The DJ was unable to feel the pain of doing so because the drugs had left his face so numb.
DJ Fat Tony pulled out his own teeth at the height of his crystal meth addiction, but was so mentally unwell that he “thought it was normal”.
The DJ, who has previously admitted spending more than £1 million funding his drug habit, told Olivia Attwood on her Olivia’s House podcast that he ended up “digging” out his gnashers, but was unable to feel the pain of doing so because the drugs had left his face so numb.
He explained: “When you don’t drink water for 28 years, you get dehydrated and my gums had receded.
“My drug of choice had changed so drastically and the substances I was taking got a lot more severe and when you start to smoke drugs, the first thing that gets infected is your gums and you get infection.
“So you’d sit and dig at them and the finger wasn’t doing it so I’d pick up a bit of stick and start digging.
“At the time, my face was always numb and I just wanted them out of my mouth. I was so mentally unwell that I thought it was normal.
“I would sit rocking backwards and forwards to stabilise myself.”
Olivia questioned what the reaction was from the “people around you when you were losing your teeth”, to which Tony admitted that the majority of those he’d previously considered friends had already scarpered.
He sighed: “People had gone. The faster we go down, the quicker those people hit the wall and are out and you’re left at the bottom with the carcasses and the sewage and the rats and all of the bottom feeders.”
Tony also said he always fully believed he had complete control over his drug use – even as a self-described “junkie with no teeth”.
He got clean in 2006, and has maintained his sobriety ever since, becoming a passionate advocate for recovery.
And he added to Olivia that despite the assumptions often made about the lifestyle associated with drug taking, there’s “nothing glamorous” about it.
He sighed: “There is nothing glamorous about spending that kind of money, there’s nothing glamorous about taking that amount of drugs.
“There’s nothing to be proud of except for being alive now.”
Despite decades of success, Tony admitted he still struggles with anxiety before every performance, whether he’s playing to to three people or 20,000.
However, he’s credited therapy for helping him better understand himself, as well as attending 12-step fellowship meetings which ultimately saved his life.
He admitted: “I wouldn’t be here now without going to those meetings.”
DJ Fat Tony dug out his own teeth at height of meth addiction
