Fatboy Slim has said that the idea of DJing sober left him feeling paralysed and "rigid with fear" as he describes getting sober as the "hardest thing I've ever done."
The 62 year old recently opened up about his struggles with anxiety after going to rehab.
The DJ checked into a rehab facility in 2009 as he was battling an alcohol addiction. He has been sober for almost 15 years now and says that is it the "hardest thing" he's ever done.
In an interview with Lauren Laverne on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Fatboy Slim, real name Norman Quentin Cook said he needed to address his alcohol problem as his wife at the time said she would leave him if he didn't stop drinking.
"That was my wake-up moment. There had been tonnes of people shouting at me before, but it was whispered very quietly in the end. Addiction is such a weird disease and it's like a parasite, it protects its own. It knows that if you quit, it won't have anywhere to live anymore, so it will do things to you to keep you," he said.
"Probably the last year of my drinking, I wasn't really enjoying it, and things were starting to fall off in my life," he continued.
Fatboy Slim at the music festival Atlas Weekend. Credit: Shutterstock
Cook stated that he seeked help for his addiction at the right time. "I needed someone to bash into my head for a month. You know, 'You'll die, and you'll be in misery if you don't stop doing this'," he said.
The DJ explained that his return to the stage after his time in rehab was not easy. "For the first five shows, I was so paralysed and rigid with fear, I couldn't dance, and I couldn't enjoy it. I was thinking, 'What are you actually doing? Why are you going to play that record next? And why are they going to react to it?" he said.
