Celebrity Big Brother’s Paul Danan reveals he DIED after snorting heroin in ‘Pulp Fiction style overdose’ after ‘countless’ years in rehab
CELEBRITY Big Brother’s Paul Danan died and was brought back to life after snorting heroin – in an incident he compares to the infamous Pulp Fiction scene starring Uma Thurman.
The actor and Love Island star has battled addictions to cocaine and painkillers since 2006, but in his most candid interview ever, Paul, 39, talks for the first time about his harrowing ordeal with deadly heroin and exclusively tells The Sun Online that it almost killed him, because he thought he was meant to snort it.
Paul said: “My mum found me in my bed and I was making these weird noises and choking on my last breath.
“The ambulance was down the road thankfully, but by the time they arrived I was dead and they brought me back to life.
“It was awful.
“It was so dangerous as I didn't even know how to take it, that you were meant to use foil, or inject, or even smoke it, so I snorted it as I’d done cocaine and thought it was like that.”
The Londoner, who played Sol Patrick in Hollyoaks, compares the incident in 2007 to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction in which Uma Thurman’s character Mia Wallace snorts heroin after mistaking it for cocaine and needs an intracardiac injection - a shot to the heart, of adrenaline.
“I did a Pulp Fiction, like when she snorts the heroin.
“And what happens to her? She’s pretty much dead and needs the reversal, she needed the injection in her heart, that's what I needed to bring me back.
“They call it 'going over', and that happened to me.”
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He adds: “I wasn't a heroin addict. I took it once and have never touched it since.”
And while Paul never used heroin again, his life has been riddled with addictions that cost him his personal life and his livelihood.
He admits that being hooked on cocaine and “party drugs” saw him in rehab “many, many times”, but it was his addiction to painkillers following a motorbike accident in 2010 that plunged him into his darkest days.
“In 2006 and 2007 I was in and out of rehab for cocaine and party drugs and would just keep relapsing and have to go back in.
“Then I was OK for a few years, but in 2010 I came off my motorbike and broke my shoulder and learnt doctors give painkillers out like anything, so I soon became addicted to codeine.
“I kept taking the painkillers to numb the pain and because I have a tendency for addiction I got used to them and once you get used to opiates you get used to that pill, so you need more to take the pain away.
“If you try to come off them the withdrawal makes you ill, really, really sick and it's so hard to stop that.
“You have to do a detox and it took me many years to come off, I think I finally did in 2012.
“Painkillers, prescribed medication from the doctor, can be a killer, it’s dangerous, and it can become a real dependency.”
Nowadays Paul still suffers from pain and pins and needles in his shoulder, but says he controls any discomfort with paracetamol.
“The doctors thought I was depressed but I wasn’t, it was just the drugs that were clouding my mind.
“I don’t touch any antidepressants anymore; I don’t touch anything, nothing. I take a paracetamol if I have to.”
Paul who is dad to 22-month-old son DeNiro, now works with The Amy Winehouse Foundation – a drugs programme set up in the tragic singer’s memory, to educate young people about the effects of drugs.
He said: “Now I've come out the other side I work with The Amy Winehouse Foundation to deter kids who are taking drugs or abusing alcohol or self-harming or have eating disorders, and let them know they need to ask for help.
“When I was young I never thought I'd end up with problems I had, but it can easily become a problem and once you've crossed that line there's no going back, you're an addict and once you start you can't stop.
“Addiction is an illness, a disease that kills and should not be taken lightly.
“I go into schools to work with kids and having me do this with them shows that addiction is a disease that doesn't discriminate. You can be an actor, a lawyer, an accountant, it can affect everyone.”
He adds: “I want to be an advocate for mental health, I’ve died, I’ve been in rehab countless times, lost everything and been on benefits, but I’ve bounced back.”
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