Tauranga local and music entertainer Tiki Taane is the first to admit he has had a colourful life but what some may not know about him is at 11 he was huffing glue and selling 'tinnies”.

Although he's not proud of it, he's not ashamed to bring it to light in the hope he may stop other young people from travelling the same path.

Tiki Taane has joined Auckland Council's social media campaign 'Buzzed”. To help young people affected by drugs and alcohol. Photo: YouTube. Watch the video below.

The Papapmoa resident is part of an Auckland Council social media campaign called Buzzed. The campaign aims to share stories to stimulate conversation on the real impacts of alcohol and other drugs to inspire change.

Buzzed features high profile support from Tiki, Marcus Powell and Mike King along with a number of young people sharing their stories through video clips.

In Tiki's video, he admits to dabbling in drugs at a young age but now as a father, he wanted to help change lives.

'I've had a pretty colourful life, I guess just through music… Now that I'm a dad, my son is nearly seven and my step-daughter's nearly five. I'm doing a lot of reflection I guess. My whole kind of life's journey.

'Especially in the last five years. I've kind of gone ‘wow, I've been through quite a bit and I'm actually still here and I can actually function properly.”

Tiki admits he's lucky to be alive, especially due to dabbling in drugs at a young age. His first experience was watching his best friend huffing glue.

'I was 11 and he was 12… I ended up doing it [a few] weeks later. The fact that I wanted to try it just because he was going ‘just try it bro' and that's pretty much how everything has happen in my life.”

At 13, Tiki had tried marijuana and many of his musical influences were into drugs.

'All the artists I was influenced by were like drug taking, wasted musicians and that was my inspiration. I wanted to be like Jimmy Hendrix and I wanted to be like Led Zeppelin, smoking pot and playing music. That's all I wanted to do.”

He even dabbled in selling 'tinnies” to his classmates.

'I kind of grew up really quickly. Of course when you're like selling tinnies and selling that kind of stuff. You know you sell it to the kids in your classroom and word gets around and you sell to the older kids and then of course you start meeting up with dudes who were like prospecting for gangs.”

Tiki says marijuana was the gateway to harder drugs.

'By the time I was 15, I was doing all sorts of stuff. I saw some stuff and I was involved in some stuff that made me feel really bad. My conscience and my soul was just like, ‘this is not cool man'.

'I need to step away from this world and concentrate on this, which is the music side,” says Tiki.

Drugs played an active part in Tiki's life for about 17 years. Eventually it started to affect his relationships with his family and friends which was the cause for him to give up drugs.

'It was starting to affect my relationship with friends and families who wanted to see me and catch up with me. When you start making up excuses and lies for that, that's when things are pretty bad.”

Tiki says he knew deep down inside the drugs were taking its toll and he had to get out. He had broken up with his partner, left the band Salmonella Dub and was broke.

'It wasn't until I was about 29, when things got really bad and I started to question everything. I could see that I was just burning out.

'So I had to make the decision and say to my bandmates, ‘I've got to stop this and get off this rollercoaster now'.”

Thanks to a close friend, Tiki was taken away from his life in drugs. This singer went bush for eight months.

During his time living in the bush, Tiki says he managed to write and produce his album Past, Present and Future and Tiki Taane the solo artist was created.

Since then, Tiki has gone on to produce a successful solo career and lives with his partner and children in Papamoa.

He hopes his honesty about his life will help inspire others struggling with drugs and alcohol to find a better way.

'I just want to be someone who can be straight up with youth and kind of tell them the truth about my life anyway. So I'm not going to say don't do this and don't do that.

'All I'm going to say is, be really, really careful. You know if you're going to go down that path. Then just be really conscious about the old saying. ‘What goes up, must come down'.”