Danny Dyer says it’s ‘tricky’ staying clean after rehab almost a decade ago
In a frank interview, ex-EastEnders star Danny Dyer admits he has to make a 'decision every day' to stay away from drugs and pays tribute to his wife Jo for sticking by him
Danny Dyer admits he has problems with staying clean, almost a decade after going into drug rehab.
The former EastEnder, 46, who reveals he would stay up all night smoking crack at the height of his addiction, finally sought help in 2016 after his problem became too much for him to handle. He went on to beg BBC bosses for a break from work as his marriage to Jo Mas also hit the rocks.
But the dad of three managed to turn his life around with the help of rehab, therapy and meditation. However, Danny confessed it is still an effort every single day not to lapse back into using drugs.
And he paid tribute to wife Jo, 47, for sticking by him through the years, saying it is now his turn to look after her. “You know, it’s still quite tricky,” he says. “You know, I had many years of it after that. Do you know what I mean? I went to rehab in 2016. It all just became too much for me. I just lost the sense of who I was and I think that I just knew I needed to change something.
“And so I took it upon myself and I think most people that do go to rehab need to take it upon themselves to go. You need to be there on your own will because otherwise you’ll just go back to doing what you were doing really. It was me taking ownership of my life and going, ‘You’re going to f***ing die. What the f*** are you doing?’
“I obviously had a big hole inside of me. Why am I doing this? And I suppose I had a really good capacity for drugs and I never really wanted to go to bed ever. But I think I needed to take ownership of it because I could see where it was going.”
He would stay up all night smoking crack (
BBC / Kieron McCarron)
His marriage to Jo Mas also hit the rocks. (
Getty Images)
The star, who was known to millions as Albert Square’s Mick Carter, said the moment he realised he needed help came when he froze on stage on Broadway after staying up all night binging on drugs. He said: “I’ve heard about people that had dried [up] on stage, because it’s a massive thing, and it had never happened to me.
“I thought that I could sit up all night, smoking crack, and then walk on stage, and of course you can’t do that. It’s a ridiculous idea. I’ve done this play so much, and I just didn’t have a clue what to say. The worst thing was the other actors, who knew I’d been out, all looking at me. It was just their horror. As if to go, ‘Come on then, pr**k’.
And that made me worse because I thought, ‘Oh sh**, I’m not just letting
myself down, I’m letting all that down’. “Then [actor] Andy de la Tour shouted the line out and I snapped into this and I did it, and said it. I came off stage going, ‘I can’t go back on, I can’t’. I just had a major panic attack but I just had to get on with it.”
After the wake-up call, Danny checked himself into a remote rehab facility in South Africa. And he said he deliberately avoided The Priory because he did not want any home comforts. He went on: “I’m not knocking The Priory, I’ve never been there. But I know that it’s all fresh bed linen and, you know, little candles next to your bed. And I needed to sit on a f***ing dorm, you know, with other addicts and scrub toilets. They break you down completely and got rid of all my ego b*****ks that I had going on at that time. We need an ego. It’s important, because it gives us drive and ambition and all them things. But when it’s your ego making most of the decisions, you’re f***ed.
“And mine was f***ing out of control. I was playing up to this character of whatever I’d created, I suppose. So how do you deal with your addiction day to day? It’s a decision every day, isn’t it? It’s an effort every day. I had a lot of therapy and I grew up a lot and I started to feel very grateful for my family and who I am and what I’ve got around me. And that’s what it was about, really, gratitude.”
He’s known as Albert Square’s Mick Carter
Danny first met childhood sweetheart Jo when they were both kids growing up on an East London council estate. They went on to have daughter Dani, now 26, who has twin girls with England footballer Jarrod Bowen, and then came daughter Sunnie, 16, and son Arty, nine. But the actor, who found fame starring in 2004’s The Football Factory, admitted he went off the rails after landing his role as Mick in EastEnders and it was wife Jo who bore the brunt.
Speaking to Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, he explained: “Of course it f***ed my head up when I became really famous and I didn’t quite know what to do with it. And I suppose she stood by me for a lot of sh** and had to be very patient with me.
“And so now we get to a stage where it’s my turn to be very patient and accommodating. I mean, I can tell what mood she’s in by the way she walks down the stairs, you know, the creaking of the stairs, whether it’s on me today or not.
“Of course I do believe in the marriage vows – in sickness and in health, for better for worse. But it’s hard to stay in a relationship for that long with the attention, and with me being a p***k for many years, because I was one. I hold my hands up. I lost the plot for many years. I didn’t quite know who I was. And I suppose she had to suffer all that on a national level. So yeah, you know, we are still together.”
Since leaving EastEnders in 2022, Danny has gone on to host Channel 4 ’s Scared of the Dark and filmed travel doc Absolutely Dyer: Danny and Dani Do Italy. He has also appeared in Celebrity Bake Off and Celebrity Gogglebox, alongside his eldest. His two-part documentary, Danny Dyer: How to Be a Man, aired on Channel 4 in April.
But outside of Albert Square, one of his biggest TV successes was his BAFTA-winning 2019 episode of Who Do You Think You Are? in which investigators revealed he was a descendant of King Edward III. But he told Elizabeth the glory was not all it was cracked up to be, revealing he turned up to the glitzy awards do, but missed out on an actual gong. He recalls: “How can someone like me potentially win the first BAFTA for Who Do You Think You Are? Although I didn’t get a f***ing BAFTA for it, which was weird. I stood in the queue and all the producers and the director got one, and I went, ‘Where’s f***ing mine? It’s my family.”
- Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast, and bonus feature Failing with Friends, are available now.
