Fatboy Slim says he felt paralysed at prospect of DJing sober after rehab

Fatboy Slim has said he felt paralysed and “rigid with fear” at the prospect of DJing sober after spending time in rehab to deal with his alcohol addiction. The artist, whose real name is Norman Cook, referred to his alcoholism as a parasite and said getting sober was “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done” during an appearance on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne. He said he was prompted to address his problem after his wife at the time, the radio DJ Zoe Ball, said she would leave him if he did not stop drinking. “That was my wakeup moment. There had been tons of people shouting at me before, but it was whispered very quietly in the end. “Addiction is such a weird disease and it’s like a parasite, it protects its own. It knows that if you quit, it won’t have anywhere to live anymore, so it will do things to you to keep you. “Probably the last year of my drinking, I wasn’t really enjoying it, and things were starting to fall off in my life.” He checked into a rehab facility in 2009 and has since been sober for almost 15 years. While in rehab, it dawned on him he had sought help “just in time”, he said. Asked if he had found it easy to quit, he said: “No, absolutely not. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done … I couldn’t have done it without going to rehab. I needed someone to bash into my head for a month. …