Liam Payne’s Former Girlfriend Describes Singer’s Addiction, Pain in Years Before Death: ‘He Became Someone Unrecognizable’

Liam Payne openly struggled on-and-off with substance use and mental health issues during his years in One Direction and as a solo act. But in a new Rolling Stone investigative piece (paywalled), members of the late singer’s inner circle describe the chaotic days and hours before Payne’s death from a fall last October and the years of anguish and heartache that led up his tragic, final moments.

“Initially, it was the drug use and addictions that tore us apart. Anyone who has been with an addict understands how difficult that is,” Payne’s ex, model Maya Henry told the magazine. “While I loved him deeply, he did things that hurt me in ways I’ll never fully understand, and he continued to hurt me years after we broke up. On drugs, he became someone unrecognizable — so different from his sober self. I kept hoping each incident would be a wake-up call for him to get help, but it never was.”

Payne began dating Henry in 2018 after meeting at a fashion show in Lake Como, Italy and proposed to her the following year. But unnamed sources close to Henry told RS that Payne became depressed when his solo music failed to reach the heights of that from his former 1D bandmates Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and Niall Horan, with drinking, drug use and mental health issues adding to his burden to the point where he often “couldn’t work properly” on new music.

“If you’re an artist like Liam, coming out of One Direction, you haven’t got time to stop and take three years to do the kind of therapeutic work that you might hope for. You’ve got to move it on,” said his sober coach, Chip Somers, describing how the pressure of Payne’s solo career limited his ability to focus on his sobriety and mental health.

Payne, 31, fell around 40 feet from the balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 16, 2024, suffering fatal polytrauma and hemorrhaging. A preliminary toxicology report found that Payne had alcohol, cocaine and prescription antidepressants in his system at the time of death.

A guest who was staying at the same hotel, Texan Doug Jones, described what he observed during Payne’s final hours at the CasaSur resort to the magazine, saying that the groom from the destination he’d come down for couldn’t check into a spacious suite next door because the staff couldn’t get a guest (Payne) to check out. A person who observed Payne in the hotel lobby who requested anonymity said that Payne “had a frantic vibe… it seemed like he was in a bad mental state.”

The story claims that the dark, final hours of Payne’s life included marathon drug sessions in his room with a waiter he’d met at a local restaurant, as well as the hiring of two sex workers for a “daytime orgy” and the destruction of a TV and furniture in his hotel room. The piece also noted that Payne was born with just one functioning kidney, which resulted in years of on-and-off hospitalization as a child and a warning from sober coach Somers — who worked with Payne in 2017-2018 — that with one kidney “you need to be quite careful” ingesting substances.

The singer had long eschewed alcohol, taking his first sip in 2012 when he was 19, after getting the go-ahead from his doctors following years of abstaining because of his kidney issues. Within four years, sources told RS, he was recreationally using drugs. In interviews following 1D’s split, Payne talked about the need to numb himself out during One Directions endless tours to combat the monotony of playing the same songs to tens of thousands of screaming fans every night, saying he was “pissed [drunk] quite a lot of the time.”

Watson said he saw Payne on the day the singer died lounging in the lobby in the afternoon, where he observed him yelling “f–k this!” after something on his laptop angered him. The hotel staff removed Payne after he tossed the laptop on the floor, but Watson said the star was back 15 minutes later, making a scene when he fell over a table, landed on the floor and was “shaking or convulsing” as if he was in a “semiconscious state.”

The hotel staff ran over to try and help Payne, who reportedly threw himself on the floor and was foaming at the mouth, according to masseuse Daniel Salinas. “He was completely gone on drugs,” said Salinas, who helped the staffers move Payne to his room. “We grabbed him because there was no way to take him standing up.”

Watson said a short time later he “saw an object fall out of the corner of my eye,” with the wedding planner exclaiming, “Oh, my God. That was a body.”

