Corey Feldman denies having been on drugs during his heavily criticized “Today” performance last month, adding that he’s been sober for more than 25 years.
“There’s nothing in this world that would ever make me do cocaine or heroin or any of that stuff ever again,” he told People.
The former child star added that he has to stay strong for his 12-year-old son Zen.
“That’s where my love is and where my heart is,” Feldman said. “There’s no time to mope around or to be depressed, because I have to be a positive influence on him. That’s what’s most important.”
He added, “I look at his beautiful smiling face and I say, ‘I’ve got to stay strong for him.’ No matter how mean and awful people can be, I can’t let that affect me.”
Feldman, a former child star famous for roles in “The Goonies” and “Stand by Me,” performed his band’s single “Go 4 It” on the NBC morning show last month, and was a trending topic on Twitter the following weekend. But his name was trending for all the wrong reasons.
One critic tweeted, “I’m equally horrified and embarrassed for him,” while another wrote, “I’m usually against cyber bullying but Corey Feldman is just asking for it.”
Feldman and his band had trouble facing the world after being mercilessly mocked. “We can’t get out of bed right now,” he said in a now-deleted Facebook post, according to People. “We’re petrified to even go out … And I’m sorry, but we just wanted the world to know, like, we’re really freaked out over this and it’s really not fair.”
However, he didn’t let the social media backlash get to him, and at the end of September announced he would return to “Today,” which he finally did on Thursday morning.
See his latest performance below.