TV’s Ant: My despair hooked on morphine
Star reveals drugs cocktail that left him in rehab clinic
ANT McPartlin has spoken frankly about his terrifying descent into addiction to morphine and other powerful prescription drugs that he started taking for knee pain.
At the height of it, the TV presenter was rushed to hospital in a druginduced ‘psychosis’ after taking tramadol, morphine and alcohol.
‘It was insane,’ he said. ‘It sends you crazy. It was to the point of hearing things, seeing things in the garden.’
Speaking to The Sun on Sunday about his secret two-year addiction, he added: ‘I was at the point where anything – prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs – I would take. And take them with alcohol, which is ridiculous. The doctors told me I could have killed myself.’
He revealed that he had to be rushed to hospital at 5am after bingeing on drugs while recovering from a knee operation in June. He was in such a bad state that he had to phone his wife Lisa upstairs at home to call an ambulance.
It was after this that McPartlin, 41, decided to tell Lisa, 40, and his co-star and best friend Declan Donnelly about his addiction and go into rehab.
He said that at first he did not believe
‘It was insane – it sends you crazy’
he had a problem but ended up hiding his addiction because he was embarrassed about it.
McPartlin, who presents Saturday Night Takeaway, I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and Britain’s Got Talent with Donnelly, told the newspaper that his problems began after he damaged his knee in 2014 and he started using prescription painkillers.
He said in his interview that he also self-medicated by taking more drugs because they were easy to obtain. He went to three different doctors and medical teams on the shows he worked on also gave him painkillers.
McPartlin said he was initially prescribed ‘normal stuff’ such as co-codamol and codeine, but soon needed ‘opium-based’ painkillers.
He revealed that he became addicted to tramadol – an opioid with similar properties to morphine – within weeks of starting the medication, and had to take more and more to get through work commitments.
And when he flew to the US for the Saturday Night Takeaway series finale last year, American doctors prescribed more painkillers. ‘I don’t know what they were but they were hell of a lot stronger,’ he said. ‘I brought them home with us and was taking them as well.’
McPartlin finally had excruciating knee surgery in June but while he was recuperating his addiction began to spiral out of control.
In addition to painkillers, he was also taking sleeping pills and drinking heavily. ‘I was on oral morphine as well,’ he told The Sun on Sunday. ‘But I finished that off quite quickly.’
When he went into rehab he was prescribed OxyContin – another opioid pain medication – to try to wean him off tramadol.
However, this was also a difficult drug to give up, a process he described as horrendous. ‘There’s irritation, scratching, sleepless nights, sweating,’ McPartlin told the newspaper. ‘They call it “hill- billy crack” in America.’ After two months in rehab, the presenter said he no longer uses any drugs besides ‘your basic paracetamol’.
He also revealed that he had been struggling with clinical depression that was so severe at points that he was unable to leave his bed. ‘I’ve put Lisa through hell,’ he admitted.
His depression was deepened by his worries over the fact he and his wife are now in their 40s but have not yet had children.
In a previous interview, a friend said: ‘ He and Lisa still want to have kids but of course that is a much harder reality at their age.’
McPartlin’s decision to speak out about his depression won praise from Princes William and Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge, who sent him a handwritten note of support.