Stephen Fry says 'addictive impulse' from sweets to cocaine addiction

03 November 2023 , 21:00

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Stephen Fry says 'addictive impulse' from sweets to cocaine addiction

Stephen Fry reveals his "addictive impulse" began with a sweet tooth as a child and escalated into a cocaine addiction in adulthood.

Speaking on John Cleese's The Dinosaur Hour on GB News, Fry confessed: "When I was a teenager, I had this vast empty hole in me that said 'Feed me, I need this sugar, I need it'. When it wasn't sugar, it became tobacco, so I smoked and then in my twenties it became cocaine. I just couldn't sit still. It's that addictive impulse."

Fry also pointed to TV adverts for sugary cereals and other food, along with his boarding school's tuckshop, as factors that contributed to his developing addiction. He explained: "They (the tuckshop) even, extraordinarily, had ... rolling tobacco, which was coconut shreds, but it was done exactly like a rolling tobacco packet.

Stephen Fry reveals his 'addictive impulse' (Getty Images)

"You would have a pipe made of liquorice and you would have cigarettes with red tips on the end, which were candy cigarettes. So, you were being prepared for cocaine and tobacco. Essentially you were given white powder and tobacco and I never could eat enough of that. I would break out of school and go to the village shop. I couldn't eat them quickly enough."

Stephen Fry, the former host of popular quiz show QI and a Golden Globe nominee for his role in Wilde, has opened up about his relationship with alcohol. He said: "I do like a drink, I like wine, but I know I could never be an alcoholic. I just don't like it enough. I don't like feeling sick. I don't like having to cope with the responsibility of apologising the next day if I've been drunk. I don't like the fact I might get a bit argumentative. So I could never be an alcoholic."

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Fry, also known for his comedy partnership with Hugh Laurie in Jeeves And Wooster, shared his thoughts on tech entrepreneurs running social media websites. He stated: "They were making huge sums of money out of it, they were inventing new ideas, and they were sweeping away everything from the past and the betrayal to me, the hypocrisy, is that somehow we believed in the nineties and early 2000s these guys in jeans and T-shirts were gentle, sweet people who wanted the world to be better. We now know that, in Orwell's magnificent image, the pigs are now wearing trousers."

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Harry Rutter