Phil Collins opens up about his battle with alcoholism: “I was about to die”

Phil Collins has revealed for the first time the details of the extremely serious hospitalization that kept him in hospital for seven months in 2023, the consequence of a severe alcohol addiction that had by then compromised several vital organs. In an interview with the Sunday Times, the British musician recounted coming within a hair's breadth of death. "My kidneys were failing, my organs were shutting down. People were coming to say goodbye to me, but I don't remember it, I had no idea what was happening. It could really have ended badly," confessed the former drummer and singer of Genesis. The situation was so critical that, as Collins himself explained, "there was talk of whether to keep me alive with artificial support."

The musician, now 75, has called his recovery a genuine miracle: "I was very lucky to get through it. Needless to say, I haven't had a drink since." Collins had already spoken in the past about his problems with alcohol, tied above all to the difficult period following his divorce from his third wife, Orianne Cevey, but he had never before revealed just how extreme the crisis he went through three years ago actually was.
In recent years the English artist's health has also been marked by serious back and neck problems, which prevented him from playing drums during the Genesis reunion in 2021, forcing him to perform solely as a singer. In 2016 he had also made public his diagnosis of diabetes.
Asked what prompted him to share this experience now, Collins responded with his usual humor, calling his 75th birthday "a milestone, or maybe a millstone."

Despite his physical difficulties, his bond with the drums remains unchanged. "I wish I could still play," he confessed, recalling how over the course of his career he went "from a drummer who sang to a singer who played drums," while still considering the former role his true love since childhood.

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