Elton John celebrates 29 years of sobriety

Pop-music icon Elton John is reflecting on his nearly three decades of sobriety.

In a post Monday across his social media, captioning a photograph of an Alcoholics Anonymous chip with the Roman numeral XXIX, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, 72, wrote, "29 years ago today, I was a broken man. I finally summoned up the courage to say 3 words that would change my life: 'I need help'. Thank you to all the selfless people who have helped me on my journey through sobriety. I am eternally grateful."

"You are a true inspiration, my friend," commented tennis legend Billie Jean King on John's Twitter account. On Instagram, actress Elizabeth Hurley, whose now-17-year-old son Damian is John's godson, gave a comment of six hearts. Filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson ("Fifty Shades of Grey"), who directed John's music videos for "I Want Love" and "Turn the Lights Out When You Leave" in the 2000s, commented, "Love you," flanked by two hearts.

John in his 2012 book "Love Is the Cure" recalled that checking into what was then Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, outside Chicago, in 1990 "was as challenging as it was transformative. … When you deprive your body of cocaine after having used very much and very frequently, as I had, the craving for it is inconceivably enormous. … This was compounded by the fact that I had stopped using not just cocaine but everything I had self-medicated with: the booze, the food, the sex."

He added that, "Needless to say, the first stages of rehab were among the most trying periods of my life. The most important part of my time in rehab was that, to all with whom I interacted, I was not Elton John the rock star. I was just Elton. Elton the addict. … We were all the same. Suffering, struggling addicts who wanted to get better but didn't know if we could." During his inpatient treatment, "Every day of staying sober was a challenge, but it was invigorating to feel that I was regaining control over my life, my direction, my choices. And I'd say the biggest driver of my progress was the overwhelming kindness of the strangers I met in rehab."

He told Variety in May, with a laugh, "What I couldn't do when I was an addict was communicate, except when I was on cocaine I thought I could but I talked rubbish."

John, whose film biography "Rocketman" opened in May and comes to home media in August, is scheduled to play NYCB Live's Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale on Nov. 16.