Shane MacGowan - Substance Abuse

Substance Abuse

Shane MacGowan is known for his prolific use of legal and illegal drugs, and his erratic, intoxicated behaviour has often been reported on in the press. MacGowan claims to have been introduced to alcohol and cigarettes by his aunt on the promise he would not worship the devil. In a 2007 interview with the Daily Mirror he told a reporter: "I was actually four when I started drinking. I just remember that Ribena turned into stout and I developed an immediate love for it." MacGowan says he tried whiskey when he was 10 and continued to drink heavily thereafter.

In 2001, Sinéad O'Connor reported him to the police in London for drug possession — in what she said was an attempt to discourage him from using heroin. At first furious, MacGowan later expressed gratitude towards O'Connor and claimed that the incident helped him kick his heroin habit.

Speaking on BBC Four's Folk Britannia television programme in early 2006, Robyn Hitchcock recalled: "I remember going to the Hope and Anchor . The Pogues were all on stage and ready, it was a full house, but they hadn't started yet. Then this character shambled in through the door and shambled downstairs. I thought, 'Jesus, you're not letting that guy in are you?'. Then he walked on stage. That guy was Shane MacGowan."

On 7 September 2002 MacGowan became so intoxicated before a performance at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin that he stopped singing and threw up over fans in the front row. Fiona Wynne wrote in the Daily Mirror that the consequent criticism of MacGowan's behaviour, "who was in a wheelchair after breaking his leg", led Sinéad O'Connor to call Joe Duffy's RTÉ Liveline programme three days later to defend him, saying: "He is an angel near the end who needs support. He's too far gone to stop drinking; he has an illness that cannot be cured, and as far as I can see, the end is near for him".

MacGowan has suffered physically from years of binge drinking. He often performs while drunk and has been impaired in interviews. In 2004 on the BBC TV political magazine programme This Week he gave incoherent and slurred answers to questions from Janet Street-Porter about the public smoking ban in Ireland.

MacGowan's fiancée, Victoria Mary Clarke, blamed his alcoholism for an earlier split, but in a 2007 interview, she said, " loves a drink and he probably always will. But he drinks less than people think and I haven’t seen him drunk for quite some time". She blamed his problems with drink on fans ("it became difficult for us to get from A to B without being dragged into bars by well-wishers desperate to buy him a drink") and social anxiety. ("To cope with his social anxiety, he began drinking more and more")