world for the On the Road Again tour, Payne recalled to The Guardian in 2019 the physical and emotional toll of touring led to alcohol abuse.
“Doing a show to however many thousands of people, then being stuck by yourself in a country where you can’t go out anywhere — what else are you going to do?” Payne told the outlet. “The minibar is always there.”
Years later, Us Weekly confirmed that Payne died at age 31 following a three story fall off a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Scroll down to read his candid quotes through the years:
2019
Payne told The Guardian that he was a “bit more mature” than his fellow One Direction bandmates. “I’d lived a different lifestyle from 14 to 16,” he explained. “Most kids try alcohol and experiment – I never did any of that because I thought there’s a chance that I might make it.”
According to Payne, management informed him he held a “very specific role” in the boy band to be responsible. Payne admitted to the outlet that he was taking an epilepsy drug as a mood stabilizer, noting that it affected his cognitive functioning.
Payne said he had been told to take the drug to battle the “erratic highs and lows” he was undergoing. “I just needed a little bit of help to keep me stable,” he said, adding “ but under certain lights on stage or during interviews, I wouldn’t be able to tell them my name.”
After releasing his 2017 track “Strip That Down,” Payne told the outlet he was “struggling” with alcohol. He proceeded to be sober for an entire year, he shared.
“My social life completely plummeted,” he explained. “I always feel like you never get past the awkward first 10 minutes at a party, when everyone’s like: ‘Do we get up and dance, or do we just sit here?’ I don’t know whether it made me happier, but it was definitely needed.”
2021
Payne admitted during an interview on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast that “I didn’t like myself very much” at the beginning of One Direction. He said his early days with the boy band including “pills and booze” and “moments of suicidal ideation.”
“There is some stuff that I’ve definitely never spoken about,” he admitted at the time, per USA Today. “It was really, really, really severe. It was a problem.”
Payne recalled the relief he felt when One Direction broke up in 2016. “The day the band ended, I was like, ‘Thank the Lord,’” Payne said. “I know a lot of people are going to be mad at me for saying that, but I needed to stop or it would kill me.”
Payne, who noted at the time of the interview that he had been sober “for just over a month,” explained that he struggled with alcohol while touring with One Direction. “In the band… the best way to secure us, because of how big we’d got, was just to lock us in our rooms. What’s in the room? A mini-bar,” he said. “So at a certain point I thought, I’m just going to have a party-for-one and that seemed to carry on for many years of my life. Then you look back at how long you’ve been drinking and you’re like, ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a long time.’” He continued, “It was wild but it was the only way you could get the frustration out.”
2024
Following Payne’s death, TV host Richard Madeley recalled on Good Morning Britain the artist being “always very open about the demons who pursued him.”
“He was very very open and frank about that. He spoke about his issues with drinking, with drugs and he was very proud of the fact recently that he was celebrating being 100 days clean,” Madeley said. “He was 100 days clean and he was very proud, that was a real achievement.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
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