Robbie Williams has revealed the mental health battles that have plagued him throughout his career. The former Take That singer, 49, was first diagnosed with depression in his early 20s and has battled poor mental health ever since.
Now approaching 50, Robbie has also been diagnosed with dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), neurodiversity, body dysmorphia, hypervigilance, HSP (highly sensitive person), and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Those conditions, coupled with his intense drug and alcohol addictions, almost killed him as dark thoughts took over and he became obsessed about criticism of his chart-topping songs.
“I did have a sense of what I was doing to myself and I didn’t care,” he says, looking back at old footage of himself and commenting on his vacant expression. “There is a sense of, ‘It would be best if I passed away.’ I didn’t care and it would be alright. For me to change I’ve got to be dying.”
Robbie has talked about his mental health before saying, 'I’ve got a disease that wants to kill me and it’s in my head.'
When Robbie met his now wife Ayda Fields in 2006, he was in the grips of an intense drink and drugs relapse.
Robbie’s management staged an intervention, but it meant the end of his relationship with Ayda, who had started to think of Robbie as her “soulmate”.
Talking on new Netflix documentary Robbie Williams, Ayda says, “He is like, ‘I can’t be in a relationship, I have to get better and I can’t be with you, I have to break up with you.’ I understood it. Because I saw that he was unwell. But I was so crestfallen. He was my soulmate, then he was gone.”
Robbie spent his 33rd birthday in rehab. “It’s a hospital. It’s not a country club,” he explains. “Some people can envision rehab as being like a health retreat. It’s not – you’re surrounded by other people who are completely depressed and have just f**ked up their lives.”
However, it saved Robbie’s life and afterwards he reconnected with Ayda. They went on holiday, their relationship flourished and Robbie married Ayda in 2010.
“Rehab cut the circuit on the addiction,” explains Robbie. “It gave me the moment to recalibrate and see if I could live.”
The pair jetted off around the world and Robbie decided to stop being a rock star and start working on being a normal person. “My professional career had become that big,” he explains, “the only thing that I could do for self preservation was to take myself out of it.”
Robbie decided to go and visit the places he’d travelled through but never really seen. He says, “There became enough space between me and my career to fall in love.”
Looking back at old photos of his trips with Ayda to exotic countries including Morocco and Egypt, Robbie is overwhelmed with memories of falling in love with her. “What a package, man – silly, doesn’t take herself seriously, smart, beautiful, she makes me feel great,” he says as he looks at a photograph of Ayda. “There was a cementing of a relationship between me and my future wife. But if you’d have asked me what I was doing during that, I wouldn’t have known that.”
Today, the only drugs Robbie takes are “something like Ozempic” which has helped him slim down from 13st 13lb to 12st 1lb. To show off the results he spends nearly the entire four episodes of his Netflix documentary in bed, wearing just his underpants and a tight black vest. Despite being in a healthy place, he still struggles with insomnia and ends up lying awake most nights, then sleeping in until 1pm.
Robbie Williams is available on Netflix from November 8 and coincides with the 25th anniversary of Robbie’s solo career.
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