The investigative story also delves into some disturbing moments in Payne’s relationship with Henry, including an unnamed source claiming that when the model became pregnant in 2020 Payne issued an ultimatum: get an abortion and stay with him or raise the child alone. Other disturbing episodes — some of which Henry included in a novel, Looking Forward, based on their relationship — reportedly included Payne allegedly chasing her with an axe, pushing her down a flight of steps and her discovering sexting conversations he had with strangers when he accidentally broadcast them to their TV. The book also contains a scene in which the pop star, Oliver, tries to leap off a penthouse balcony while under the influence that a source said was based on a real incident involving Payne and Henry.

By the time they broke up in 2022, the source said Henry finally realized the extent of Payne’s drug use, which reportedly included cocaine, ketamine, MDMA and pharmaceutical pain pills and anti-anxiety drugs, as well as smoking heroin. “I tried to be there for him. I loved him so much that I convinced myself I could fix things,” Henry told RS, adding that in the wake of Payne’s death she’s reportedly discovered more incidents of him sharing intimate images dating back to their earliest days together, with Henry hiring lawyers in the U.K. to seek legal relief from the actions.

“I put myself in situations that were unsafe and harmful, ignoring every read flag,” she said. “I knew there were parts of himself he was struggling with — parts of his identity he wasn’t ready to fully face, even within our relationship… In the end it wasn’t just the betrayals or that addictions that broke us — it was the realization that I had spent years in something that was never what I thought it was. I don’t fault him for his struggles.”

Payne reportedly flew to Argentina last fall due to a quirk that requires foreigners looking to renew their U.S. visa to leave the country and schedule a renewal interview at a U.S. embassy abroad. The singer could have gone back home to England for the routine paperwork, but chose Buenos Aires because he wanted to see former bandmate Horan in concert there.

But the day after the Horan concert, Argentine authorities insisted Payne get a psychiatric evaluation given his several rehab visits over the years, a decision that kept him in country for two more weeks. While the doctors found nothing alarming, disturbing allegations about Payne’s relationship with Henry began to emerge on TikTok around that time. In an Oct. 6 post, Henry claimed that Payne had been harassing her and her family using multiple different numbers.

RS said it obtained a cease-and-desist letter in which Henry’s lawyers said she’d received concerning messages from a stranger about Payne’s behavior, as well as what the lawyers said was a vulgar request from Liam demanding intimate videos of the former couple, as well as asking if Henry wanted to see similar ones of Payne with his other girlfriends. The letter also claims that Payne sent “disturbing images and videos” to Henry and her family, including pictures of his “genitals and various videos of Mr. Payne performing disturbing sexual acts on himself.”

And while he appeared jovial and in love with girlfriend of two years, influencer Kate Cassidy, at the time of his death, Payne had reportedly spent much of 2023 in and out of rehab facilities and acting erratically, including looking for drugs, sexting fans and hiring sex workers. A close friend said Payne suffered a “severe overdose” in 2023 that left him “close to death.” Over the next year, the singer briefly entered a rehab facility in Spain, without completing the treatment, and was hospitalized in April 2024 after relapsing again, reportedly requiring hospital staff to resuscitate him to save his life.

Payne’s father reportedly tried to get him committed to a psychiatric facility, which the singer rejected, instead enrolling in several other treatment programs that he never completed. The final professional blow came when his U.S. label, Universal Republic, dropped him last year following tepid sales for his solo solo album, 2019’s LP1.

The singer reportedly had a brief period of clarity and creative energy last summer while living in Miami, with his close friend, Roger Nores, revealing that the final time Payne saw Cassidy in Argentina after she visited him there, “they had a happy goodbye. He wanted to marry her. Two days before he died, he asked me if i wanted to be his best man.” This despite, sources saying, that in early 2024 Cassidy caught the singer sexting with other women, causing her to revoke his phone access.

At 9:45 on the day he died, Payne reportedly messaged a sex worker he’d found online, saying, “Wanna play? I have all day. I’d gift you $5,000 US dollars,” then asking if her friend could join them. Hours later, Payne reportedly refused to pay the sex workers, which led the women to complain to the hotel staff. A few hours after that, Payne reportedly bought cocaine from a hotel employee and the sex workers left.

Within the hour, Payne would be dead and the ensuing investigation into his death would result in the arrests and indictment on involuntary manslaughter charges of five people prosecutors believe supplied Payne with drugs; all five have maintained their innocence.