The Glasgow-born band member said earlier that he feared Parkinson’s was ‘stealing his personality’ before he started the medication.
He wants his degenerative illness to make the decision on whether he should stop touring.(Image: Euan Cherry/Getty Images)
Del Amitri’s Justin Currie feared Parkinson’s Disease was “stealing his personality” in his lowest moments and he found himself thinking “I can’t do this anymore” while he was on stage reports the Sunday Mail.
However, the Glaswegian singer has said that medication has given him a new lease of life and he is now working on a new album. He is also determined to keep performing as he says it is the “only thing I know”.
He said: “I’ve written a bunch of songs and after an awful lot of prevarication I’ve started to record them. I’ll need to carry on that process next year, record, record, record, as much as possible. Hopefully have a Del Amitri album finished, quite a long Del Amitri album.
“We’re thinking about doing two records. Hopefully have it finished for May or something. So yes, I need to really focus on that.
“Even without Parkinson’s I’m terrible at concentrating two things at once. One of my biggest fears was I initially felt like it was stealing my personality but I’ve softened a bit on that now, I’ve got over being so freaked out about it, and the medications have helped.”
The band has had many hits in the 80s and 90s including: Kiss This Thing Goodbye, Nothing Ever Happens and Always The Last to Know.
The singer told LBC: “I didn’t even know there were pills. I thought they just said ‘see you later. Good luck’, that’s what I was expecting.
“So I was thrilled to find out there’s medication, and then thrilled to find out that the meds worked for me, so I’ve had one step up in dose since then, but yeah, I’m actually better than I was.
“I can play a bit better, and I can think a bit better, and I’m a bit more sociable than I was, so I feel slightly like a fraud, because when I got that diagnosis, I was pretty ill, and I’m sort of less ill now, and it’s not getting worse very quickly.”
He has written a book reflecting in his experiences of Parkinson’s titled: The Tremolo Diaries, which highlights various difficulties he has faced since being diagnosed.
He added: “I’ve got Tremor Dominant Parkinson’s, whatever that means. I suppose it’s self explanatory, but stress really switches it on.
“So if something happens in the morning, if I get an email saying we’ve got to suddenly do something, I can’t use my phone, it’s just all over the place.
“It’s a real betrayer, because it tells other people I’m excited or nervous. If a football team is about to score a goal, it goes. If there’s like a kissing scene in the film, it goes, it’s quite embarrassing.
“So sometimes you have to kind of sit on it. And I’ve noticed I see other Parkinsonians being interviewed. They put their arms behind them, they can be quite self conscious about it.
“People generally think one of two things. They think you’re either very nervous, or the other thing people tend to assume is that you’re an alkie. I’ve just given up caring. I just assume that most people kind of know now.
“I will eventually end up being awful, you know, the disease will take away my voice. It will take away a lot of my motion control.
“And the big question is, when do you stop. Do you have the courage to stop at the right time, or do you end up putting yourself into embarrassing situation.
“I already feel that sometimes now I’m putting myself into embarrassing situations. I think I shouldn’t be doing this, but I am compelled to go on, because it’s the only thing I know.
“I really don’t want to stop, and I know it’s going to make me stop, so that there’s a kind of battle going on between that finish line and what I do before that finish line.
“I find myself on stage quite a lot, going, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore’, But when I get to the end of the gig and go to the dressing room with the band, and everybody’s happy, I think, ‘Oh, I was great’.
“It can be quite difficult, because you’re fighting little losses of control that aren’t there naturally anymore, and you have to sing slightly differently.
“So that internal monologue is constantly getting at you, which may also be a function just of the disease itself, just because it’s a mental disease as much a physical disease as far as I can tell.”
He also believes that richer people like himself should be taxed more to help fund the NHS as he has had a lot of experience in the healthcare system and a new appreciation of the NHS and the need to properly fund it since his diagnosis.
He added: “All the major parties have been talking about integrating care with the NHS for years, but they’ve not really not done anything about it. We’re all going to live far too long and most politicians seem terrified to address it because it’s so insurmountable.
“It means saying the unsayable, which is raising taxes and raising taxes on people like me, raising taxes on the relatively rich. It is ludicrous because that’s the only way you’re going to pay for this stuff – by raising income tax.
“It just drives me insane, you know, and for purely selfish reasons, I don’t want to be in a situation where there’s been no more investment put into health and care, and I end up in some appalling shack because nobody’s looked after.”