A man who blew £280,000 on his cocaine addiction has revealed how it spiralled so far out of control that he was sniffing up to seven grams a day.
The habit left him paranoid and convinced he was “going to die”.
Ryan Phillips, from London, first tried the illicit drug as a teenager.
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But it wasn’t until he took up a job as a stockbroker that things got out of hand.
What started as a freebie at 17 soon turned into an expensive daily ritual – costing him as much as £500 a day – leaving him exhausted and feeling like he was having a heart attack.
“I knew I was doing too much coke,” Ryan told Need To Know.
“But everyone was getting on it.
“I just got caught up in it.
“I was in clubs every weekend doing drugs with famous people, and it was exciting.
“I had a good job, and I kept getting promotions.
“I was also engaged.
“On paper, everything in my life looked fine – but it was far from it.”
The 39-year-old says it all started when he began working in high-pressure environments – first as a stockbroker’s assistant and later in music promotions – where cocaine was part of the culture.
He climbed the career ladder, eventually running festivals, venues and shows across the globe.
But behind the scenes, his personal life was unravelling.
Ryan admits he was using cocaine at home during lockdown as heavily as he had while running shows – sometimes binging for three days straight before crashing and starting again.
At his peak, he estimates he spent an eye-watering £280,000 on the drug between 2020 and 2024.
The cash came from wages, redundancy payouts, and even dipping into savings he and his partner had set aside for a house deposit.
Ryan said: “I thought that it was fine because it was part of my job.
“Then I was sitting at home and calling my dealer and getting on it alone.
“I was doing as much coke as when I was running shows, but this time I had no excuse.
“I would have three days of heavy using, a day to sleep and rest and then go again.
“For the first time, it occurred to me that I had an addiction.
“It had its claws in me more than I realised.
“Most people don’t understand that when I talk about that side.
People say it doesn’t sound fun, but it’s an addiction at that point.
“The fun part is long gone by then.”
During his heaviest binges, Ryan would lock himself away for days at a time, taking line after line until his body went rigid and his mind spiralled into paranoia.
He’d check doors and windows obsessively, convinced he was about to have a heart attack or that someone was out to get him.
What would often start as a plan to use the drug to spark creativity quickly descended into hours of compulsive use, leaving him sleepless, anxious and physically wrecked.
His relationship collapsed, his work performance deteriorated, and eventually, his family discovered the scale of his problem.
Ryan says the wake-up call came when his sister and young niece arrived to visit him at his flat.
After a three-day binge, they found him surrounded by smashed glass and drug paraphernalia, blood on his arms and legs.
His sister climbed through the window to reach him, cleaned the place up and confronted him about his spiralling habit.
For the first time, Ryan admitted the scale of his problem – a confession he describes as a huge weight being lifted after years of secrecy.
He said: “I went to bed that night, slept, and I felt liberated.
“I felt like a monumental weight had been lifted off my back, because for the first time ever, I’d verbalised what was going on.
“I was sick of keeping it a secret and ended up telling my mum and dad too.
“I had tried loads of times to quit on my own, but never in a meaningful way.
“I would stop through willpower, and it never really worked.”
Ryan finally entered rehab in South Africa in 2024, spending £7,500 on a six-week programme.
He briefly relapsed later that year but has since turned his life around, having now been sober for over a year.
Now clean, he runs The Deep End, a support group with more than 120 members, offering breathwork, meditation, fitness and therapy sessions.
He also shares his recovery journey on TikTok in the hope of helping others.
Having once believed his habit would kill him, he now wants to show other people that recovery is possible, no matter how bad things seem.
Ryan said: “My advice is to talk.
“It only felt like something meaningful shifted in me when I spoke to someone. I suddenly felt like this darkness had been lifted.
“Up to that point, I didn’t see a way out.
“I thought I was going to overdose at some point and that would be my way out.
“Talking lifted some of the shame.
“You have to be honest about it.”
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