Claim: After overcoming his alcoholic addiction, Eric Clapton (born 30 March 1945) realized that he had wasted five years of his life, and later on he liked the recordings.
Evidence: Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers. Despite Clapton's later admission that the tour took place amid a blizzard of drugs and alcohol, it resulted in the live double album In Concert. Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast with the struggles he coped with in his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. In 1974, Clapton started living with Boyd (they would not marry until 1979) and was no longer using heroin (although he gradually began to drink heavily). After calling his manager and admitting he was an alcoholic, Clapton flew to Minneapolis–Saint Paul in January 1982 and checked in at Hazelden Treatment Center, located in Center City, Minnesota. On the flight over, Clapton indulged in a large number of drinks, for fear he would never be able to drink again. A few months after his discharge, Clapton began working on his next album, against doctors' orders. Working with Tom Dowd, he produced what he thought as his "most forced" album to date, Money and Cigarettes. Clapton chose the name of the album "because that's all I saw myself having left" after his first rehabilitation from alcoholism. As Clapton recovered from his addictions, his album output continued in the 1980s, including two produced with Phil Collins, 1985's Behind the Sun, which produced the hits "Forever Man" and "She's Waiting", and 1986's August. On 24 June 2004, Clapton sold "Blackie" at Christie's Auction House, New York, for US$959,500 to raise funds for his Crossroads Centre for drug and alcohol addictions. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Clapton admitted he was abusive to Boyd when he was a "full-blown" alcoholic. In 1993, Clapton was appointed a director of Clouds House, a UK treatment centre for drug and alcohol dependence, and served on their board until 1997. In 1998, he established the Crossroads Centre in Antigua to help others overcome their addictions to drugs and alcohol and is active in its management oversight and fundraising to the present day.