I had my first drink when I was 12. A full bottle of my old man’s Cointreau. Blind drunk. Throwing up. F***ing Cointreau! I do not recommend that to anyone. I was a pretty wayward kid. Uneven, cheeky, naughty. A wee bit callow, always looking to clash with authority, especially my old man. He was an ex-army sergeant, giving it the tough guy. I remember sitting at the kitchen table one morning, reading the paper and having a bacon sandwich. Full-on, glammed-up punk rocker — mascara everywhere. The old man took one look at me and vomited in the sink. He must have thought he had a Martian for a son!

I was nervy, edgy, always wanting to move on to the next thing. I was the classic pile-driving drinker. I didn’t just drink, I went for it. Gung ho. Punk was the natural outlet for me, full of maverick characters. I started knocking around with John Lydon, my mate from college in London, and Sid Vicious.

Music touched me in the same profound way that booze did. Finally I had a chance to show the world how angry and frustrated I was, to kick against everything my parents stood for. But even when I joined PiL [Public Image Ltd] with John and we started getting some success, I quickly realised that it still wasn’t enough. There I was, 20 years old, sitting in a limo in the States, with as much coke and booze as I wanted. But it wasn’t what I was looking for. It was just another load of bollocks. When I left PiL I knocked the powders on the head, but I started to drink more spirits. When you start on the spirits, things start to accelerate quickly. When I was on a bender, there was no morning, noon or night. I carried on till I woke up, halfway home, pissy trousers, covered in sick.

The funny thing was, I was still able to make music. I was running my own label, I’d got a few quid coming in. But I was getting out of control, unpredictable.

I was getting the angry blackouts and verballing my friends. I’d remember little bits the following day. The look of hurt. It was like the Hammer Horror films, and I was Frankenstein. My friends were scared and disgusted by me.

Everybody knew how it was going to end. I’d already got myself one of those one-sided, editing razor blades. I was going to do it properly, the old-fashioned way. These days, I guess you’d have to tie your computer round your feet and jump in the river. Very modern. At the time, I remember my mum saying to me: "You always gulped your drinks when you were a kid." Always gulped my drinks! I thought that was very sweet. My parents were telling me to slow down. And my friends were telling me, but I couldn’t. It was easier for me to stop altogether.

So I tried. I prayed: "Please God, let me stop drinking. I’ll do f***ing anything. Just stop the drinking. I mean it. Stop it. Please." I’d been brought up a Catholic, so I’d always believed in a higher power. And for me it came in the form of this geezer round the corner in east London. A scrap-metal dealer. He said: "Are you serious about stopping? Are you ready? Have you had enough?" He was one of the boys. He’d had a similar problem.

I’m not going to tell you where this geezer was from, but if you asked me if he was part of Alcoholics Anonymous I probably wouldn’t argue with you.

I started meeting people who’d not had a drink for three months! I thought it was impossible. But it wasn’t. You go through those three months and you keep going. Slowly you start to get a sense of clarity. The karma starts to come your way. You start to make sense of things. The 12 steps will do a pretty good job of opening up those spiritual doors. If you work at it, you will see the world as a different place. My sobriety day was October 23, 1986. As long as I keep going — and don’t pick up a drink — I’ve got a chance.

This is not my "Jah Wobble drink-and-drugs hell" story. I’m not interested in that bollocks. I’m just a layman who had a problem. I was grossly immature and unwilling to take responsibility for myself and my problems. I was using alcohol as an anaesthetic, dulling the everyday pain. The pain I felt from being me, of being in my own skin. But what is that pain? Once the alcohol is out of the way and you take a proper look, you realise that this pain is just called being human. And that’s a relief. All my life I’d felt like some weird, faulty machine. But now I know that this is me. This is life.

As a kid, I hated those geezers in the suburbs who’d wash their cars on a Sunday. But the other Sunday I washed my car. And I was happy. I realised I quite like the mundane things. If God is anywhere, God is there, in the beautiful little things. My lovely wife. My two boys. A walk over the hills. Life is a series of beautiful moments and I love them all.

Jah’s new album, Mu, is out tomorrow