Roy Stride (Scouting For Girls) Admits Alcohol Problem, Anxiety And Recovery Journey
On The Mend
High Performance
4.9 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Scouting for Girls frontman Roy Stride achieved global fame and number-one albums, but behind the scenes, he was wearing a mask. For 25 years, he used alcohol to bridge the gap between his public persona and a deep-seated feeling of never being "enough," eventually spiraling into a high-functioning nightmare of secret drinking and pre-show panic attacks.
In this episode, Roy pulls back the curtain on the exhaustion of the "secret life." He reveals the extreme lengths he went to hide his addiction, from filling non-alcoholic cans with real beer to drinking 30 units a day while on tour.
Roy also discusses the moment his dream became a prison, his initial skepticism of recovery, and how leaning into the "weirdness" of AA saved his marriage, his career, and his life. This is a powerful exploration of why life in recovery is infinitely better than the "belonging" found in a bottle.
This episode covers the following themes: Addiction, High-Functioning Anxiety, Recovery, and Finding Belonging.
'Scouting for Girls' new album These Are The Good Days' is out now
Need Support?
Samaritans: Call 116 123 or visit samaritans.org
Narcotics Anonymous: na.org
Alcoholics Anonymous: alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk
Mental Health Mates: mentalhealthmates.co.uk
Shout: https: giveusashout.org
IAPT: https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/adults/nhs-talking-therapies/
Heights👉 Join Matt in getting your energy back with Vitals. 20% off here: https://highpfrmc.com/au3-OTM20
Postcode Lottery 👉 Discover how Postcode Lottery players are Powering Hope Together. Click here to find out more: https://highpfrmc.com/otm-postcode-au
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Want to know who's coming up next? Hit follow wherever you get your podcast and you'll be the first to find out. |
| 0:06.0 | As soon as I started drinking, I loved it. From the very beginning, I had a problem with it. I could have died so many times. |
| 0:13.0 | There are so many things where if it had gone the other way, it would have changed my life forever. |
| 0:19.0 | Because you've never talked about this. I've never talked about this since I got sober. |
| 0:22.9 | It's been the most transformative thing that I've ever done. |
| 0:28.2 | And today, I'm so stoked to have the frontman, songwriter of Scouting for Girls voice ride. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello. |
| 0:37.3 | I mean, I'm so pleased to have, voice's right. I mean, |
| 0:37.6 | I'm so pleased to have you on, mate. I mean, we go back. We go back. Do you know where we first met? I was thinking if you could remember that. Okay, got me. Because I was reminded about it by, I think it was one of your bandmates at a gig. Okay. Oh, right. Okay. At a backstage at a gig. and I did suddenly had this flashback |
| 0:55.5 | to a moment, |
| 0:56.8 | but do you remember it? |
| 0:57.7 | I do remember. It was Imperial University. Right. It was, I think you were doing either DJing or it might have been your solo record. No, this was, Emma was DJing. Oh, right. Yeah, so Emma was there with Emma. She was DJing and I was just there. We were literally so excited because you were like the first famous person we'd met. We just signed our deal. It was our first tour and we're like, it's Matt Willis from fucking busted. And we were like, it was absolute, it was like, because we just signed our deal about three months before and we were, we had a record on the radio, right? |
| 1:30.3 | We know not at that point. I think maybe it's not about you. Our first sort of, we had an EP out at that time. And we were doing a university tour. We were just playing anywhere. Right. And I remember we met you and you were lovely. And then I think you and Greg went out on quite a mad one that night |
| 1:45.7 | and I had to go. What does Greg play? Greg play the bass. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And to be fair to Greg, |
| 1:52.0 | he thought you were amazing but he, Greg hadn't really listened to any music since that |
| 1:56.7 | 1988. So he didn't even know who busted were. Right. Okay. He's quite old school. He was just, |
| 2:00.5 | I met this amazing guy. And like, there was quite a legendary story about that night with you guys going out. Oh, really? Yeah, and it was... Tell me. It was just messy. Oh, right, it sounds like that time in my life. Yeah, exactly. You know, I think that was there. But it kind of set the stage of like what we wanted to be. You know, like it was amazing. It was exciting, you know, to meet someone famous and then get absolutely smashed afterwards. And that was, that was been 19 years ago. Oh my God, man. Yeah, that's so crazy. And then since then we bumped into each other other loads. We did McMusted. Yeah, we did some writing together from Macbusted, which was really fun. I mean, Charlie knew you as well, right? Charlie, I knew through a friend of mine who at the first time I did any songwriting outside of Scout for Girls. It was a sheer fluke. A friend of mine was called Josh Wilkinson, |
| 3:07.3 | and we wrote a song that ended up on a One Direction album. And Josh was really good with friends, good friends with Charlie. From school, they went to the same school. And my manager went to the same school as Charlie as well. Right, right. And so we kind of, we sort of knew Charlie through, I had some nights out of Charlotte as well. I can imagine. yeah yeah |
| 3:07.8 | yeah |
| 3:08.3 | so fine |
| 3:08.9 | yeah |
| 3:09.3 | yeah |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from High Performance, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of High Performance and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.