Former 'X Factor' winner Matt Cardle checked into rehabilitation centre The Priory on Boxing Day and has now revealed why he decided to seek treatment for prescription drug and alcohol abuse. 

Speaking exclusively to The Sun newspaper, the singer explained that he had become incredibly reliant on Valium and booze, and ran the risk of death:

"The doctor said to me if I'd been left to my own devices for another three or four weeks I might not be here now. To be told it is life or death, I was like, 'Hold on a minute, how have I come to this? How has it got this bad?'"

"I didn't have my wits about me to even count how many I'd taken. It was a lethal situation. Towards the end I was so out of it I was asking people around me how many pills they'd seen me eat. That little word in front of the drug, 'prescription', gave it an air of safety for me. But it's the total opposite - they are so highly addictive both physically and mentally."

Cardle added that a trip home to visit family over Christmas was the turning point where he realised just how out of it he truly was: "I had already pushed it too hard and I passed out on the train - spilling beer all over myself. I started getting changed on the train and got half-naked. I didn't know where I was or what I was doing. All my sense of what was good and bad and right and wrong had gone out of the window."