“The fuck up”, as Jordan Stephens refers to it – both in-person and on page – wasn’t his first experience of infidelity. “Yes, I had been unfaithful to girlfriends in the past,” he accepts, “I’d also been cheated on.” It’s just, what happened in that hotel bedroom five years ago, the night of a friend’s seaside wedding, played out differently. It triggered a breakup, a breakdown, a path to sobriety. “I’d had three, four other relationships before, but I’d never stopped afterwards. Oh, we’ve broken up? I’ll go on tour, sleep with whoever, do a bunch of cocaine, or drink loads. I’d numb myself to get through it, then make the same mistakes.” Not this time. “This one, however, was a pivotal point for me. I was in a relationship, I fucked it up, then everything crumbled. I was confronted by my own behaviour, and by grief, and was forced to make some major changes. That single moment changed my life’s trajectory.”
That’s a lot to share within five minutes of hellos and how-are-yous on a summer afternoon. For the former Rizzle Kicks singer turned actor, podcaster and now published author, it’s nothing unusual. Soul-baring honesty, it seems, is very much his MO. It’s there through every chapter of his new book, Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak & Dogs, a deeply personal account of his disloyalty, subsequent unravelling, and how he set out to rebuild. Now sprawled out on a sofa at a sunny canal-side café – pink T-shirt, shorts and baseball cap, hoop earring, gold teeth, and a dusting of tattoos – face to face he’s charismatic with his vulnerability.
“I started writing this maybe two-and-a-half years ago,” he says, “after this messy period was over.” Stephens is 32 now – he’s 27 in the book. “Around the time it was all happening, I was offered a book deal. I declined. I hadn’t stabilised myself. I owe a lot of my confidence to my current relationship.” Since 2020, Stephens has been dating former Little Mix-er turned solo singer Jade Thirlwall. “The only reason I’ve been able to write this is because I feel so secure. It’s because of her, and our relationship, that I can explore this.”
When fighting to stay afloat as that past relationship sank, Stephens didn’t know where to turn for guidance. “As I was going through that heartbreak, I didn’t find cultural references to help me understand what I was feeling. You go to a library or bookshop,” he says, “where’s the section on male puberty? The male anatomy? Sexual experiences, consent, and certainly heartbreak. For men, these stories are just so limited. I was experiencing a lifetime’s worth of heartbreaks all at once, and felt entirely alone.” This book, he hopes, documents one such experience. “So I promised myself I’d be honest about it all…” A nervous laugh escapes. “Some of those things are embarrassing, man.” There’s a brutality to his written retelling: much of the behaviour he recounts is chaotic, selfish and, at times, toxic. “The focus of the book is how fragile and immature my actions were. That’s why I wrote in the present tense. I wanted people to be in that mania with me, and to know there’s a way out; to show that even if you’re fucked and you’ve fucked up, you can find a way through.”
Stephens was born in north London, his first decade spent with his mum on a Neasden council estate. They moved to Brighton when he was 10, where his future bandmate Harley Alexander-Sulé was also based. They attended music workshops together, and then the Brit School. Stephens was 16 when they formed Rizzle Kicks in 2008. By the summer of 2011, they’d exploded. While the book taps into darkest moments and choices, there’s a distinct lack of reference to all that he’s known for: his chart-topping late teens and early 20s.
“While I don’t talk about my music career,” he explains, “my ‘celebrity’, whatever that is, I make sure it’s clear that when all this happened, I had both time and money. That’s the key context people need to understand when reading: if you are heartbroken, and you have time, it attacks you. And some of what I did on the journey that followed was expensive.” Beyond this, however, the pop-star years get little mention. “It’s not that I’m not ready to talk about it,” he suggests. “Well, maybe. I’m also just not that interested in it right now. Our perception of celebrity is pretty fucked. We put people on pedestals who perhaps aren’t qualified to be there. At times, myself included, even if it’s the culture I exist in and benefit from.”
