Robbie Williams fears his children could inherit his addiction problems.
The 48-year-old singer has had several stints in rehab to overcome addictions to booze, prescription pills and other substances, but proudly overcome his issues and has touched alcohol for 20 years.
Robbie has four kids - Teddy, nine, Charlie, seven, Coco, three, and two-year-old Beau - with his wife Ayda Field and he is worried that when they are old enough to start drinking they will have the same addictive personality that he has.
He said: “I’ve been sober for 20 years, I haven’t had a drink for 20 years.
In that period there was a period of time for a year where I relapsed on a certain substance.
“When I was 19 something happened to me one evening where I woke up the next day and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m an alcoholic and I’m an addict.’ I didn’t do anything about it for another two to three years. I have mainly been a sober person for a majority of my life.
"Where I am now as a 46 year old is content. There’s no binge. The last bastion of negative addictions for me that I can’t cope with is food, and I’m getting that down, I’m managing that, I’m managing that addiction.
“The school doors close and the pub doors open and as simple as we breathe we just walk into those pubs and it’s a lottery whether you survive them or not. It’s becoming apparent to me is that there doesn’t have to be that paradigm.
"That paradigm that you get your entertainment and you deal with life from numbing yourself. I don’t want to do anything about it I’m just finding it interesting as a sober person of 46, ‘we didn’t need to do that.’ It was just the route the river was taking you."
He added: "I’ve got four kids and they’re all young, and I wonder how they’re going to approach that particular phase of their lives and how I’m going to approach that particular phase of their lives with them."
Robbie admits he started taking drugs to try and cope with the enormous fame he experienced from the age of 16 as a member of Take That.
The Angels hitmaker - who became one of the world’s biggest solo stars after quitting the band in 1995 - would booze and take drugs to try and fulfil people’s expectations of him, and it took him a long time to realise he didn’t have to destroy himself with substances to please other people.
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Speaking on the Bought The T-Shirt podcast, he said: “I took drugs to fill in the blanks.
“When fame came to me at a very early age, I was 16 when I joined Take That, it magnified all of the negative aspects of who I thought I was. Before that I was quite content but I was vulnerable and incredibly sensitive. I felt like I’d been born with an open wound. Then when I was thrown into this mosh pit of show business it magnified the negative aspects of my own self-doubt.
“I took drugs to become the person that the world was telling me I should be. When really I’m an introvert, and it’s OK to be an introvert.
“I’m an introvert with extrovert tendencies. I’m an extrovert for a living but I’m an introvert in real life.”
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