TONY ADAMS ON WENGER, DRINKING AND HOW HE’S SAVING LIVES

IN A REMARKABLE INTERVIEW TONY ADAMS DISCUSSES DRINKING, GAMBLING AND HIS 20-YEAR-OLD CLINIC WHICH SAVES HUNDREDS OF LIVES

‘At the end of my drinking I did not want to live but I didn’t know how to kill myself’ ‘Most people die or go to prison or intensive care. Or they swap addictions’

THE really sobering thing about Tony Adams is that he is one of the exceptions: an addict who got clean and stayed clean. More than 23 years since he took his last drink, the former England captain laughs when he realises he can no longer remember the name of the pubs that almost ruined him.

But, at 53, the fight goes on. Not necessarily the fight to save himself. That one leans in his favour. It is the fight to help others that consumes him now. Men such as the former Tottenham player who came to him talking about suicide.

‘He was living out of the back of his cab,’ revealed Adams. ‘His mum committed suicide when he was 23, he played for Tottenham as a young pro.

‘But it was gambling that got him. He didn’t bet until he was in his 30s and by 39 he’s wanting to kill himself. He has lost everything, including his wife. And then he turned up at my clinic. We put him on the 26-day programme and now he is nine years into recovery without a bet.

‘He’s got his kid back, he’s got his life back. That’s crying material. That’s why I cry. The guy’s living the dream, like I am.’

Adams is almost as good at talking as he was at playing. Not much gets left unsaid.

He is here to talk about his clinic, Sporting Chance. Started with proceeds from his first book and his testimonial, it is now celebrating its 20th birthday. Two decades of providing help, support and refuge for sports people in the grip of addiction and mental health problems.

Adams believes the success of the venture represents his greatest life achievement. You could argue that being alive actually trumps it. Adams was an alcoholic throughout most of his playing career. By rights, it should have killed him.

‘Alcohol gave me a good hiding,’ he said. ‘Prison, intensive care, p***ing myself, s***ting myself, still not giving it up. Sleeping with people I didn’t want to sleep with. ‘That’s where it took me. ‘At the end of my drinking I did not want to live but I didn’t know how to kill myself.

‘I think when I got enough pain and I was broken enough and I got to my bottom, it enabled me enough to ask for help. But I needed a lot of pain.

‘I was at “jumping-off point” as we call it. I got there and only then was I able to ask for help.’

Last year Sporting Chance helped 1,200 current and retired sportsmen and women. Gambling is the current curse, especially among footballers, while cocaine use is high among jockeys. Cricket has its own specific problems, as, increasingly, does rugby league.

Adams was first moved to start something in 1998 after realising that, outside the Professional Footballers’ Association, there was nowhere for struggling athletes to turn to.

‘We phoned the British Olympic Association and asked what they did with their athletes if they get done for taking cocaine,’ Adams recalled. ‘They said, “A two-year ban”. ‘But we meant, “What do you do for the athlete?”.

‘The fact is that no- one was helping. Nobody wanted to take responsibility. They didn’t think it was their job.’

Last year 653 footballers — 40 per cent of whom were retired — called the PFA helpline to talk about their life problems.

Adams believes gambling, in particular, is at epidemic proportions in the game. Recently his former Arsenal team-mate Paul Merson, himself a recovering alcoholic, revealed that his own issues with betting were out of control.

‘Paul has bounced around at the bottom for a long time now,’ said Adams. ‘He is 10 months without a bet and pray to God he has got it this time.

‘But not everyone is as lucky as me. The stats are against us. I am a bit of a freak. Only 10 per cent get 10 years’ sobriety.

‘Most people do bounce around at the bottom or die or go to prison or intensive care. Or they swap addictions.

‘As a charity we are not involved in the politics of the gambling or alcohol companies or sponsorship.

‘I can’t be associated with something that nearly killed me. That would be morally wrong. We’re talking gambling in the Premier League. It’s a bit of an epidemic.

‘Ideally I would get the advertising out of the game because it does influence people. They spend fortunes on the ads for a reason. It’s because it works. It normalises it and that’s the issue I have got.’

