George Michael does not see his cannabis use as a major problem but he would like to smoke less, the singer revealed today.
In a candid interview for BBC Radio 4's ‘Desert Island Discs’, Michael talks openly about his drug use, the depression he felt at the deaths of his lover and then his mother and the struggle he had revealing his sexuality.
He also expresses support for troubled singer Amy Winehouse, who he describes as "the best female vocalist I've heard".
Speaking to presenter Kirsty Young, 43-year-old Michael said of his drug use: "I'm constantly trying to smoke less marijuana. I'd like to take less and to a degree it's a problem."
But he added: "Is it a problem in my life? Is it getting in the way of my life? I really don't think so.
"I'm a happy man and I can afford my marijuana so that's not a problem."
The former Wham! singer hid his sexuality for decades for fear of upsetting his mother, he admitted. Hiding his sexuality, he says, made him feel "fraudulent" and being caught exposing himself to an undercover policeman in Beverly Hills in 1998 was a subconsciously deliberate act.
"In a strange way I've spent the last 15 to 20 years trying to derail my own career,” he says. "But it never seems to suffer.
"I suffer like crazy. I've suffered bereavements and public humiliations, but my career always seems to right itself like a plastic duck in the bath. In some ways I resent that."
Michael came out to some people, including one of his two sisters, when he was 19 but friends advised him not to tell his parents.
"Firstly, understand how much I love my family and that Aids was the predominant feature of being gay in the 1980s and early 90s as far as any parent was concerned ... My mother was still alive and every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking what I might have been subjected to."
The songwriter, the son of Cypriot immigrants, has sold more than 85 million records and is the most played artist on radio.
In June he was sentenced to 100 hours of community service after being convicted of driving while under the influence of prescription drugs. Police found him slumped behind the wheel of his Mercedes at a road junction in London in October.
In the interview, which is repeated this Friday, he reveals he has completed 50 hours of that sentence, helping people with mental health problems as well as drug addiction.
Michael also talks about his early career, claiming that a bang on the head when he was eight led him towards music and away from a childhood obsession with collecting bugs.
