Rizzle Kicks star Jordan Stephens opened up about his ADHD, self-medicating and using cocaine as a coping mechanism
Rizzle Kicks star Jordan Stephens opened up about ‘overdosing every day for months’ as well as his past cocaine addiction.
The musician, 32, joined Busted star Matt Willis on his On The Mend podcast and discussed everything from using cocaine as a coping mechanism and buying non-prescribed drugs from the internet to help with his ADHD. Jordan was told at 15 years old that he had ADHD and he ‘did nothing about it’.
However, a friend of his soon helped him purchase Modafinil – which is used to boost cognitive performance – and he began to self-medicate a high amount of it. When he was getting a full psych check-up for a TV show, he was asked whether he had any previous diagnoses.
He told them about having ADHD and added that he did ‘nothing’ about it. “But I do self-medicate And they were like, ‘With what?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, this thing I bought off the internet.’ They were like, ‘Let’s take you to a psychiatrist, maybe.'” Matt asked the star: “And what was that thing you were self-medicating with?”
Jordan explained: “And I went, well, my mate, my hacker friend told me about these drugs called modafinil. And he went, oh, modafinil is actually a recognised ADHD drug, medication for it. And he went, how much do you take? And I went, sometimes two pills a day, but like it varies. And he went, okay, how strong are the pills? And I went 200mg each. And I remember he just went quiet. And he was like 400mg a day? And I went, sometimes.”
The psychiatrist wrote him a prescription for the drug and Jordan was shocked to see how low the dosage was. “I remember so vividly he gave me the prescription and I looked at and it said 16mg, and I was like 16mg?” he continued. “And then I remember reading the pamphlet and it said like, here’s how you know you’ve had an overdose.”
He was shocked to learn the feelings he had been experiencing were symptoms an overdose, including dry tongue, excessive sweating. However, he thought it meant the drug was ‘kicking in’ and ‘working’. He said: “So by those metrics, I’d basically been overdosing on every day for like 18 months.”
The star also opened up about his ‘cocaine problem’, which became a problem when he started doing it at home. He said: “You know, initially it was a coping mechanism for dealing with how intense the places I was being asked to go to were. Again, as you would know it was surreal.”
Jordan said he felt less pressure and stopped ‘overthinking’ when in social situations because of it. “I used to have this compulsive thought when I would be out at an event where, because it was so quick from me and Harley playing at our mates, like, you know, prom or whatever,” he explained. “Suddenly we’re like, you know, all over Radio One, and then we’re getting invited to events with people that I’d literally just watched on telly with, like my… you know what I mean?
“You’ve got like Jimmy Carr’s knocking about or like, I’ll be playing FIFA and then like, Daniel Sturridge is just like stood in the event looking at me going like, oh, I love your new song. What is happening? So I’m just like, I can’t cope with it. And it was exciting. But I had this compulsive thought where if I said bye to someone… I’m just remembering this now… I would obsess over like whether or not I said bye in the right way to myself.”
He added: “So it’d be like if I shook their hand, I’d be like, was I supposed to shake their hand? Or like give, you know, the kind of like, more like chill version of, cupping the hand and then a slap on the back or a hug, or if I said, why did I say, see you soon? And I would go go go go go go.”
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