‘X Factor’ winner Matt Cardle opens up about drug addiction

Singer says he came close to dying a "number" of times

X Factor winner Matt Cardle has opened up about his past problems with drug addiction, speaking in a new interview.

Cardle won the TV singing contest in 2010, beating fellow finalists Rebecca Ferguson and One Direction that year.

The singer recently re-signed to Sony, the label that dropped him in 2012, for his comeback fourth album, out next month.

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Speaking to The Sun, Cardle has described becoming addicted to alcohol as well as prescription and illegal drugs as his career started to derail.

The singer revealed that he came close to dying a “number” of times due to binges. “I got lucky on a number of occasions not to have been found fucking cold,” he said.

Cardle revealed that he was first prescribed Tramadol (a strong and addictive painkiller) for a minor injury to his finger, explaining: “I wasn’t that injured, I didn’t really need it. I started eating Tramadol for fun if I’m honest.”

“Then the first time I did Valium was on a flight to LA and that was it. Valium and alcohol are lethal together anyway. It’s a muscle relaxant and your heart’s a muscle. The danger with them is when you mix them with alcohol you forget what you’re doing.”

“I would wake up in various parts of my flat, in the toilet, in my bedroom, on the bed, off the bed, in the lounge, and it would always be like, ‘Oh that’s where it ended’.”

“If you were on your own and you’re completely smashed and you’ve taken one or two too many, you won’t wake up, it’ll stop your heart and that’s it. So it was getting to that point for me without knowing it.”

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Matt Cardle

Cardle checked into rehab in 2014, later describing that his drug problems as a “lethal situation”.

“I was never suicidal but I honestly didn’t care about myself,” Cardle has now said. “You don’t wind up in The Priory if you’re looking after yourself. I really didn’t.”

Cardle attributed his addiction problems to his “frustrations” over how his career was going. “I was being rejected left, right and centre for a record, for all of this kind of stuff,” he said.

“I was still coming down hard from a place where I didn’t have a label, I didn’t really have any management at the time, I didn’t have a steady place. And none of it was bitterness, but it’s just frustration about my fall from grace.”

On whether he ever regretted appearing on X Factor, Cardle said: “People have asked me a lot and I’ve never said it was a mistake. Unfortunately there was a lot of people trying to put words in my mouth that I wasn’t right for this show when I came off it.”

‘Time To Be Alive’, Cardle’s first album since 2013’s ‘Porcelain’, will be released on April 27.

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