Ed Sheeran opened up on an episode of The Jonathan Ross Show about his substance abuse problems, saying that fame affected his life in a dark way — then music helped to save him.

“I think you need to, when you get into the industry, adjust to it — and I didn’t adjust because I was constantly working on tour. And all the pitfalls that people read about, I just found myself slipping into all of them. Mostly, like, substance abuse,” he said. “I never touched anything. I started slipping into it, and that’s why I took a year off and buggered off.”

He continued: “I focused on work, and I can’t work under the influence, I can’t write songs under the influence, I can’t perform under the influence — so the more I worked the less [that happened]. I’ve worked my whole life to get to where I am and you can’t lose that over something that you do in your spare time,” adding: “I didn’t really notice it was happening. It just started gradually happening, and then some people took me to one side and were like, ‘Calm yourself down’… 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.”

Ed said he cut off excessive beer.

“I’ve cut [out] excessive beer. I’ll still have a point. But what I would do is I’d have like five or six pints a night. So what I’ll do, I’ll have a pint, then I’ll move to a less…Well, a beer is like having a loaf of bread, isn’t it? So a less-loaf-of-bread-y kind of drink,” he said to People. “The best part of the day is the first beer. Second beer never tastes as good. So I’ll switch to wine or gin or something after that.”