Jason Donovan, who starred on the Australian soap opera Neighbours, is opening up about his past cocaine addiction.
“I got vilified in the ‘90s for announcing on a news show once that, ‘Why did I take drugs? Because I liked them,’ which was the truth at the time,” Donovan, 57, said on the Tuesday, December 16, edition of the “Great Company With Jamie Laing” podcast.
Laing, 37, asked the actor about previously confessing that he had consumed “three grams of cocaine a day.”
In response, Donovan remarked, “Sure, there were days, weekends that would begin on Thursday and sometimes not end until the following Tuesday or whatever.”
He described his drug use as “a binge” and not “a heroin-type situation that was consistent. Your body has to shut down particularly with something like cocaine at some point.”
Donovan added that the “paranoia, particularly with cocaine, starts to set in, 24 hours in — you think the MI5 are outside your window.”
Donovan, who played Scott Robinson on the hit soap from 1986 to 1989, said he worked amid his addiction and struggled to stay sober.
“You feel great for two days and then that little demon in your head would come along and go, ‘Come on, let’s do a cheeky one, let’s blow it all up again,’” he said.
However, he stopped that pattern after starting a family with his wife, Angela Malloch, with whom he shares three children.
By that time, “I was still in my 30s, enough time for the body to repair,” he said. “There was enough time to get back time.”
In an interview with The Guardian in January 2024, Donovan — who currently lives in England — was asked what he would change if he could “edit” his past.
“My relationship with drugs,” he said at the time, adding, “I was so selfish at the time, I wouldn’t really have noticed what was going on.”
When asked what makes him unhappy, Donovan answered in characteristically blunt fashion.
“Overdrinking,” he told the outlet. “I don’t drink all the time, but I do love a glass of wine, and it’s very difficult to just stop at one or two. If I overdrink, I don’t feel good about myself.”
Donovan previously addressed his drug problem in his 2020 memoir, Between The Lines: My Story Uncut. During the 1990s, he suffered an overdose at Kate Moss’ 21st birthday party in Los Angeles. He has since gone back on track, acting on stage and screen, recently starring in the UK’s theatrical performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
