Elton John celebrates 34 years of sobriety

nme.com:

Elton John has celebrated 34 years of sobriety, marking the occasion in a new post on social media.Sir Elton took a year off from work in 1990 to attend recovery after years of addiction issues.

In his 2019 memoir, Me, he opened up about just how bad his addiction was – recalling the time he hijacked a Rolling Stones show while high on cocaine, as well as the moment he mistook Bob Dylan for his gardener while high – describing him as “scruffy”.In 2020, ahead of an online screening of the film Rocketman – the film biopic about his life – John said despite the debauched lifestyle of many musicians in ’70s LA who regularly took cocaine to the point that few commented on it, his cocaine use was so extreme by comparison that it was “noticed” by many.

He explained: “It took a fairly Herculean effort to get yourself noticed for taking too much cocaine in the music industry of 1970s LA, but I was clearly prepared to put the hours in,” John wrote next to a gif of an inebriated Taron Egerton, who portrayed him in the 2019 film.However, John celebrated 34 years sober on Instagram this week, taking to Instagram on Wednesday evening (July 31) to share a picture of his Alcoholics Anonymous coin that featured the phrase, “To thine own self be true”.

The words “unity” “service” and “recovery” were embossed along the triangle while inside, the number ‘34’ appeared in roman numerals.Captioning the image, John wrote, “34 years clean and sober.