In Do not touch My TV this Friday, Cyril Hanouna offered a long debate on the stars who drift and fall into the hell of drugs. Based on the latest analyzes carried out on Matthew Perry and on the real causes of his death, which turns out to be a drowning associated with overconsumption of ketamine (a powerful psychotropic drug used as an antidepressant in the USA), the host suggested that the columnists look back on French and international celebrities who have had problems with the drug, such as Jean-Luc Delarue, Pierre Palmade, Benoît Magimel and Loana Petrucciani.
During the debate, Cyril Hanouna asked his columnists if any of them had ever touched illicit substances. Only one of them agreed to acknowledge it publicly: Jean-Michel Maire. The show’s emblematic columnist looked back on his many years of addiction, which are now behind him: “I’m a night owl. When you live at night in Paris, those who say that there is no cocaine at night in Paris are liars. Or else, they have blinders and they don’t see nothing. Frankly, they are absolutely everywhere! Prices have absolutely fallen and there are some in all walks of life. There are some among the young, there are some among the old, there are all walks of life, etc.” explained the sixty-year-old and former war reporter.
And to continue: “The hardest thing about getting out of it is that, gradually, we build an environment made up of friends who also care. So, quitting cocaine or quitting another substance means separating yourself from all the friends you had before (…) because otherwise, you will be too tempted (…) so you are forced to break up with a whole environment, and a way of life, so that, for me, was the hardest.”. The journalist had to draw a line under many friendships, in order to succeed in getting out of this addiction: “It’s like cigarettes, it’s like everything. It’s an addiction of course, it’s a certain pleasure, harmful, for yourself, for your job, for everything.”
Setbacks that he had already spoken about with frankness during the Palmade affair
Jean-Michel Maire’s addictions to alcohol and drugs have been known for several years now. Indeed, the historical chronicler of TPMP has already had numerous setbacks with the law. In 2013, Jean-Michel Maire was arrested on the handlebars of his scooter, in a marked state of intoxication: 1.01 grams of alcohol in his blood was held against the journalist, who is placed in a sobering up cell. In November 2016, Jean-Michel Maire was placed in police custody for more than ten hours by the drug brigade, suspected of keeping silent about the actions of a friend, who has several illegal activities, including that of cocaine trafficking. During his custody, the columnist admits to having used cocaine, but having been weaned thanks to a hypnotist. He comes out free and is not prosecuted.
Last February, reacting to the Pierre Palmade affair which had just emerged, Jean-Michel Maire returned to this affair, and explained that he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time: “The police arrested me at my home, because they were following a drug dealer who was leaving my house, and no luck, it fell on me. I certainly deserved it.” The journalist, removed from TPMP for more than two years by Cyril Hanouna, and who is making a comeback this season by being present three to four times a week around the table, also spoke at that time on its dependencies: “Over the last ten years, there hasn’t been a party I’ve been to where there weren’t people doing drugs. And if you don’t have one, we offer you some. I stopped for that, so I’m not ashamed to talk about it.”.