He had to overcome heroin addiction all on his own
In that interview with The Guardian, Allen credits his overcoming of heroin addiction in the first few years in France to his own willpower.
“I knew I had to fight it myself. The cold turkey business, I won’t have it every day. It’s one full day of that you suffer,” Allen said in that interview.
“So when you come out, you see the day – and you see the feeling of your body, and all of a sudden you see brightness that you never saw. Once you see that, you don’t want to go back to darkness. In one week, you are as clear as anything, you know? That’s how I did mine,” he added.