In an interview with Matt Lauer of The Today show Sir Elton John has revealed that he regrets the drug use of his past. The legendary songwriter is about to publish his memoirs, entitled 'Love is the Cure: On Life, Loss and the end of Aids.' The proceeds from the book will be donated to the Elton John Aids Foundation. In the book and in his interview with Lauer, Elton explains that when the Aids epidemic struck in the 1980s, his drug addiction clouded his behaviour so much that he "wasted" a great deal of his time - something that he now lives to regret.
Speaking from his home in the UK, Elton explained that he "wasted such a big part of my life, when this epidemic was beginning to happen in the early 1980s. And I was a drug addict and self-absorbed. You know, I was having people die right, left and center around me, friends. And yet, I didn't stop the life that I had, which is the terrible thing about addiction. It's that - you know, it's that bad of a disease."
Whilst he feels guilty about that time, however, he is now working hard to make amends for the time he wasted, hence his charitable work with the Aids foundation, "I'm making up for it. There is so much more to be done," he admitted. Discussing the risks that he took during his drug addiction, he said "You know what? When you take a drug and you take a drink and you mix those two together, you think you're invincible. I came out of this Hiv-negative. I was the luckiest man in the world."