Former EastEnders star Paul Nicholls has admitted that he fears he may die if he is unable to kick his drug addiction issues for good.

The 42-year-old, who starred as Joe Wicks on the BBC soap in the late '90s, told The Sun that his problems started after a horrific incident in 2017 that saw him trapped under a waterfall in Thailand for three days.

The ordeal left him with 37 different infections and led to him suffering a stroke in 2018, after which he sank into a drug-fuelled depression.

"I've had addiction issues before and relapsed last year," he told the newspaper. "The rabbit hole I went down led to places that I never thought I'd end up in - in flats with people that I didn't know.

"I was taking lots of dihydrocodeine, a very strong opiate pain killer and on top of that, cocaine... every time I relapsed cocaine is always present.

"I sank like a stone into a deep depression. At certain points I'd be gone for three or four days and not sleep at all. I stopped caring, I pressed the 'fuck it' button.

"The last time I ended up in a flat with people smoking stuff, doing this and doing that. They recognised me. I was looking around and I thought, 'If I don't stop, I will die'."

Nicholls has now been clean for a few months and is a regular at Narcotics Anonymous meetings.