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Ex-EastEnders star Paul Nicholls fears death by drugs overdose

Ex-EastEnders star Paul Nicholls fears death by drugs overdose
© BBC
Former EastEnders actor Paul Nicholls reveals that he is worried he may die if he is unable to kick drug addiction issues.

Former EastEnders star Paul Nicholls has admitted that he fears he may die if he is unable to kick his drug addiction issues for good.

The 42-year-old, who starred as Joe Wicks on the BBC soap in the late '90s, told The Sun that his problems started after a horrific incident in 2017 that saw him trapped under a waterfall in Thailand for three days.

The ordeal left him with 37 different infections and led to him suffering a stroke in 2018, after which he sank into a drug-fuelled depression.

"I've had addiction issues before and relapsed last year," he told the newspaper. "The rabbit hole I went down led to places that I never thought I'd end up in - in flats with people that I didn't know.

"I was taking lots of dihydrocodeine, a very strong opiate pain killer and on top of that, cocaine... every time I relapsed cocaine is always present.

"I sank like a stone into a deep depression. At certain points I'd be gone for three or four days and not sleep at all. I stopped caring, I pressed the 'fuck it' button.

"The last time I ended up in a flat with people smoking stuff, doing this and doing that. They recognised me. I was looking around and I thought, 'If I don't stop, I will die'."

Nicholls has now been clean for a few months and is a regular at Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

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Written by
Neil Wilkes

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