Staying in the clear. Harry Styles opened up about the choices he made during his years in One Direction, one of which included his decision to abstain from experimenting with drugs until after the band announced its hiatus in 2015.
“When I was in the band, it was like, to me, it felt like it was so much bigger than any of us that I kind of felt like, ‘I’m not going to be the one who f–ks it up,’” Styles, 25, said on “New Music Daily with Zane Lowe” on Friday, November 22. “So I was like, ‘Now is the time in my life when you probably go out and experiment and do this and you take this and you do that and that’s what you do with your friends.’”
The “Lights Up” crooner continued, “So, I was like, ‘I’m not going to do any of that stuff.’”
Styles was a member of One Direction along with Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. The boys were brought together on The X Factor’s seventh season in 2010. In the midst of the English-Irish group’s On The Road Again Tour in March 2015, Malik’s departure was announced. The remaining members later confirmed the group’s extended break in August of that year.
After parting ways, each bandmate went on to pursue solo careers. Styles, for his part, dropped a self-titled debut album in 2017 and appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk later that year. He’s also set to drop his sophomore album, Fine Line, on Friday, December 13.
In regards to the boy band’s solo endeavors, Styles opened up about how things changed for him when he went out on his own, especially in relation to his upcoming second record. “Making this record felt like — I just felt, so much, like, so much more joyous,” he explained.
“I was with my friends and we were in Malibu … I felt so safe,” he continued. “It was like, ‘I want to take some mushrooms? I’m going to take some — like now is the time to have fun.”
Styles is far from the first One Directioner to mention his experience dabbling with drugs and alcohol. Earlier this year, Payne admitted that the fame he garnered from being in 1D pushed him to start drinking.
“When you’re doing hundreds and hundreds of [concerts] and it’s the same 22 songs at the same time every single day, even if you’re not happy, you’ve got to go out there,” the 25-year-old told Men’s Health Australia in July. “It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on.”
The “Strip That Down” crooner added, “I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”
Malik, meanwhile, discussed his frequent drug use in a 2016 interview with NME. “I’ve probably been smoking [marijuana] for a while,” he explained. “I don’t wanna say when I started because I don’t want to influence anyone else. That’s just something I do myself. It helps sometimes with the creative process, if you’re smoking a good weed.”
