The Darkness rocker Justin Hawkins had parts of his face falling off before he got sober

The Darkness rocker Justin Hawkins has recalled in gruesome detail the “cataclysmically awful” moments when he hit rock bottom and finally resolved to get sober 20 years ago.

“I remember bits of my nose falling out and ... whole tubes of the mucus kind of structure coming out,” he revealed on Andrew Gold’s Heretics podcast.

The English musician, 51, battled drug and alcohol addiction at the height of his fame and spent more than $282,000 of his fortune on cocaine alone.

His years of substance abuse drove a wedge between him and his brother Dan Hawkins, who was also part of The Darkness, and saw Justin leave the band in 2006.

That was the same year he hit rock bottom and started recovery, but not before experiencing some truly harrowing side-effects.

“I can still remember the smell of cocaine and the numbing sensation,” Justin confessed on the podcast.

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When asked what finally made him decide to get sober and stick to it, he said, “There was some stuff that happened that was so cataclysmically awful that I changed my life.

“Something bad happened. Something really bad happened actually.”

The rocker wouldn’t share details about the darkest moments that served as wake-up calls when he was trapped in the depths of addiction, but did touch on the feelings of shame that haunted him afterwards.

“Something positive isn’t what stops it [addiction]. It’s something negative. That’s why they always talk about rock bottom,” he said.

“Somebody dies, or something dreadful happens, and then you have to take stock and go, ‘Hang on that’s my bad. I’ve got to stop doing that.’”

This isn’t the first time Justin has opened up about his battle with addiction, but he’s rarely been so open about his own rock bottom.

He previously told the Independent that his battle with drugs and alcohol often rendered him secretive, volatile and verbally abusive, but that the exact details of many moments were difficult to recall.

“There were lots of periods I don’t even remember; blackouts,” he told the outlet.

Getting sober was gruelling and the journey went well beyond his month-long stay at an addiction clinic in the 2000s.

Years passed before he was able to rebuild his relationship with his brother Dan and, eventually, reunite with The Darkness in 2015.

But in the final minutes of his podcast appearance, Justin confessed the question he hates the most after 20 years of sobriety is “Are you happier now?”

“What the f--k does that mean? I’m a human being, which means every day is a myriad of different feelings that you sit with,” he said.

Justin added that even after 20 years sober, he’s still taking it “one day at a time”.

The National Alcohol and Other Drug hotline (1800 250 015) provides free and confidential advice about alcohol and other drugs, including available treatment options, and automatically directs the caller to the Alcohol and Drug Information Service in their state/territory.