Elton John penned an emotional letter to his "lover" cocaine after Freddie Mercury and members of the Beatles told him he needed help.
The global superstar revealed how famous friends pointedly told him he was overdoing the Class A drug at the height of his addiction in the 1980s - and begged him to go to rehab.
In his new autobiography Me, Sir Elton documents his descent into addiction as he struggled to cope with worldwide fame and the scrutiny that came with it - along with issues from his emotionally cold childhood.
During the worst grip of the drug, the I'm Still Standing star would rail lines of coke alone in his bedroom for days, watching porn and living in a vomit-stained dressing gown as he binged on food before throwing it up.
At a party, even Queen frontman Freddie - himself no stranger to the excesses of rock n' roll - and George Harrison remarked on his drug use, and Freddie asked a friend to persuade Elton to go to rehab.
It was his lover Hugh Williams that finally prompted him to seek professional help, as he told Elton he was going to rehab himself to beat his demons.
"I went ballistic, screaming, shouting, saying the most hurtful things I could think of," Elton writes.
"Afterwards, I holed up alone in a rented house in London for two weeks, snorting cocaine and drinking whisky.
"On the rare occasions when I ate, I made myself sick immediately afterwards. I wouldn't answer the phone. I wouldn't answer the door. I didn't wash, I didn't get dressed. It was sordid. Awful.
"Eventually, I realised that if I carried on for a couple more days, I'd either overdose or have a heart attack. I had no idea how to live, but I didn't want to die."
Elton checked in to a hospital in Chicago to be treated for his addictions to cocaine, alcohol and food, but it wasn't until he was put on the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step programme that he was able to turn his life around.
"I had to write all the time, including a farewell letter to cocaine - which [songwriting partner] Bernie [Taupin] read when he visited and broke down in tears - and a list of consequences of my drug and alcohol abuse," he continues.
"It was hard at first but once I got started I couldn't stop... The list of consequences went on and on for three pages. Self-hatred. Severe depression. Going onstage under the influence of drugs."
Despite being clean for nearly three decades now, Elton still dreams about coke every week.
"It's always the same dream: I'm snorting coke when I hear someone coming into the room, usually my mother. Then I try to hide what I'm doing, but I spill it and it goes everywhere - all over the floor, all over me. but it never makes me hanker after cocaine," he adds in the book.
Since giving up the drugs, Elton has become something of an agony uncle for other stars struggling with their own addictions.
He is now Eminem's AA sponsor and rings him once a week to check in with him - "he always greets me the same way, 'Hello you c***', which I guess is very Eminem" - and got Rufus Wainwright into rehab when the singer was "taking so much crystal meth that at one stage he'd gone temporarily blind".
*Elton John: Me is out now
