8 May 1, 2022The Sunday Times
Football
A
t the start of an Alcoholics
Anonymous meeting, one
of the group tells their story,
prompting the rest of the
room to share feelings and
thoughts. That person is the
“chairman”, and Tony
Adams sees it as the role
he’ll play in his theatre tour,
beginning later this month.
The first 45 minutes will be Tony,
wandering the stage, describing his
journey from first childhood panic
attack, to being bullied at school, to
becoming so deep in a world of drink
that he once left his young son in a
pub for three days, to go on a bender.
There were drugs, prostitutes,
fights, regular instances of soiling the
bed; there was prison, a car crash,
depression. He’ll tell self-deprecating
stories of those times “that are hilari-
ous — but only hilarious because I’m
still alive. That’s part of the message,
because there are a lot of people like
me who are dead.”
The template is his second memoir,
Sober, published in 2017, rather than
his 1998 bestseller, Addicted. He pre-
fers Sober. “It’s more grown up,” he
says. “But sex and sickness sells. The
purpose of Sober is to get people
clean, to help with people’s mental
health. It has more tools, more gui-
dance, more emotional intelligence
[for alcoholics and other addicts].”
The tour has five dates — in
Wycombe, Portsmouth, Cheltenham,
Islington and St Albans — and ticket
sales are going well. “I should break
just about even and if I make a profit
I’ll probably give it to my charity,” he
says. “It’s not about money, it’s
spreading the message.”
His charity, Sporting Chance,
founded in 2000 using the proceeds
from Addicted as seed money, has
helped more than 1,200 sportspeople
through counselling and rehab treat-
ment. “We get more gambling addicts
through the clinic now than alcohol-
ics,” Adams, 55, says. “The drug of
choice for the Premier League foot-
baller is gambling.” Porn and gaming
are other growing “fixes” for young
sportspeople with addictive personal-
ities in today’s online-centric world.
I mention that I’ve just been to the
EFL Awards, where it was announced
that the British Red Cross is replacing
Mind as the EFL’s charity partner, and
this exasperates him.
“I’m doing no more mental-health
days,” he says. “Charities like Mind,
the Samaritans, the Red Cross do very
well in raising awareness but they
don’t have support services. They
signpost to the NHS.
“Well, the NHS have 374,000
under-18s on the mental-health wait-
ing list, which is nine months to a year.
There’s only 17,000 registered BACP
[British Association for Counselling
and Psychotherapy] practitioners.
They can’t clear the backlog and the
list is growing, and the thing with
mental health is if you need that
session, you need that session — and
need it now. Six months down the
road, you might be dead.
“There’s 18 people per day killing
themselves, and that stat hasn’t
changed in 50 years — 7.5 million of
Tony Adams
on going out
on tour to
spread his
message of
hope – and
why Graham’s
title-winners
were better
than Wenger’s
Invincibles
THE FOOTBALL
INTERVIEW
WITH JONATHAN NORTHCROFT
‘The new
Adams has
helped more
than 1,200
sportspeople to
combat
addiction since
forming Sporting
Chance in 2000;
below, with Petit,
the former
team-mate he
rates highestdrug
of choice for the
Premier League
footballer is
gambling’
NEIL SPENCE