Pete Doherty’s hopeless drug addiction including horrifying footage of him smoking crack cocaine and preparing to inject himself with heroin is revealed in a new documentary about his life as a hellraiser.
Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin also contains film of him with his friend and lover Amy Winehouse.
The documentary was shot by The Libertines’ singer’s wife Katia de Vidas over a decade, and in upsetting scenes he is seen smoking drugs and writhing in the aftermath.
He is also shown tying a tourniquet around his arm just before injecting heroin, before scenes shoot to him shouting at a crowd of adoring fans: ‘On the one hand, thank you, on the other hand… f**k you’.
In other chaotic moments he is also shown setting various things on fire.
Pains: The film was shot by his wife Katia de Vidas over a decade-long period, and in upsetting scenes he is seen smoking drugs and writhing in a stupor
Belting it out: A glimpse of his good friend Amy Winehouse saw the troubled star looking upon one of his gigs, in an insight into their relationship – which Pete previously alleged evolved into a romantic relationship prior to her 2011 death aged 27
Shocking: The full extent of Pete Doherty ‘s heartbreaking drug addiction has been laid bare in new documentary Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin
Hold on: He is seen tying a tourniquet around his arm in the starting process of injecting drugs
Shock: Amy and Pete’s friendship hit headlines and sparked concerns in 2008, prior to her tragic death three years later aged 27 from alcohol poisoning
Writing away: Pete was seen scrawling his thoughts on a notepad during the clip
A glimpse of his good friend Amy Winehouse saw the troubled star looking upon one of his gigs, in an insight into their relationship – which Pete previously alleged evolved into a romantic relationship prior to her 2011 death aged 27.
Pete, 44, is seen in the depth of his addiction – which led to a string of rehab stints and brushes with the law – with his wife, with whom he shares five-month-old daughter Billie-May, behind the lens capturing his darkest moments.
Pete was known for his well-documented drug use and disruptive antics during the height of his career. And the singer has now revealed the brutal extent of his addiction in a new shocking documentary, filmed by his partner Katia.
Filmed over 10 years, Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin delves into the moment Pete, 44, realised he had a heroin addiction as he confesses he smuggled heroin into Japan in his guitar case.
Speaking in the film, he says: ‘Hard drugs entered my life and slowly, slowly, and then very quickly, took control.’
He took heroin for the first time in 2002 when he was just 23, yet the addiction didn’t fully take hold until he found himself sweating and sick after a journey to Japan.
After landing Pete took the heroin he had smuggled into the country and described the hit as an instant ‘bing’.
‘I felt on top of the world, felt a million dollars. I went down to the lobby, like, ‘Right, what’s going on?’ Everyone was like, “Oh Pete, you look really well”.’
Yet Pete’s addiction led to him having multiple run ins with the law and the rockstar was in and out of prison.
Now, the singer, who dated Kate Moss between 2005 to 2007, has turned his life around and is clean, living in Normandy with Katia and Billie-May.
Shock: He set fire to a mannequin in one raucous scene
Larking around: Pete was seen frolicking with who appeared to be his son Astile, who was born in 2003 following his romance with Lisa Moorish
Shocker: The graphic scenes were laid bare
Pete has tried to leave his toxic past behind. He says: ‘It’s a quiet, simple existence. I get up before sunrise and take the dogs for a walk. Then I go back to bed at six or seven, then get up again.’
He then strolls into the village, buys a French newspaper, which he says he ‘pretends to read’, and has a coffee and a brandy at about 11am.
‘Then I go back home and maybe watch some… movies, listen to some Tony Hancock, have a siesta, walk the dogs again and go to bed.’
Yet it was a hard journey to get there, and the documentary shows raw scenes of the frontman smoking crack cocaine and preparing to inject heroin.
Footage shows him pulling a black band around his arm as he melts the drug on a spoon above a flame, telling Katia: ‘The one thing I’m not scared of is death. I’m scared of everything else.’
The film explores the star’s crippling anxiety and drug dependency then came to a head in 2010, when The Libertines reunited for the first time in six years to perform at Reading and Leeds Festival.