That’s the reason, I point out, we’re here talking about his heartbreak. “Yes, but the dream is that’s not why. I want to write more books, not all nonfiction. To be an author, and explore all the crevices of my imagination. I get you, there’s interest there: Boy From Rizzle Kicks Writes Heartbreak Story. I understand I can leverage that. But there’s a reason those details aren’t there. Why my face isn’t on the cover.” This book, he hopes, is universal. “Grief doesn’t give a fuck, and the emotional world doesn’t care about your material standing. Every human being, I believe, has to feel pain in order to grow. I want anyone to relate to it. Not to feel like they have to sell a million records or own a flat first. You might feel this tomorrow, and I’ll be there with you.”
Today, though, Stephens does set the scene. He was 19 when Rizzle Kicks hit the big time. Their 2011 hits, Down With the Trumpets and Mama Do the Hump, both went platinum. “There’s this idea,” he says, “that you stay the age, emotionally, you were when you become famous. That it suspends your maturity. Your responsibilities are instantly delegated to other people.” He struggled in the limelight. “I wasn’t coping. The loss of anonymity was massive. Listen, I’m a sucker for attention. I’m validated by it. But I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
Constant comparisons didn’t help. “You’re in a rat race, always in competition. I didn’t feel I had the tools to deal with it. I feel like I was – I am – too sensitive.” He loves writing, making music. “And I loved Harley. I loved travelling the world. I’m so proud of what we achieved. But it wears you down. I’d hyper-focus on people’s opinions of me. I’d get into fights online. I was young, and growing up. And I was doing it with all this attention. People act differently when you have this perceived notoriety or power: there’s no real way to gauge who your friends are.”
Yes, he’s sure some youngsters can cope. “But I failed. There’s such a record of people blowing up young, left broken or dead. Else falling to drugs.” That’s what Stephens turned to. “I started early. My first pill at 13, 17 when I first took cocaine.” Did it become an addiction? “I think I was addicted to self-destruction, but yes, there were points I was taking cocaine at questionable hours, in questionable situations. It came from a desperation to cope with how anxious I was. Drugs really helped me not care so much about what people thought about me.”
Stephens was 24 when the boys called time on the band. “Harley had severe stage anxiety, and I had built up resentment towards the industry. Maybe I had enough emotional awareness to know it wasn’t working, but honestly it was more my issue with authority: I wasn’t going to let this machine destroy me and my friend.” The pair sat down. “I said: why are you having panic attacks every time we gig – and me, self-destructing – to earn some fucker we don’t know or see money; more money than we’ll ever have.” Stephens hadn’t faced down his demons, yet. “Still, I knew something was wrong. I was impulsive and open. People would look at me, or say: you’re unusual. There was something I wasn’t getting, and I hadn’t had time to work it out. I was doing a lot of drugs. I didn’t trust myself to make it if we continued.” So, they walked away. “And I don’t regret it all. I’m so proud of what we did. I didn’t choose to be a pop star. That’s different to being a musician. It’s a different role. Some people are amazing pop stars, but I couldn’t hack it.”
It’s here we find Stephens at the start of the book. “Rizzle Kicks is on ice. Harley doing his own stuff. I’m on my own wave. And by that, I mean I’m cracked out on ADHD meds I’m taking, without a prescription.” In the process of getting sober, Stephens traded cocaine – which helped him find focus – for black-market Modafinil. Today, his standard dosage might be 10mg per day. “I was taking 400mg then, so I’m firing on all cylinders: a rap album, a punk album; hot yoga, new ventures, hitting the gym… and I’m driving myself into debt. I was on one.” On reflection, he reckons, he was a “feminist fuck boy. And I was finger-pointy, but I didn’t know shit, bro. The perception I had of myself was so shallow and fragile. All it took was a woman to bin me off and that was it. My whole sense of self disintegrated.”
All that, I suggest, would make a great read. “Yeah, it was a fucking whirlwind. There’s a lot I don’t remember, and I feel totally detached from certain things that happened. But I just think, right now, it’s not important. All you need to know is that I had time on my hands, and some cash in the bank.”
