Halifax Daily News, November 6, 2002
HEADLINE: Why Mick Fleetwood quit drugs: 'I looked in the mirror'
BODY:
A glimpse of himself in a mirror prompted Fleetwood Mac star Mick Fleetwood to quit drinking and taking drugs, because he looked like "a sweaty, greasy blancmange."
The drummer's third wife, Lynn, felt sure a vacation to Hawaii eight years ago would help her husband kick his bad habits. And it did, but not before she threatened to leave him there on his own.
"I came here in a wretched condition," Fleetwood said. "My drinking and drug-taking was no longer a laugh; it was no longer funny. It was sad.
"I got there, I drank myself into a stupor, made a lot of friends very quickly, and the next morning Lynn said, 'I think I'm going home."'
Lynn Fleetwood said: "I had so hoped this would be the change of something."
Fleetwood admits that change came when, hungover, he glanced at himself in the bathroom mirror.
"I went into the toilet and I looked in the mirror and I had a long beard, a greasy complexion and I was slightly overweight. I was a sweaty, greasy blancmange and I looked at myself and thought, 'This is it, it's over.'
"I walked out and told Lynn not to go home and let me sleep my way out of it for the rest of the day, and ever since then I've been sober."
Fleetwood said he will never forgive himself for being a deadbeat dad to daughters Lucy and Amy during his years of cocaine and alcohol abuse.
In the documentary about him, filmed by cable channel Bravo, Fleetwood said, "It was like buying toothpaste -- Leer jets, send them in, just make a phone call: 'Send someone out from Los Angeles; I need a new heap of drugs.'
"Part of my crazy behaviour was not being the father that I could have been."
His grown up daughters admit living with their boozed up dad was difficult and confusing most of the time.
Amy Fleetwood said: "Nothing was hidden from us. I witnessed everything and I had concerns for a long time. I didn't have the closeness that I wanted. It was impossible." -- WENN
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