Peter said in 2021 that he has been doing a lot of sleeping, eating French cheese and drinking water following his move to Normandy
Pete Doherty was seen at the Duke of Wellington pub in London’s Belgravia on September 13
The band had prior broken up after band member Carl Barât refused to play with Pete due to his drug use.
Speaking about his recovery with The Times, while promoting the film, Pete said: ‘Do I miss heroin? At the moment, I’m still in the early stages of recovery. I’m still fragile. Does it seem like it was all part of somebody else’s life?…
‘No, it feels horribly close. Maybe when it does seem like someone else’s life, I’ll find it easier to watch the scenes of me shooting up. I do wonder why I allowed Katia to use that, but I can’t even remember it happening…
‘If I’m being brutally honest, there were many years when I couldn’t imagine it would be possible to live without drugs. I talk about addiction in the film and some of my spiel sounds very profound, as if I understand it. I don’t and I don’t have answers’.
One of the clips from the show, saw Amy in the audience of one of his gigs.
Shock: Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin is now in UK cinemas
Worrying: He reflected on the dark side of his addictions
Tough: He looked pained in the scenes as he was filmed by his wife
Break ups: Pete previously described his relationship with Kate Moss in his memoir A Likely Lad, as a ‘running battle’ full of ‘highs and then crushing, violent lows’ (pictured at Glastonbury in 2005)
Back in 2012, Pete claimed his relationship with Amy was romantic, telling Mail On Sunday: ‘This is difficult for me to admit. But, yes, it’s true. Amy and I were lovers. I loved her then and, well, I still do today.
‘But towards the end, as only lovers can, she became quite mean and cruel to me. She didn’t suffer fools. She had such a big heart but she was physically small and increasingly frail and I never once saw her eat anything solid, just milkshakes…
‘Well, we did lose her. There but for the grace of God go I, is what I say.’
Pete announced the movie in August, when he took to his social media to share the movie’s poster for the first time as well as the title.
In the black and white picture, a much younger Pete sits topless staring off into the distance. Pete, now clean for three and a half years, captioned the post: ‘Peter Doherty: Stranger In My Own Skin, a film by @katiadevidas…
‘Will be released exclusively in November 2023. Tickets on sale soon, stay tuned!’
Adding: ‘The film will have its world premiere at the @zurichfilmfestival followed by a live performance after the screening. See you there x’.
Katia will make her directing debut with the flick after previously working as an editor on small budget films including 2015’s Flag’s of The Old Regime and 2013’s Drive in Holy Motors.
Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin is now in UK cinemas.
Candid: Pete is pictured with his partner Katia de Vidas last month
Honest: ‘Hard drugs entered my life and slowly, slowly, and then very quickly, took control’ (pictured in 2007)
Tough times: Pete’s addiction led to him having multiple run ins with the law and the rockstar was in and out of prison (pictured in 2007 for a review of his drug treatment order)
Music: The band had prior broken up after band member Carl Barât refused to play with Pete due to his drug use (pictured together in 2009 at the NME awards)
Brutal: Footage in the documentary shows him pulling a black band around his arm as he melts the drug on a spoon above a flame (pictured in 2006)
From party death ‘murder’ of Cambridge grad, to escaping the spotlight for married life in France: How one time rock and roll hellraiser Pete Doherty, who once dated Kate Moss, turned his back on life of drugs and excess
Pete Doherty was the rock and roll hell-raiser who arguably became more famous for his drug-fuelled run-ins with the law and his romantic liaisons than for his music.
The bad boy of British indie rock music, the former Libertines star ricocheted from one calamity to the next during the noughties as he was caught in a life of drug-use and excess.
Whether it was dating Kate Moss or Amy Winehouse, sparking a riot at his gigs or being found partying with a grubby entourage of hangers on in ‘crack dens’, he was rarely out of the headlines.
His infamy reached its peak after he was found to be present at a house party where Cambridge graduate Mark Blanco was ‘murdered’, with his own ‘minder’ later ‘confessing’ to the killing.
