Former Tottenham star and England international Dele Alli made the sensational revelations in an interview on Gary Neville’s ‘The Overlap’ podcast. In it, he talks about his addiction to sleeping pills and his difficult childhood.
“Now is the right time to tell people what’s going on. It’s hard to talk about because it’s something I’ve hidden for a long time. I’m afraid to talk about it. When I came back from Turkey, I realized that I needed help, I was in a bad mental state, and I decided to go to a state-of-the-art mental health rehabilitation facility. They deal with addictions and traumas. I’m addicted to sleeping pills, it’s not just a problem for me. It’s more common in the world of football than you might think. He also revealed that he spent six weeks at a rehab clinic in the United States this summer, which helped him fight his addiction to sleeping pills. “I felt it was time to do it. You can’t be told to go there – you have to know and make the decision yourself or it won’t work. I had fallen into a bad cycle and things that were causing me harm. Inside I was losing the battle and it was time to change.”
“So I went there for six weeks. Everton were amazing and supported me, I will be forever grateful. For them to be so honest and understanding, I couldn’t have asked for anything more during the time I was making the most important decision of my life – to do something I was afraid to do. I’m glad I did.”
🗣️🧠 Dele Alli: “I was literally staring in the mirror and I was asking if I could retire now at 24… for me that was heartbreaking. It doesn’t make you weak to get help.” (@GNev2/@WeAreTheOverlap) pic.twitter.com/DseBfUq1Ie
— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) July 13, 2023
Dele Alli also shared details about his extremely difficult childhood. “At the age of six, I was raped by my mother’s boyfriend, who was often at the house. My mother was an alcoholic and it happened at six. I was sent to Africa to learn discipline and then sent back.”
“At seven I started smoking, at eight I started selling drugs. An older guy told me they wouldn’t stop a kid on a bike so I’d ride around and I’d have the drugs underneath, that was at eight. At eleven, I was hung from a bridge by a man from the next estate, a man.”, he shared.