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Elton John: I wasted a big part of my life due to drugs

Jul 13, 2012, 22:01 GMT

Sir Elton John

Sir Elton John admits he 'wasted' a massive chunk of his life due to drugs and addiction.

The 65-year-old singer believes he was too 'self-absorbed' to notice that he was destroying a big part of his life during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, despite so many of his friends dying around him.

He said: 'I wasted such a big part of my life, when this epidemic was beginning to happen in the early 1980s. And I was a drug addict and self-absorbed.

'You know, I was having people die right, left and centre around me, friends. And yet, I didn't stop the life that I had, which is the terrible thing about addiction. It's that - you know, it's that bad of a disease.

'I was consumed by cocaine, booze, and who knows what else. I apparently never got the memo that the Me generation had ended.'

Elton - who has raised more than $275 million for the Elton John AIDS Foundation - used to think he was 'invincible' after drinking and taking drugs, and he now believes he's the 'luckiest man in the world' because he didn't get AIDS when he was younger.

He explained: 'You know what? When you take a drug and you take a drink and you mix those two together, you think you're invincible. I came out of this HIV-negative. I was the luckiest man in the world.'

Elton is keen to have a brother or sister for his and husband David Furnish's son Zachary - who was born on Christmas Day 2010 via a surrogate mother - so that the 19-month-old little one has someone to play with at school.

Speaking on the 'Today' show, in a conversation which will be aired in two parts on Tuesday (17.07.12) and Wednesday (18.07.12), he added: 'I'd love to have more children. And also Zachary, being the child of a famous person is hard. And I would like him to have - you know, when he's four and he starts going to preschool kids will say, 'You don't have a mummy.' And we know that. We talked about this before we had Zachary.

'And we're going to say, 'Well, listen, there's going to be consequences involved in having a child when you're two gay parents.' And I want him to have a brother or a sister to go to school with him. And so that he can have someone to play with.'