“I started to get anxiety and paranoia, but it’s always been in my nature to carry on and think that everything is going to go away.”
Last month much-respected producer Benga took to Twitter to address the mental health problems that led to his retirement last year. In an interview with The Guardian, the producer has further expanded on the events surrounding his diagnosis.
He first noticed a problem in late 2013. “Around Christmas, I got all of my jewellery together and I started giving it to people as they were shopping,” he told Kate Hutchinson. “One of my favourite watches was a rose gold Rolex, and I had that in my inside pocket. I remember somebody talking about ‘time’ and I just reached into my pocket and gave it to them. During that period, I cleared out my entire house, not knowing what I was doing. I lost everything within the space of about four months.”
Benga links the onset of what he was then diagnosed with (bipolar disorder and schizophrenia) with excessive drug use and touring. “I’d been taking them since I was 17 years old, but it really started to affect me when I was about 22, 23,” he says. “The majority was ecstasy but I also discovered ketamine when I was 25. I started to get anxiety and paranoia, but it’s always been in my nature to carry on and think that everything is going to go away. I found myself getting high because of it – I’d be in a situation and I’d be anxious, so I’d think: ‘Let’s get out of it.’ People would say to me: ‘You need to slow down,’ but I didn’t recognise that anything was wrong.”
However, he is thankfully feeling more positive now: “this illness has kind of given me focus: it’s made me realise what’s most important to me and to get my priorities straight.”
Read the feature in full over on The Guardian.
