I grew up in a stable, working-class home in Hull in the 1980s, but I always craved excitement. That’s probably why, aged 18, I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I started visiting the city in the school holidays, because I had fallen for a girl who lived there. On one trip, I was introduced to a producer called David Percefull, who was putting a band together. I decided to move to Tulsa permanently, to be with my girlfriend and join the band, Fanzine, as its singer.

By the time I moved to the US, my girlfriend had become addicted to crystal meth, crack and other hard drugs. She was also living with another boyfriend. I was devastated, but I’d sacrificed a lot to be with her, so I convinced myself I could fix her and our relationship.

Fanzine quickly became quite successful in Tulsa. We went from playing small dives in front of 15 regulars to supporting Cypress Hill and Evanescence at the city’s Edge festival, in front of 50,000 people. We were unsigned, yet I was rubbing shoulders with massive bands and leaping off stages to crowd surf among thousands of fans. For an ordinary kid from Yorkshire, it was amazing, surreal.

Fanzine may have been thriving, but I couldn’t help my girlfriend, and what had broken her was breaking me. Crystal meth, crack, cocaine, heroin – you name it, I took it. My bandmates were aware, but we were doing so well that getting clean was rarely discussed. Drug addiction robs you of your time, your friends, your health and your dignity. My apartment seemed to have a revolving door for every type of lowlife. At one point I found myself sharing with a white supremacist and a drug dealer who, in between pistol-whipping me on a whim, would regularly sleep with my girlfriend.

I still loved her, despite it all. But our arguments would quickly escalate. She attacked me with knives; she’d throw things; she even stubbed cigarettes out on my face. One night, I found her holding a gun. She said she was going to kill herself. She passed out for a few seconds and when she came around, she turned the gun on me. I left her for good that evening.

Fanzine was still doing well. My manager had arranged for me to record at Abbey Road studios in London without the others. A Parlophone executive was impressed with my sessions and paid to have the rest of the band flown over to record. I would score smack in Camden and shoot up in the toilets at Abbey Road. During one playback, I passed out on the exec’s shoulder, ending the deal before it even started. He’d seen it all before, and got up and left. My music career was in tatters.

I headed back to Tulsa and decided the best way to score drugs was to start selling them. I befriended a fan who happened to be in a Mexican drug cartel. What he gave me was far better than the opiods available to locals, so I sold it on to them.

I had a new girlfriend, from a rich family, and was cruising around in her BMW. The car helped me convince dealers all over the city to accept dodgy cheques. I once got a call from a dealer to whom I owed thousands. He had just cooked up a batch of crack at his home in the sticks, and invited me over. If I’d gone, he would have killed me. Gangs from every neighbourhood wanted me dead, so I left and returned to England.

Back home, I joined another band, called the Shine, but we never had the success I’d enjoyed with Fanzine. It took over a decade and the near-obliteration of my health for me to have an epiphany. The drugs had caused me to gnash my teeth so often that they were ground down to rotten nubs. One day I looked over my body – riddled with holes and abscesses. I realised that God didn’t give me this body to destroy it.

I had been in rehab multiple times, but I always went back to using. It was only when I checked into the Carpenters Arms, a Christian-run rehabilitation centre in Leicestershire, that I got clean. It will be two years this October. I still love music, and have started studying at Nexus ICA, an institute for creative arts in Coventry. I have a fiancee, and she recently gave birth to our first child. We’ll tie the knot next July.

I threw away a pop career, a decision I regretted for 13 years. Now I’m grateful I did it; that I missed out on all the money. If I had made it, I don’t think I’d be alive today .

• As told to Daniel Lavelle

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