McFly star Dougie Poynter has revealed he tried to commit suicide after his relationship with The Saturday’s Frankie Sandford fell apart in 2010.
Dougie, 24, checked into rehab in February 2011 and was treated for depression.
The revelations come as the band’s biography Unsaid Things… Our Story is released today.
Extract from Unsaid Things… Our Story
“I tried to work out the best way to kill myself. I knew I was no good with blood – I faint at the sight of it – so I’d never be able to bring myself to slit my wrists. I had no idea how to go about hanging myself, and I didn’t have enough prescription medication or anything else to overdose with. (Plus I’d heard horror stories about people who’d tried to OD and woken up not dead but paralysed.
“Then I remembered I’d seen something on TV about attaching a hosepipe to the exhaust of your car and slipping the other end through a partially open window. The carbon monoxide would send you to sleep, permanently. I had a hosepipe and I had a car. Which meant I had an escape route.
“It was 5am and quiet outside when I stumbled into the garden and found a hosepipe. I carried it to my car – an Audi Q7 – out in the street, and slid one end of the hose into the exhaust pipe. I wound the hose round the side of the car and fed it through a tiny gap in the top of the driver’s window. Then I sat behind the wheel and turned on the ignition.
“To this day I don’t know why I’m still here. I could smell the exhaust fumes and inhaled them deeply. But the Q7 is a large car with quite a big exhaust. Maybe more fumes were escaping than were diverted down the hosepipe. Maybe I screwed it up in some way. I sat there for 20 minutes, waiting to fall asleep but I didn’t.
"I was sobering up now. I turned off the ignition and stumbled out of the car, feeling even more self-loathing than before. I couldn’t give up my addictions. Now I couldn’t even kill myself. I’d tried and failed – like I had with everything else in my life.”
Dougie’s demons
Dougie's problems started when he split with Frankie
Talking on Alan Carr: Chatty Man, Dougie opened up about his secret struggles with his demons – drink, drugs and depression.
Alan said in the pre-recorded show, which airs tomorrow night: “Listen, I have got to say, it got really dark, about you trying to kill yourself.”
Bassist Dougie replied by admitting he feels much better since going to rehab and getting his feelings down in the tell-all book.
“It's always good to reflect on that sort of stuff. I'm in a really, really good place now. It is quite easy to forget,” the I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! 2011 champ said.
Alan added: “Last time you were on Chatty Man, you weren’t yourself. Now I realise you were battling drink and drugs. Did you feel better once you wrote about it?”
Dougie replied: “It is quite easy to forget. It's quite therapeutic to go back, quite scary and a bit of an eye opener into how dark it can get if you take your foot off the gas and stop looking after yourself.”
The McFly boys noticed a change in Dougie
The rest of the McFly boys noticed a big difference in Dougie during these dark times.
Drummer Harry Judd told him: “Half the time you didn't know what you were doing - it was us telling you,” to which Dougie replied: “Yes, because I was so battered.”
But Tom Flectcher said the band are doing great now.
“We are all in good places now,” Tom told Alan.
“Dougie has sorted himself out and I am married.”