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John Mayer: 'I'm A Recovering Ego Addict'
By WENN in Music / Festivals on 06 March 2015
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Picture: John Mayer - A variety of stars from the music industry all turned out in style to attend the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in Los...
Rocker John Mayer struggles to control his use of social media because he considers himself a "recovering ego addict".
The Your Body Is a Wonderland singer admits he let his behaviour get out of control early on in his career because he used to feed off all of the praise and adoration he received from fans online, but it wasn't until his candid 2010 interview with Playboy magazine, in which he dished on all of his celebrity ex-girlfriends and famously described Jessica Simpson as "sexual napalm", that he realised he needed to take a step back from the limelight.
He quit Twitter and moved from Los Angeles to Montana, where he has since refocused his attention on his music, and Mayer is adamant he is nothing like the man he once was.
Discussing the moment he realised he had hit rock bottom, he tells U.S. newsman Ronan Farrow, "I went, 'All right, dude, you did a couple interviews where you were out of touch and you were being a ham, and you were basically break dancing into a nitroglycerin plant, right?'"
Mayer, who is reportedly dating Katy Perry, claims he was never the playboy he was portrayed to be in the press, but he played up his wild behaviour to fit the part - because he thought that's what fans wanted to see.
Asked if he considers himself a womaniser, he replies, "No. Absolutely not. But when you're crafty and you're clever and you go, 'Well, I'm just going to be as strange as they think I am,' then you lose (yourself). Number one: You're not playing music anymore. Number two: You're not feeling anything honestly. And number three: You're not saying anything honestly."
He returned to Twitter last year (14), but Mayer admits he has to remind himself every day not to get too drawn in to social media.
He says, "I'm a recovered ego addict and the only way that I can be sure that I don't relapse is to admit that I constantly have this ego addiction every day. So I do the Grammys and then I go home, because if I stay I get high again (on the approval).
"You've already looked through Twitter, everyone says it's great, and then you get low again because you can't stop looking, so I'm a recovered ego addict."
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