Libertines rocker Pete Doherty said he risked amputation after he was given a serious warning. Pete had been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and later revealed he would have to have his toes amputated if he wasn’t careful.
Pete has been opened about his health for years. In 2023, he said: “You are looking at a very sick man. I’ve battered it, haven’t I, I’ve f***ing caned it. The heroin and the crack… I surrendered to that, and then it was cocaine and the smoking and the alcohol, and now it’s cheese and the saucisson, and the sugar in the tea.
“It’s all gotta go. They told me a little while ago if you don’t change your diet then you’re gonna have diabetes and cholesterol problems. Death’s lurking, you know what I mean? That’s why I carry that stick.”
In a new podcast interview, Pete has now revealed that he had to amend his diet and stop drinking. He said: “They were going to have to come off, so I had to amend my diet and stop drinking. They’re kind of on the mend now… I’m letting myself have a drink once in a while, like, every 10 days, but something has, sort of, shifted in me. There’s not that need.”
He also credited his family for helping him get things together. He said of his wife Katie and their young daughter: “It’s just evolved, our relationship. The closer we’ve got, and the more time we’ve spent together, the less I’ve needed to do it… It turned out she preferred me not on the drugs, and I preferred it when she liked me, and we built a life.”
Discussing new music, Pete also said his new solo LP Felt Better Alive is built on his own merit rather than on his addiction, which he once believed that helped his music more than anything else.
He told Happy Place podcast: “I’d think I’m dying, I’ve got to write a brilliant song right now… that would happen a lot. I’m not that arsed really about writing. I love music, playing music, but that need to write and create, it was fuelled by anxiety and darkness.”
Pete previously described himself as a “very sick man”. Speaking in 2013, in one scene of an interview documentary with Louis Theroux, Pete coughed before clutching his chest and was groaning in pain.
He said: “You are looking at a very sick man. I’ve battered it, haven’t I, I’ve f***ing caned it. The heroin and the crack… I surrendered to that, and then it was cocaine and the smoking and the alcohol, and now it’s cheese and the saucisson, and the sugar in the tea.
“It’s all gotta go. They told me a little while ago if you don’t change your diet then you’re gonna have diabetes and cholesterol problems. Death’s lurking, you know what I mean? That’s why I carry that stick.”
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