He struggled with addiction for years and now Nick Carter has revealed his troubles began at the tender age of two.
In his new autobiography, the Backstreet Boys singer opens up about his parents’ dependence on alcohol which he believes led to his addiction first to drinking and later drugs including cocaine, Ecstasy, and prescription painkillers.
In new excerpts from the tome, titled Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It, obtained by RadarOnline, Nick recounts a story which saw him trying alcohol for the first time when he was still crawling at the bar below his parents’ apartment.
‘Family legend has it that when I was two years old, I crawled into one of the Yankee Rebel’s liquor storage rooms where I was caught drinking for the first time,’ he recounts. ‘My parents always laughed at that. I laughed too, for a while, and then I didn’t laugh at it anymore.’
Nick admits his mother and father also struggled with addiction, which he believes was caused by money worries and says he started drinking heavily himself when he was still a teenager.
He explains: 'My parents …always stressed about money, which is another reason they turned to alcohol so much.'
‘I began drinking heavily in my teens and then moved on to drugs at eighteen or nineteen, starting with marijuana and moving up to cocaine, Ecstasy, and prescription painkillers among other substances.’
While his fellow Backstreet Boys tried, without success, to intervene, Nick, 33, blames the crowd he was hanging out with for his out of control behaviour.
‘My life plummeted to an all-time low,’ he says. ‘We’d chug beers and pound down shot after shot until we reached the semi-comatose state where the alcohol made us sleepy and lethargic. Then we’d do a bump of cocaine for an energy boost.
‘My crowd made partying an extreme sport. We repeated that binge and bump cycle night after night.’
Nick’s drinking got so bad that he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart and he eventually realised he had to change his ways.
‘I drank, did drugs, and partied until I was paralyzed and passed out [after the diagnosis],’ he reveals. ‘I woke up in a hotel room with my head pounding so hard I couldn’t focus my eyes. … My heart was pounding so loud, I thought someone was at the door. I decided my body was trying to get me to pay attention one last time. … It was change or die.’
While Nick admits he still slips up when it comes to alcohol, he is happier and healthier than ever and looking forward to tying the know with his fiancee Lauren Kitt.
He says, 'I’m not perfect now. I still slip up when it comes to drinkin. But I’m alive and great things have happened for me in the last few years.'
Nick has previously partially blamed ex-girlfriend Paris Hilton for his wild ways, saying the party-loving socialite, whom he dated from 2003 - 2004, was a bad influence.
'Paris was the worst person in the world for me to hook up with,' he writes in the memoir, seen in excerpts obtained by RadarOnline.com.
He alleges that the former reality star, who was famously arrested for cocaine possession in 2010, 'fed my worst impulses as far as partying.'
He also lifts the lid on the extent to which he indulged, revealing that some nights he would drink an entire bottle of vodka.
'...during the height of my problems, I did Ecstasy, cocaine and drank a large bottle of vodka a night,' he reveals.
The pop star says he mostly regrets doing Ecstasy, and believes that it was the amphetamine that caused the bouts of depression he now suffers from.
'The amount I did caused changes to my brain that are responsible for my bouts of depression now,' he writes.
Nick's siblings have also endured battles with drug and alcohol addiction.
His brother Aaron Carter is also though to have gone to rehab for substance abuse while their sister Leslie tragically passed away at age 25 in January 2012, after suffering a suspected prescription drug overdose.
Originally posted by Daily Mail
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