CAULKER CRITICS, ARE YOU PROUD?
QPR supporters who use message boards and social media to slag off Steven Caulker need to have a long, hard look at themselves.
Yes, the guy cost £8m. Yes, he failed to deliver. But only because he suffered from serious and debilitating mental health issues.
In a brutally honest interview with The
Guardian in June, Caulker told of his struggles with anxiety and depression. How he’d spent years numbing the pain of crippling insecurity and regret with twin addictions to gambling and alcohol.
“I’d stay up until 5am, replaying every bad decision I’d ever made in my life,” he explained. “I’d think about the money I lost, feel guilt and shame. The only relief I found was in alcohol. It would silence the voices of doubt and self-hate.”
The response – at least in some quarters of Loftus Road – was indicative of the prejudice that still surrounds mental illness.
Stupidly and naively, too many people still believe happiness is a choice. That someone just needs to ‘look on the bright side’ or ‘cheer up’. That earning £60,000 a week is insulation against the demons.
It is not. It is an illness every bit as insidious and undeserved as cancer or motor neurone disease. And, if Caulker had suffered from those, would fans be wishing him good riddance or branding him a parasite? Absolutely not.
Now Caulker is gone, his contract paid up. In the name of compassion, we must all hope this rejection brings the 25-year-old a fresh start – and not another spiral of self-destruction.