Monday, 24 September 2007

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Jason Donovan: Cocaine nearly killed me

Neighbours star rushed from party in ambulance

Jason Donovan says he almost died at Kate Moss’s 21st birthday party in 1995.

Kate was dating Johnny Depp at the time and halfway through the bash at the Viper Room in LA, Jason started reeling from his massive cocaine use.

‘My heart was racing, my vision was blurring and I was becoming disoriented,' says Jason in his book Between The Lines: My Uncut Story.

'I tried to steady myself but my legs buckled under me and I fell to the floor.’

The next thing Jason, now 39, remembers is lying in the back of an ambulance with a siren blaring.

He was taken to the Cedars Sinai hospital and advised to lay off drugs.

‘You do realise that seizures like this can prove fatal,’ the doctor told him. ‘Maybe this will serve as a wake up call.’

Yet it didn’t. Jason discharged himself three hours later and snorted coke almost immediately.

‘I headed back to my room, tail between my legs,’ he recalls.

‘I had made an utter fool of myself. I’d tried to party with the big boys. Tried to be so very rock’n’roll, but all I had done was make a complete f**ing idiot of myself.

‘I had just ruined what was possibly one of the greatest nights of my life and what for? Drugs. It was pathetic.

‘I went over to the drawer of my bedside table, pulled out my coke stash and, without a second thought, cut myself a line.’

Between The Lines: My Uncut Story, by Jason Donovan is published on 1 October by Harper Collins, priced £18.99




Phil Boucher