James Arthur "hit the self-destruct button" when he first found fame

He shared: "I wasn't really mentally in a good place before I did 'The X Factor'. The pressure got to me - I was having these bad anxiety attacks all the time. The way that I would deal with that was by self-medicating; it spiralled out of control. I hit the self-destruct button."

After he was dropped from his record label, it was a huge wake up call and he desperately tried to reconnect with his family and friends who he had shut out.

He added: "Everyone wrote me off including me ... I felt like I was a joke in this country, and I didn't want to feel like that anymore. I quickly realised that smoking the amount of weed I was smoking and taking the pills I was taking was not helping. I decided to help myself, reconnect with friends and family who I'd previously stopped talking to to try to cope with it all by myself."

And the 28-year-old singer isn't worried about slipping back to his old ways as he feels "more equipped to deal" with his fame now.

He told Billboard magazine: "I'm more equipped to deal with it. There's a lot of nonsense of course, and it can make you anxious because you never know what to expect.

"Before I would just smoke a lot of weed and take some prescription pills. Now I'm trying to take each day at a time without looking too far ahead, which I think is a much better approach."