'Dele Alli's sleeping pills admission shines light on addiction'

JANET STREET-PORTER: Dele Alli’s admission he’s hooked on sleeping pills has shone a light on an uncomfortable truth: Our craving for kip has left thousands of Brits sleep-walking into an addiction nightmare

Dele Alli isn’t the first footballer addicted to sleeping pills and he won’t be the last. In a highly emotional online interview with Gary Neville this week, the Everton star revealed he’s just completed six weeks in a US clinic to overcome his misuse of Zopiclone, a commonly prescribed sleeping pill.

Zopiclone is as addictive as any class A drug – taken in large doses daily, it can lead to memory loss, hallucinations, delusions and depression. Combined with booze, it makes users euphoric. Coming off a heavy dose taken daily is dangerous and has to be a gradual process. And yet, over 100,000 NHS patients have been using zopiclone for over five years!

Alli has drawn widespread sympathy and messages of support from other players and fans for finally opening up about demons he’s battled resulting from a traumatic childhood. Abused by a friend of his alcoholic mother at 6, sent back to his blood father in Africa for a year against his wishes, he started smoking at 7 and was dealing drugs a year later.

At 12, he found a safe haven when he was adopted by family friends, the Hickfords. Alli’s prodigious talent soon saw him signed to Spurs and playing for England. At 27, he’s been recovering from hip surgery and hopes to be back on the pitch for Everton within weeks.

I can understand why Dele might have turned to sleeping pills as a crutch to cushion the stresses of fame and top-level competition. He was emotionally unprepared for all the attention that professional sport brings. And he has never opened up about a horrendous childhood where violence and threats were part of his existence. As a low-level dealer, he told Gary Neville that – aged 11 – he was suspended from a local bridge by a man from the next estate.

Dele Alli, 27, (above) also revealed that he spent six weeks at a rehab centre in the US this summer

A young Dele Alli pictured with a football as a child (left) next to an adult Alli in his kit (right)

As a consequence, Dele has been withdrawn and shy in public, or joking around as an insecure party boy. He even considered retiring aged just 24. Three years later, he’s finally found the strength to decide something had to change for him to realise his best life and fulfil his potential.

Sleeping pill misuse is football’s dirty little secret, rarely discussed – unlike class A drugs and booze. The Professional Footballers Association admits there’s a growing problem with many players asking club doctors to prescribe Zopiclone so they can relax and wind down after an evening game or to ensure a good night’s sleep before a big match. With three matches a week, and hours of travel, Zopiclone soon becomes a crutch you can’t do without.

Unlike heroin, cocaine or booze, sleeping pills won’t kill you, unless they are combined with drink, painkillers, muscle relaxants and alcohol. Then, they can be lethal because reflexes have been deadened, your mood distorted and any ability to make rational and sensible decisions totally impaired.

Gary Neville sat down with Dele Alli and conducted an emotional interview which was released on Thursday in which the Everton midfielder spoke openly about his difficulties in recent years 

During a harrowing interview with Neville, he also spoke out about how he was molested as a young boy, aged six

Sleeping pills are not treated like Class A drugs – but they are equally highly addictive. Take them more than three times a week, for more than a couple of months, and you will find it very hard to stop. So why isn’t there as much publicity about their negative impact? Why does it take a brave young man like Dele to spotlight the uncomfortable truth – that sleeping pills are an ‘acceptable’ drug in modern Britain, where getting a decent night’s kip has become so desirable.

READ MORE: Aged six, I was molested. At eight, I was dealing drugs. At 11, I was hung off a bridge. That was my childhood: DELE ALLI’s harrowing confessional which has stunned football

A huge and lucrative wellness industry has grown up promoting ‘good’ sleep, telling us we need 7 hours if we are to live long and healthy lives – feeding off the news that one in five adults say they struggle to go to sleep every single night. Experts tell us to switch off our phones, meditate, buy a new bed, blah blah blah. What if none of that works and your brain won’t shut down?

Clubs like Arsenal have engaged sleep specialists to come up with solutions to help players which don’t involve pharmaceuticals. But anyone who takes sleeping pills knows you can always get a prescription privately without anyone knowing.

You turn to pills because you want a guaranteed result to function at work next day. I know, because I’ve taken Zopiclone at least twice a week for over ten years. I suffer from arthritis and terrible joint pain at night, plus I injured my shoulder playing tennis and it’s been further exacerbated by a couple of falls. Without a sleeping pill, I sleep fitfully in bursts of two hours at a time and look 108 next day on television with giant bags under my eyes.

I’m not an addict, but I do wonder whether Zopiclone is a good idea, especially if I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine. Zopiclone is so widely prescribed by the NHS that new guidelines were introduced a couple of years ago to try to wean us off it. In 2017-18, one in four adults in the UK was being prescribed painkillers, anti-depressants or sleeping pills – a shocking state of affairs.

Zopiclone is as addictive as any class A drug – taken in large doses daily, it can lead to memory loss, hallucinations, delusions and depression

Dele Alli pictured in hospital as he recovers from an injury

Of the one million adults who were taking the Z (Zopiclone and Zolpidem) sleeping pills in 2018, 100,000 had been on repeat prescriptions which had been running for at least three years! That’s in spite of expert advice that Z drugs should only be taken once or twice a week for no more than a month at a time.

You might deduce that Covid, a lack of GPs and general pressure on the NHS has led to doctors over-prescribing sleeping pills as a way of dealing with their huge workloads.

In one month alone (May 2019), the NHS issued over 430,000 prescriptions for Zopiclone and that figure has been more or less constant for years. Dele and those highly paid Premier League footballers who are begging for Zopiclone are not alone. All over the UK, hundreds of thousands of ordinary folk are popping it every single night. Working in television, I’ve met plenty of performers addicted to zopiclone and who were forced to resort to counselling and intensive medical support to withdraw from it.

They can afford private healthcare, but what about the millions of addicts the NHS is supplying every month who are waiting for surgery, in constant pain, or who are chronic insomniacs?

In spite of millions of prescriptions, there’s no evidence that Zopiclone works after a couple of months of continuous use. And melatonin, a widely prescribed hormone replacement commonly used to combat jet lag, doesn’t deliver such a knockout result.

I wish Dele every success in the future. Facing life without sleeping pills is going to be hard. Sleep is something I crave at any price.

Source: Read Full Article