How Ronnie Wood got clean—for the eighth time

Ronnie Wood’s moment of madness may turn out to have been a godsend, said Simon Hattenstone in the London Guardian. In 2008, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist left his wife of 23 years, Jo, for a teenager. He then embarked on a drinking and drugging binge that culminated in his arrest for trying to throttle his lover in the street. At that point, his friends, the artist Damien Hirst and professional snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan, offered to take him to rehab. “They went, ‘Ronnie, d’you want us to come over and help you?’ And I went, ‘Pleeeeease,’ cos I couldn’t stand myself,” he says.

No one expected Wood’s eighth stint in rehab to work. “There were a lot of doubting Thomases, and there was something inside me that thought, ‘I’ve got to do this and prove them wrong.’” And so he has: Fifteen months later he is still sober. He has a solo album out, a gorgeous new girlfriend in her 30s who doesn’t drink, and he’s even made peace with Jo. “She saw [me] a couple of weeks ago and said, ‘You’ve still got your wedding ring,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, because you’re my old mate and you always will be.’ And she said, ‘You’re my best friend and you always will be.’”

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