EVEN without his green threepiece suit and orange shirt, Adams would struggle to pass by unnoticed. He remains one of the most distinguishable and significant figures in Premier League history.

He won 10 major trophies at Arsenal and 66 England caps. To this day, they miss someone of his type at the Emirates.

Briefly, in 2010, there was talk of him joining Arsene Wenger’s coaching staff but it didn’t happen.

‘He handled it really badly and I needed a little bit more respect but that’s OK,’ recalled Adams. ‘He just put it off to other people to tell me.

‘I may have to take it all back and give him a massive apology because since the phone-hacking stuff came out he reckons he phoned me and left me a message on my phone. But I had a conversation with him and I’ll leave it like that.’

Having reached a tipping point with his drinking after the European Championship of 1996, Adams played the final six years of his Arsenal career sober. He believes Wenger played a part in that.

‘I have said in my book that when the pupil’s ready, the teacher appears,’ he said.

‘So it was great having someone who understood. Maybe not empathised but sympathised.

‘His mum and dad had a pub in Strasbourg. He saw the way that alcohol changed people. He saw the way that gambling changed people.

‘ He’s not an idiot, that guy. It’s one of his strong points, the psychology. He is an amazing man and was the right person for me.’ Adams made a notable appearance as a TV pundit when Arsenal lost to Leicester earlier this season. His frustrations were clear about a club that appears to have been on the slide for so long.

Did Wenger stay on too long? ‘He was probably an addict too,’ said Adams.

‘He couldn’t let go at the end. He’s completely obsessed with the game, every single minute. It maybe cost him relationships and maybe other stuff.

‘I think more than staying on too long, I think the legacy could have been different if he had done things a bit more openly and got in a few more people around him.

‘That’s the difference between him and Alex Ferguson. I think Alex rekindled his coaches and he got some new perspective on it and he kept it fresh and he created three squads during that period, while it fizzled out under Arsene.

‘I look at four things in my life: finance, work, relationships and health. I strive for balance.

‘I think Arsene’s work was off the Richter scale. Look, they all seem very driven in their industry. But Alex, in my opinion, had a better life around him, a better balance. Anyway I’m analysing other people now. I’d better shut up.’

Adams’ own coaching career is best described as eclectic. More importantly, he seems content. Balanced, indeed. Married to his second wife Poppy, with whom he has three children, he is not a man without purpose.

When asked, stories of the bad old days pour forth. He does not hide from any of it.

‘I was the captain of the club so I made sure that I bullied basically everyone else,’ he admitted.

‘I made sure that if anyone else was totally together in their life, they were just boring or glum.

‘Lee Dixon? I would think, “What an a***hole he is. He’s got to be wrong! He’s got to be educated! He’s Northern! There you go, he’s Northern! You ain’t going to talk to Dicko are you?

‘They were the people who come up to you to help but they were kind of wasting their time.

‘If you’d met me before I sobered up, you’d not want to come anywhere near me and I wouldn’t want to come anywhere near you.

‘When you are an addict you make other people sick. I dragged everyone else down with me. Hopefully I’m bringing everyone up with me now.’

An hour with Adams has passed by quickly. The surface has not even been scratched. That night he was due to host a dinner in Cheshire to celebrate the Sporting Chance anniversary. He was predicting tears.

‘For 22 years I got in my car and drove round the M25 to training, to Highbury and that was my life,’ he said.

‘For 12 of them I had my head up my a*** so I didn’t see anything.

‘I needed every drop of alcohol to get me to the bottom. I needed all the prison, I needed it all. But life is different now.

‘ I’ve done this podcast with 12 people who’ve been affected by Sporting Chance. Every Sunday I do it and I’m just in floods of tears.

‘All these people who got well, and got their lives back.

‘There will be a lot of love in the room tonight. You’re talking about 300 years of recovery in the room tonight. Hundreds of people but 300 years of recovery.

‘It’s a lot of people to be dead without me. I’ve passed the message on. For one ex- drunk that’s f***ing amazing.’