While the book’s near-300 pages are centred on his infidelity’s fallout, the event itself is handled succinctly. He was drunk and high at the time. “She used her mouth. I lost my head,” he writes. “Heart leaking. Guilt, shame, confusion.” From there, he spirals. At first, while grappling with whether to come clean. And once he does, the rejection that follows. “It’s all there,” he says, “my issues with validation. Sex and intimacy, my relationships with friends and family.” There’s a spiritual jaunt to Brazil, an emotional trauma retreat, and transformative trips on psychedelic DMT. And he’s upfront about the extremes his mind was pushed to: the compulsion to contact his ex-girlfriend, even when asked to steer well clear. His obsession to get her attention. It was in these six months his viral article for the Guardian about toxic masculinity in the early #MeToo days saw him showered with praise. Less commendable were his intentions. “Only thing that got me buzzing,” he writes, “was the idea that [my ex- girlfriend] might read it. And take it as proof that I’m a ‘changed man’…”
More than once, he acknowledges suicidal ideation. “I felt really bad…” Stephens says now, then takes a deep breath. “I was at a point where I felt like hurting myself would be a really great way to change my circumstances. I think it’s important to share that – the experience isn’t unique to me.”
Chaos turns to calm towards the book’s end. “Creativity, nature, exercise, sleep, nutrition… all these things,” he believes, “have helped me balance myself, and stay a lot calmer. I’m literally a different person to who I was even five, seven years ago.” Sobriety has played a major part. “The moment of my betrayal,” he says, “was the last time I took cocaine. With drinking, there was a cloudy time before I stopped: my sober birthday, I know, is 8 January.” And then, there’s his current relationship. It must be a lot, I suggest, for her. All this sharing. “Her reading the book was a real thing,” he says. “I was fucking anxious, man. It was the present-tense thing that was killing me. I said to her: I’m writing as if I’m in love with someone else, but I’m not. I need to write it like this so people are right there with me.”
Stephens didn’t show her sections or drafts as he wrote. Once completed, he printed out the pages. “We didn’t talk about it as she went, total silence. She’d come in every evening, read, and that pile would get smaller.” For Stephens, at least, the wait was tense. “Then eventually, she said: ‘I’m finished.’ I was shitting it. Then she looked at me, and said: ‘these were my favourite bits’.
There’s a smile on his face; eyes wide and gleaming. “Honestly, the love I felt for her deepened in that moment. And it was already pretty deep. It’s like someone hugging the shittest version of yourself. The version of yourself lost and in pain…” He’s searching for a word, but can’t find it. “It’s real, man, this thing people talk about. The reason there are so many soppy films and shit. Because actually, there is this feeling. When I look at my girlfriend now, I feel things I can’t verbalise. Something eternal. Something beyond me.”
By way of headlines, there wasn’t much Thirlwall didn’t already know. “I’m pretty open… I just fucking talk. I’d told her lots about my past already. All the madness and the chaos. It’s part of who I was, who I am.” And Thirlwall, of course, can relate to fame’s tribulations: she was just 15 when auditioning for The X Factor, the start of Little Mix. It’s the subject of her debut solo single, Angel of My Dreams “That’s part of our connection, 100%” he believes. “There’s an innate understanding. My partner is a superstar. It helps that people look at her more than me.”
For someone who struggled in the spotlight’s glare, I say, he’s about to lob his most intimate experiences and private thoughts right back into it. He takes a minute, then looks me in the eye.
“This is going to sound weird,” Stephens warns, “but look past me, and my identity. The events of this book – our whole lives – are a blip. A millisecond.” He finds that thought comforting. “I’d like to believe I’m part of a much bigger thing; community is a massive part of the human existence. I want to feel like I’m a limb in a body; to leave something which lives beyond me. Even if there’s some push back, pain or exposure, I think I’ll be OK.” Another smile. “Bro, am I really going to hold myself back from honesty because I might, briefly, get called a dickhead?”
Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs by Jordan Stephens is published by Canongate on 22 August, priced £16.99. Pre-order it from guardianbookshop.com for £15.29.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Source: theguardian.com