But these days the former Babyshambles singer appears to have left the debauchery of his youth behind for the relative comfort of married life in France, becoming a father for the third time earlier this year with his wife Katia de Vidas.
Pete Doherty was a regular in the tabloids during his on-off romance with supermodel Kate Moss. Pictured: The pair at the 2005 Isle of Wight Festival
The former bad boy of indie rock has a more sedate life now, having recently become a father for the third time as he lives in France. Pictured: Doherty at The Duke of Wellington pub in Chelsea on September 13
Such has been Doherty’s troubles with drugs that for large parts of the noughties it overshadowed his music career. Pictured: The rocker at C a vous in Paris in April 2019
It’s a far cry from the wild antics that saw the Northumberland-born rocker catapult into the public consciousness in the 2000s.
His band The Libertines, which had Doherty as the frontman, had gained a cult following after forming in the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until they released their debut album ‘Up The Bracket’ in 2002 that they found mainstream success.
READ MORE: Moment Pete Doherty runs away from London flat where Cambridge graduate was ‘thrown off a first-floor balcony’
But with success came growing issues with Doherty’s drug-use, a problem that would overshadow large parts of his career and personal life.
He was arrested countless times for drug offences – once when 13 wraps of heroin fell from his pocket during a criminal hearing – and pleaded guilty to possession of crack cocaine, heroin, cannabis and ketamine.
Doherty was jailed numerous times, including once in 2003 after he broke into bandmate Carl Barât’s Harley Street flat and stole a guitar and a laptop while The Libertines were touring Japan without him.
As The Libertines rose to fame in 2003, Doherty started a romance with singer Lisa Moorish, something that saw them welcome a son, Astile.
However, the relationship wouldn’t last and after they broke up the rocker found himself banned from seeing his son due to his drug habit.
The following year his bandmates kicked him out of The Libertines, citing his rampant drug-use as the deciding factor and urging him to seek help.
Doherty took the opportunity to focus on his new band, Babyshambles, although his tumultuous times continued.
The band triggered a violent riot after they failed to show up to one of their gigs at London Astoria in December 2004.
More than 100 angry fans stormed the stage after being told the rockers would not be performing following a two-hour delay to the midnight show.
Security staff battled to contain the pandemonium as the furious crowd of people started destroying the venue.
Describing the chaos at the time, a witness told NME: ‘The curtains were torn down, drinks were thrown, the drum kit was smashed and essentially the entire contents of the stage were destroyed. The security forced the kids back to the other side of the barrier.’
Just one year later in 2005, Doherty would meet supermodel Kate Moss at her 31st birthday party – triggering a relationship marred by chaos and drugs.
At first they were Britain’s most talked-about celebrity couple, with their A-list party lifestyle documented daily in the tabloids.
Kate and Pete were Britain’s most talked-about celebrity couple, with their A-list party lifestyle documented daily in the tabloids, but their romance was turbulent and rocked by drug abuse
In 2011 he had a fling with model Lindi Hingston (pictured), a romance that saw the birth of his second child, daughter Aisling
And he admitted having a secret romance with Amy Winehouse when he spoke to the Mail on Sunday in 2012, a year after her death
Doherty married Katia de Vidas (pictured), in a private ceremony at in September 2021 – just two days after confirming their engagement
Moss kept a dignified silence throughout, while Doherty, who at the time was ravaged by a heroin addiction, also gave little away.
But years later he revealed the turbulence that defined their relationship in his autobiography ‘A Likely Lad’, claiming he once accidentally set off a panic alarm in Moss’s bedroom at her home in St John’s Wood, North-West London, prompting 12 armed police officers to turn up at the door.
He confessed he pressed the button, which is thought to have been linked to the local police station, while looking down the side of the supermodel’s bed for a piece of crack cocaine he had lost.
Doherty’s drug-taking has plagued his career, and once led to him pleading guilty in court to seven charges of possession. He managed to avoid being jailed but was ordered to go to rehab – another regular occurrence in his relationship with Moss.
