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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Tina Campbell

Pete Doherty admits he almost lost both feet during drug addiction battle

Pete Doherty has opened up about just how bad his drug addiction got

(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

Pete Doherty has said he almost lost his feet at the height of his addiction to cocaine and heroin.

The Libertines frontman, who has been clean for two years now, admitted there were “a few close calls” and he was “pushing the limits”.

Candidly the former Babyshambles musician, 43, said he very nearly lost his feet because he had “run out of veins”.

"I was really pushing the limits. There were a few close calls really. I nearly lost my feet and horrible things like that,” he told The Mirror.

"It was very close, just because of the injecting. That’s what happens when you run out of veins. It all seems so long ago now though but it was a hell of a ride.”

Doherty confessed it wasn’t almost losing his limbs that provided the much needed wake up call.

In fact, the musician said it was song Inutile Et Hors D’usage, which means “Useless and all used up” in French, that prompted him to make the change.

It was penned by musician Frédéric Lo, whom Doherty has teamed up with for new album The Fantasy Life of Poetry And Crime which was released last week.

“I got really emotional when he played it to me, it really hit home. I was giving up hard drugs and feeling f**ked really. The best way to describe it for me is like being hit by a bus,” he added to the newspaper.

Doherty has since swapped the UK for a more tranquil existence in rural France with wife Katia de Vidas.

However, the star remains very much a Londoner at heart.

Recently, he lifted the lid on how he wants his ashes to be scattered in the capital.

He told ES Magazine: “Just chuck ’em [my ashes] out of the bus window and wherever they land it’ll be fine. Maybe on Shoot-up Hill or Kilburn High Road, from the 16 or the 32.”

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