McFly heart-throb Harry Judd, 31, reveals how exercise helped him to beat a secret dope-smoking habit and crippling anxiety
Strictly Come Dancing champion opens up about his road to recovery through exercise in his new book Get Fit, Get Happy
POP heart-throb Harry Judd looked like he had it all.
On top of chart fame with McFly and McBusted, he won Strictly Come Dancing in 2011 and now has daughter Lola, 20 months, and six-week-old son Kit, with his beautiful violinist wife, Izzy, 33.
Yet for two years in the early part of his career Harry, 31, suffered crippling anxiety, panic attacks, OCD and hid a dope-smoking habit that ruled his life.
That all changed when he became a fitness fanatic. Now he has turned his life around and in his new book, Get Fit Get Happy, he shows how you can transform your life too.
IN the early days of McFly we had quite the clean-cut image. We didn’t like to think of ourselves as a regular “boyband”, as we wrote our own songs and played our own instruments.
Behind the scenes, however, things were a bit different. My room in the band house was thick with the fog of marijuana smoke.
I loved my weed. Smoking was a daily occurrence. Sure, being out there with the band was a blast, but even when I was playing to thousands and lapping up the adulation of the fans, it always felt good returning to the band house so I could roll up and spark up. To me, it became a part of life.
When our manager Fletch caught me smoking and quite rightly read me the riot act, I promised to kick it. But I didn’t. This was the worst mistake of my life.
People make light of marijuana use, and maybe it’s true the weed and resin I’d started out on was less damaging — but I wasn’t using that any more. It just didn’t give me the kick I was after.
I was on the hard stuff. A few puffs of it and you’d be away with the fairies. I remembered how my friends had told me that marijuana was not addictive. I hadn’t been on the skunk for very long before I realised that this simply wasn’t true.
Despite all the other amazing things that were happening to me, weed was really all I could think about. I couldn’t sleep without it; I couldn’t really function without it. I was quite sure back then that
I’d be smoking weed for ever.
I realise now that I was suffering from the physical effects of anxiety and paranoia.
I hated travelling in those early days of McFly because it meant I couldn’t have any weed. No weed meant anxiety, and no sleep. It caused tensions. Arguments. We would be travelling to some amazing place and I’d be putting a dampener on proceedings simply because I couldn’t get stoned.
Unable to sleep, I’d be tired the next morning, then further exhausted by full days of interviews. It made me very grumpy.
The truth was I was simply hooked. I started drinking four or five beers as I looked for ways to increase the high. Smoking was starting to take over my life. The more I smoked, the more anxious I became.
The knot in my stomach became a regular morning thing. More than that, I began to experience crippling panic attacks, which started to affect my ability to do my job.
In 2005, at the Brit Awards, I felt like passing out. Walking up to get that Best Pop Act award, I felt crushed with anxiety. I was a panic-stricken mess. I needed space to sort my head out, but there was no let-up in our schedule.
Three days after the Brit Awards we flew, with our manager Fletch, to New Orleans to spend three weeks filming for a major Hollywood movie called Just My Luck.
It was a very surreal experience, not only because of my fragile mental state, but also because of Lindsay Lohan taking a shine to me.
I was sick. I saw an American doctor and he prescribed me some Valium, but I didn’t want to take it.
A week later we had a few days off. We went to Disney World. While the guys were off enjoying themselves, I stayed with Fletch in my hotel room, freaking out. He persuaded me to try one of the pills. I felt myself calming down. Relaxing.
I then read about how addictive Valium could be, and I certainly didn’t want another narcotic dependence, so I didn’t take it again.
When we landed at Heathrow at the beginning of March 2005, I went straight to the Priory. The doctor asked me how many joints had I been smoking a day?
“Six a day,” I muttered.
He explained that the skunk was triggering my episodes of anxiety and panic. He prescribed antidepressant medication that would help me and assigned a therapist to my case.
From that day I haven’t touched drugs. The long-term effects of messing with my head, however, did not disappear along with my habit.
My panic attacks didn’t disappear immediately. However, the antidepressant medication did help and
I slowly began to recover.
In 2005 I met Izzy. She was playing violin in the orchestra for our Wonderland tour, and we first kissed on the penultimate night of the tour. It was the start of the most important relationship in my life.
As I moved through my early twenties, alcohol became a bit more of a thing. The same doctor explained that my anxiety could be triggered by alcohol. I needed to stop drinking.
Kicking booze was good for me in so many ways: It helped to stem my anxiety and it had a beneficial effect on the way I was doing my job. There were times I hated being on stage. I’d be hungover and shaking, anxious I wouldn’t be able to get through the next song.
But when I joined McFly, all my sporting activity went out the window as I became a full-on, bona fide stoner for two years.
Then when I was 21, I was asked to play in a charity cricket match for the Teenage Cancer Trust. It felt good to be involved in physical activity again. I decided to run the London Marathon on behalf of the Teenage Cancer Trust in 2008.
The marathon gave me the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve ever experienced.
On New Year’s Eve 2012, I smoked my last cigarette.
Exercise has helped me turn my life around. It was my go-to weapon in the battle to stop smoking. It helped fill the gap left when I stopped drinking alcohol.
And it massively improved my ability to do my job as a musician. The more active I am, the less I find myself in the grip of these strange compulsions.
We all know we should exercise, but so many of us don’t. I totally get why. I want to change the way people think about exercise, because when it comes to treating everything from anxiety to panic attacks to depression, a little regular exercise can go a very long way to helping us.
My OCD made me OTT
I HAD another problem, which my anxiety exacerbated – obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The idea of “being OCD” has become a bit of a joke. But OCD can be a serious, debilitating complaint.
It is an anxiety-related condition, characterised by unwanted, unpleasant obsessions and compulsions that need to be carried out to relieve those obsessive thoughts.
It can have a substantially negative effect on the way you live your life.
I remember the day we moved into our first house and the removal men scraped some furniture on the outside tiles. I went nuts:
The house was ruined, we couldn’t move in! It was crazy, irrational. Looking back, I find it embarrassing to admit to the way I reacted, but at the time the frustration and anxiety seemed very real indeed.
On one occasion Izzy arranged a surprise birthday party for me. I arrived home to find a whole crowd of people standing on the mezzanine area that overlooked the main room of our house. It was almost enough to give me a heart attack.
While they were shouting “Happy Birthday!”, it was all I could do to stop myself yelling at them to take their shoes off! When they’d all gone, I genuinely wanted to have the flat repainted.
My OCD brought out the very worst in me. I was not only obsessive and panicky, I was starting to be nasty. If Izzy tried to put something down where it wasn’t supposed to be, I’d be on her case.
Ultimately, it became too much for her. She had to sit me down and explain that my irrational obsessions were making it difficult for her to relax and live comfortably in her own house. I had to find some way to control my obsession. It wasn’t fair on Izzy and, when our daughter Lola came along, it wasn’t fair on her either.
I didn’t want my wife and daughter to see this irrational, angry side.
I had to do something to get on top of it.
I have come to accept that anxiety and OCD are issues that will probably be with me the rest of my life.
Every day I am aware of the need to take care of myself. If I don’t, the demons banging on the door might find a way in.
When I was asked to do Strictly Come Dancing in 2011, dancing gave me an amazing feelgood factor.
Dance is physical activity just like any other exercise.
Getting fit really can help us to stay happy. You just need to find the physical activity that is for you.
- Get Fit, Get Happy, by Harry Judd, is published by Coronet on October 19 at £19.99.
