CELEBRITY
Pink Reveals Drug Overdose Just Weeks Before Landing Her First Record Deal In ’60 Minutes’ Interview
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In a wide-ranging 60 Minutes interview on Sunday night, Pink revealed she overdosed on an array of drugs at a rave just weeks before she signed her first record deal in 1995.
The 44-year-old Grammy winner recalled her turbulent childhood, growing up in a house where every day my parents were screaming at each other, throwing things. They hated each other. She said she had dropped out of high school and was heading off the rails.
I was a punk. I had a mouth. I had a chip on my shoulder, she said. More than just getting into drugs, I was selling drugs, she said. As a hardcore partier from [ages] 12 to 15, Pink said she was on all the club drugs.
She said she took ecstasy, angel dust, crystal, all kinds of things at a Thanksgiving event in November 1995. “Then I was out. Done. Too much, she said.
Asked whether she almost died, Pink replied, yeah.
But the DJ gave her a helping hand, and a guest spot on the lineup.
“Come back tomorrow, Ill give you a guest spotlight,” Pink recalled the DJ telling her. But you can never do drugs again, the DJ told her.
Pink said she “never took drugs again, ever” after her overdose experience. “Thats the thing with me. Once I make up my mind, Im done.”
Soon after, she was auditioning for record labels, and weeks later she was signed with the short-lived R&B girl group Choice to LaFace Records, as token white girls on a Black label, she said.
“I never got a record deal because I was cute,” Pink said. “I got a record deal because I was fiery, I had a lot to say and I had a voice.”
Now a mother of two with husband Carey Hart and a vineyard owner, Pink says she’s relieved.
I’m relieved I dont have to fall back on conventional beauty and that doesnt have to be my thing and I dont have to keep that up, either, as I age. I dont have to be that. I can be all this, she said.
Pink released the single Dreaming featuring Sting and DJ Marshmello from the upcoming expanded version of her album Trustfall on Friday, and postponed two shows over the weekend due to a respiratory infection. Her Summer Carnival Tour is next scheduled to stop at the Ball Arena in Denver, Colo., on Oct. 25.
TMX contributed to this article.
