In February’s Glamour, DJ AM (Adam Goldstein) says that his father’s verbal abuse was so bad it led to his drug addiction.

“I grew up in Philadelphia with a father who seemed to hate me: The verbal abuse he subjected me to was unbelievably cruel,” he says.

(He says he would later learn his father was gay and addicted to drugs. “If my family went out to dinner, my father would hit on the [male] waiter right in front of my mom,” DJ AM recalls. “Finally she’d had enough and kicked him out.”)

But DJ AM says he blamed himself for the abuse. “To deal with my anger and sadness, I ate,” he says. “By the time I was 10, I was obese.”

He says people began referring to him as “’the fat kid from Philly.’ I spent the next two years doing drugs every day, until I went to my mom and actually asked her to send me to rehab.”

But the treatment center — which specialized in “tough love,” DJ AM recalls — “was an abusive house of horrors that would eventually be shut down. The counselors beat us. They spit in our faces. They starved us,” he tells Glamour.

“When I left rehab, I’d learned nothing about recovery—I attended a few meetings, but within five months I was back doing drugs. Then my father died. Eventually, my mom kicked me out of her house.”

At that time, he says his “main source of income was stealing cash and drugs from drug dealers.

“All along, I hated myself for being overweight. I used to stand in front of my mirror, holding rolls of flesh in my hands, wishing I could cut it off with a knife. Every time I walked into a room I thought people were saying, ‘There’s the fat guy.’”

By 20, he began “freebasing cocaine” around the same time he began deejaying. “I would take my money, race downtown and buy crack,” he tells the magazine.

Overweight and on drugs at 24, he says, “I felt like my life was over. So I went into my living room, reached into a cabinet above my TV and grabbed my gun, a
loaded .22. I sat back on my heels, cocked it and put it into my mouth.

“Then I squinted my eyes and said, “F–k this.” I pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t go off.”

A pal intervened, DJ AM says, and “that was the turning point in my life. I started going to meetings again and distanced myself from friends who were still using drugs.” (He also underwent gastric bypass surgery around age 30.)

Now at 34, he says, “it’s been 9-and-a-half years since I’ve had a drink or taken drugs. But every day I have to remind myself that no matter how much time I have behind me, I’m still a drug addict.

“At any given moment, I’m five seconds away from walking up to someone, grabbing their drink out of their hand and downing it,” he adds.

“And if I do that, within a week, tops, I’ll be smoking crack. So even though I have this crazy fabulous life, I have to hold on to the ground, gripping the grass with both hands.”

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