In 2005, she promised to stand by Doherty, the son of an Army Major, when he admitted himself to the Meadows rehab clinic, popular with celebrities, in Arizona.
It was just two months after Moss had been caught appearing to snort cocaine at a West London recording studio, so she was adamant he didn’t leave the clinic until he had completed his treatment.
But his trip to the US ended in yet another falling out with Moss. After he told her how miserable he was in the clinic, she said she would cheer him up by taking him by helicopter over the Grand Canyon. She failed to turn up, and shortly afterwards he checked himself out. Moss then dumped him.
In an extract in The Guardian, Doherty said: ‘When I set off for my treatment at the Meadows, I had all my drugs hidden in my luggage.’
CCTV footage of Pete Doherty running from the home in East London where Mark Blanco died
Mark Blanco is pictured with his mother Sheila on his Cambridge graduation day in June 1997
The party was attended by singer Pete Doherty and members of his entourage. Pictured: The Libertines singer outside Easling Magistrates Court in 2006
Aspiring actor Mark Blanco is pictured in hospital after the tragic events unfolded
Arriving at the clinic, he said the staff ‘found all the bits in my baggage, plus what I’d hidden inside the lining of my jeans – they really knew their stuff. It was a different vibe than UK rehab – a mix of absolutely loaded trust-fund kids and people trying to avoid federal convictions by doing rehab.
‘One guy shared in the group therapy how he was in for looking at child porn on the internet. I couldn’t handle that. I refused to be in a group with him. I was horrified.
‘After two weeks, Kate was supposed to come and visit me and take me to the Grand Canyon in a helicopter, and I got the right hump when she didn’t show up. In the end I did a runner. When Kate found out I hadn’t finished the treatment, she told me point-blank that was it, there was no way we could see each other now.
‘I said, “yeah, but you were supposed to come and get me in a helicopter for a day trip to the Grand Canyon”.’
Unsurprisingly, Doherty admits Moss was not happy and the episode was one of the factors that led to the end of their tumultuous two-year relationship in July 2007.
It was during his relationship with Moss that Doherty became embroiled in an incident that continues to raise its head 17 years later.
In 2006 the rocker and his entourage turned up at a house party in east London being held by his drug addict friend Paul Roundhill.
Also present was Cambridge graduate Mark Blanco, who later in the night was allegedly thrown off a first-floor balcony to his death.
Mark Blanco’s mother Shelia Blanco has been trying to get to the bottom of her son’s death
Mr Blanco’s mother Sheila remains convinced that her son was pushed off the balcony
While police have never charged anyone with his death, Doherty’s ‘minder’ Johnny Jeannevol, known locally as ‘Johnny Headlock’, later confessed to murdering him. He later retracted this confession and blamed it on taking drugs.
CCTV footage from the night in question showed Doherty with another girlfriend, 19-year-old Kate Russell-Pavier, and Jeannevol fleeing the scene, callously swerving Mark’s body.
Officers investigated the case and Doherty was implicated after an inquest into the actor’s death but there have been no charges to date.
A new Channel 4 documentary about Mark’s death, called ‘Pete Doherty, Who Killed My Son?’, which follows his mother Sheila Blanco on her quest for answers, was released this week.
Responding to the relaying of the tragic event, Doherty handed a one-line sentence to Channel 4 that read: ‘I am sorry for Mrs Blanco’s loss and I welcome any assistance people can give her to come to terms with what happened.’
The same year he had one of the most unlikely romances in showbusiness, after it was reported he had a short fling with Big Brother star Nikki Grahame days after he rekindled his romance with Kate.
He reportedly serenaded Grahame at his flat with his guitar, after they met during a night out at London hotspot Boujis.
Nikki’s ex-flatmate told The People: ‘She’d had a lot to drink and they ended up going back to his place in Notting Hill, just the two of them. He got his guitar out and started singing to her.
