Dele Alli spent six weeks in rehab in the United States in an attempt to deal with mental health issues stemming from a traumatic childhood and after becoming addicted to sleeping pills. The midfielder was one of the biggest talents in English football, a member of the England squad that reached the World Cup semi-finals in 2018 after a spell in which he was a star for Mauricio Pochettino’s young Tottenham who nearly won the Premier League.
However, Alli’s career has gone off the rails in recent years and he opted to give an interview to former England defender Gary Neville to discuss the issues that have been plaguing him. Among them, Alli said in an episode of The Overlap published Thursday, was a dependency on sleeping pills that he said he was taking “just to escape reality.”
“It’s been going on for a long time, without realizing it, the things I was doing to numb the feelings I had. I didn’t realize I was doing it for that purpose, whether it’s to drink or whatever,” he said. “There are things that a lot of people do, but if you abuse it and use it the wrong way… You’re actually doing it for pleasure, you do it to try to chase something or hide from something, it can obviously hurt you a lot. I’ve become addicted to sleeping pills and it’s probably a problem that isn’t just me. I think it’s something that’s going around more than people believe in football,” she added.
The Englishman, who is 27, said a friend of his birth mother abused him when he was 6, then was “sent to Africa to learn discipline” and dealt drugs at age 8. He was adopted at the age of 12. Alli thrived at Tottenham under Pochettino from 2015 to 2019, saying the Argentine manager “cared about me as a person before football” but never had as good a relationship with others.
Alli said that at the age of 24, when Jose Mourinho was Tottenham’s manager, he returned to a “bad time.” “One morning I woke up,” he said, “and I had to go to training, that’s when he stopped playing with me, I was in a bad spot and I remember looking in the mirror… and he was asking if I could retire now.”
“At 24, doing what I love was heartbreaking for me.” Alli has one year left on his Everton contract and said he is “ready for a great season”. “Mentally, I’m probably in the best place I’ve ever been,” he said.
The midfielder said he decided to check into a rehabilitation center for addiction, mental health and trauma after being told he needed surgery after ending his loan spell with Besiktas in April. He came back from rehab three weeks ago.
“I was stuck in a bad cycle. I was trusting in things that were hurting me,” she stated. “I woke up every day and won the fight, went in to train, smiled, showed that I was happy but inside I was definitely losing the battle and it was time to change it,” he insisted.
“Before you know it, he’s got all this stigma around him. It’s something people don’t want to do, go to rehab. It definitely sounds scary. I never could have imagined how much I would get out of it and how much it would help me mentally, because I was in a bad place. Lots of things happened when I was younger that I could never understand,” he added about rehab.
Harry Kane, the England captain and Alli’s former Tottenham team-mate, tweeted that he was proud of Alli “for speaking up and sharing his experience to try and help others”, while Everton said the club “respect and applaud the bravery Dele to talk about the difficulties he has faced, as well as seek the help required.
