Mark Ronson health struggles explored as record producer details stroke scare at age 20 

Mark Ronson revealed that his early years in New York’s club scene were marked by dangerous choices and a terrifying health scare. In his memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City, the producer admitted he once feared he was having a stroke at just 20 years old after mixing ecstasy and cocaine.

“One night, when I was out late and already flying on E, I took a bump of coke, within minutes, my chest tightened and my left arm went numb. Could I be having a stroke? At twenty?” Ronson recalled.

He wrote that he trembled as the panic refused to subside until friends discovered him “curled up in a corner practically catatonic” and brought him home. Though Ronson clarified that such episodes did not follow every high, he admitted that “it was becoming a roll of the dice.” Alongside ecstasy and cocaine, he confessed to experimenting with heroin from the age of 18.

He also reflected on one night when he accidentally used heroin.

“I was overdoing it, mixing drugs like cocktails, pass me a bag of powder and I never asked too many questions.”

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Mark Ronson detailed a decades-long battle with anxiety and career pressures

Mark Ronson admitted that the collapse of his marriage to French model and actor Joséphine de La Baume in 2017 had left him struggling. Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, he said:

“I was floundering. I was drinking too much and just giving orders over the backs of people’s shoulders and sh*t. So I got into a new studio in LA and I basically told the engineer: ‘Show me how all this sh*t works and take the month off.’ I went back to doing what I usually do, being by myself in the studio. If it doesn’t start with me, if that’s not the ground floor, then it’s not my record.”

It was not the first time Mark Ronson had spoken about personal challenges. In 2015, he told The Times that anxiety had haunted him from childhood. He described feeling overwhelmed by radio voices that seemed to grow “intense and angry and violent,” even when delivered in calm tones.

The anxiety would ease only after he spoke to someone, often waking his mother for reassurance. After years of remission, the panic attacks returned at 28, during the height of his early fame, producing hits for Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, and Robbie Williams. Therapy helped Mark Ronson move past it, and he later said,

“I never got to the bottom of it, but it hasn’t come back in that way.”

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Mark Ronson admitted his marriage breakdown pushed him into uncharted creative territory

Mark Ronson once said he did not usually draw from deeply personal experiences when making music. But in 2019, the Grammy-winning producer admitted that his divorce from actress Joséphine de La Baume had left a clear imprint on his album Late Night Feelings.

“I was nervous to confront what I needed to do, and I didn’t know what it would sound like,” Ronson told ES Magazine.

“I don’t really write from a very personal place, my songs are usually unified by a sonic process or something conceptual. There are so many talented people in LA. I couldn’t have made this record anywhere else,” he shared.

Mark Ronson and de La Baume split in 2017 after five and a half years of marriage, with reports citing “irreconcilable differences.” Looking back, he said the heartbreak had unexpectedly shaped his music for the better.

“If you are going to go through something devastating, then at least you are going to get something to improve your art by,” he reflected.

He added that, whatever the response, he stood by the work.

“This record is so far and beyond the rest of my records, that if everyone said it sucked, it would still be okay.”

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Mark Ronson revealed a stage injury after a mishap during a DJ set:

Even a routine performance turned into a painful experience for Mark Ronson earlier this year. In April 2025, the award-winning producer said he injured himself mid-DJ set while trying to adjust a stage monitor.

Sharing a photo from a hospital bed, Ronson recounted the mishap with humor.

“That time the house PA was so bad that I tried to one-hand turn the stage monitor towards the crowd mid-mix to give them some extra juice, turns out they weigh more than I thought…Two popped bicep tendons and one finished gig later, here we are, baby! #tornthisway,” he wrote.

The injury highlighted the physical demands behind live shows, even for artists best known for their studio work. It also came too late to be included in Ronson’s recently announced memoir.