“My thing with drugs is that if you’re taking anything to escape or to try and hide from stuff then you shouldn’t even drink. But if you’re taking anything to have fun and be creative, then great.”
Former One Direction star Harry Styles is on the road promoting his upcomg sophomore effort, Fine Line, which is slated for release on December 13. Recently, Styles sat down with Zane Lowe for an interview on his Apple TV show, New Music Daily, where he discussed the recording process and his adventures with magic mushrooms.
“Making this record, I just felt so much more joyous. I felt safe,” Styles explained to Lowe. Styles said that he doesn’t usually indulge in alcohol or drugs while he’s working but he felt safe among friends in Malibu. He decided that it was time to do some experimenting.
“My thing with drugs is that if you’re taking anything to escape or to try and hide from stuff then you shouldn’t even drink. But if you’re taking anything to have fun and be creative, then great. I was with my friends and making an album, you get in your head and you hit these bumps in the road…sometimes you take something and you don’t worry about it. It’s kind of stress-relieving in a sense,” Styles shared.
Recording On Shrooms
The 25-year-old hearthrob first opened up about his experience recording on shrooms in a Rolling Stone profile this past August.
“We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine,” he says of the Malibu location where he recorded his new album. “We’d just turn the speakers into the yard. You’d hear the blender going, and think, ‘So we’re all having frozen margaritas at 10 a.m. this morning.’”
Styles highlights a corner of the room where a now-infamous accident occurred while he was tripping.
“This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place.”
Styles pointed out that he purposefully avoided drugs and heavy drinking while in One Direction because he didn’t want to destroy the band.
“When I was in the band, to me it felt like it was so much bigger than any of us; I felt, I’m not going to be the one who fucked it up,” Styles said. “So I was like, I’m not going to do any of that stuff. So I was like, now is the time in my life when you probably want to go out and experiment.”
Back in 2017, Styles told The Sun, “On the first couple of tours it was so exciting as we’d have a drink and go to parties. But for me, the albums got higher so they become harder to sing so I knew if I didn’t come off stage and go to bed I wouldn’t be able to sing the next night. Also, it’s just not for me. I’d rather wake up with a clear head. I’m not straight edge or anything – I’ll celebrate and hang out with friends when it’s the right time. But I like knowing I’m not going to be stressing about having to do something the next day.”
Liam’s Battle
Styles’ former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne has been open about his heavy alcohol use during the height of the band’s fame. Payne spoke to Men’s Health Australia about using alcohol to deal with the stress of being mega famous.
“It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed (drunk) quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on,” he said. “I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”
“It’s difficult when you have the level of fame that we had in the band,” he told Men’s Health. “There have been a lot of people in trouble with mental health that aren’t really getting the help that they need and I think that’s a bit of a problem in our industry. It’s the same shit that happens to everyone, that’s been happening since the ’70s. You know what the traps are and if you are lucky enough, like me, to be able to get out of that scenario and back into a sense of normality, then you know it’s a bit different.”