Party guest Naomi Stirk recalled that there had been a ‘sinister’ atmosphere that evening
Renowned FBI agent Grand Fredericks has claimed there must have been ‘more than one person on the balcony’ the night that a Cambridge graduate was allegedly thrown to his death
Fredericks said the ‘reverse projection clearly shows there couldn’t be just one person on the balcony’
‘Nikki thought he was really sweet and caring but his flat was disgusting. There were needles everywhere and it was filthy.’
In an interview in 2006, Nikki also revealed that Pete was one of her clients during her brief stint as a £500-per-hour escort.
She told : ‘He was my first booking. He often used the agency. I went round to a flat in London. It was a complete s*** hole full of other druggies playing guitars and just hanging out.
‘I ended up snogging him but we didn’t have full sex. He was so wasted on drugs he wasn’t capable.’
The rocker’s brushes with the law would continue, especially in relation to drugs, with numerous arrests, culminating in a 14 week prison sentence in 2007 after he breached a probation order.
In 2011 he had a fling with model Lindi Hingston, a romance that saw the birth of his second child, daughter Aisling.
A week after Linda shared the news of her birth in 2012, Pete said: ‘The little girl was two months premature. I said I’d try to be there for the birth… Yeah, she’s mine.’
Doherty also revealed that year that he had had a secret romance with Amy Winehouse, speaking out a year after her death from alcohol poisoning.
Speaking to The Mail On Sunday in 2012, he said: ‘Amy and I were lovers. I loved her then and, well, I still do today.
‘But towards the end, as only lovers can, she became quite mean and cruel to me. She didn’t suffer fools… and believe me, she had a mean right hook.’
It is believed that since 2012 the rocker has been in a relationship with Puta Madres bandmate Katia Vidas, a fellow musician, whom he married last year.
Although he now lives a quieter existence, his troubled ways have not entirely left him when in 2020 he was before the courts again, albeit not for drugs.
The singer appeared at Margate Magistrates’ Court where he was banned from driving after police officers caught him in the middle of night riding an e-scooter while searching for his dog.
Doherty was already banned from driving at the time and told the court he was unaware he wasn’t able to ride an e-scooter while disqualified.
The singer and his The Libertines bandmates opened new hotel The Albion Rooms, in Margate, Kent, in 2020, and gave it a £500,000 revamp guests described at the time as ‘ghastly’
The musician found himself in hot water with the courts again in 2020 when he was banned from driving when he was caught riding an e-scooter in the middle of night while disqualified
Peter said in 2021 that he has been doing a lot of sleeping, eating French cheese and drinking water following his move to Normandy
That same year he opened up trendy five-storey hotel The Albion Rooms alongside his The Libertines bandmates in seaside town Margate, Kent.
It was given a £500,000 revamp with garish decor guests described as ‘ghastly’ in 2020, with rooms named after famous poets such as Emily Dickinson and William Blake.
Today, a seven-night stay in its The Delaney double room costs £1,309, while a sea view suite is a jaw-dropping £2,060.
Doherty, who is now overweight in a shocking contrast to his trademark gaunt look during his rock star heyday, has tried to leave his toxic past behind.
He says: ‘It’s a quiet, simple existence. I get up before sunrise and take the dogs for a walk. Then I go back to bed at six or seven, then get up again.’
He then strolls into the village, buys a French newspaper, which he says he ‘pretends to read’, and has a coffee and a brandy at about 11am.
‘Then I go back home and maybe watch some… movies, listen to some Tony Hancock, have a siesta, walk the dogs again and go to bed.’
Yet Doherty appears in more recent years to be crawling out from underneath his French rock and thrust himself back into the spotlight.
Earlier this year he announced his first solo tour in a decade with 13 dates in the UK and Ireland spread across two months, which included gigs at The Royal Albert Hall.
While last year The Libertines celebrated 20 years of their debut release with a show at London’s Wembley Arena.
Which begs the question, why has he chosen to return to the limelight? Something Kate Moss will probably be wondering, too.
Pete Doherty was seen at the Duke of Wellington pub in London’s Belgravia on September 13