by Tony Adams
This was all big stuff for someone who had decided at the age of 14 that God was not for me. I had prayed to him when I was desperate to get in the England age-group team and he hadn’t answered my prayer. I couldn’t have seen at that age that maybe he did and the answer was no, because he had other plans for me.
Steps Four and Five are the cleaning-house process. I was being asked to make ‘a searching and fearless moral inventory’ of myself and to admit to myself, God and another human being ‘the exact nature’ of my wrongs. That meant listing all the nasty incidents in which I had wronged myself and other people through my drinking, then sitting down with another person and telling them about it all. It was a vital part of the process. If you don’t go within, I was told, you’ll go without.
I did all my house-cleaning in sessions with James – and also very publicly in Addicted, my first book, published in 1998. You can really only do those Steps once you have found a Higher Power because they are emotionally painful and draining. You need a faith to believe that all will work out as it’s meant to, to combat the fear of the self-revelation. In reality, I didn’t experience a release from sharing all my painful memories with James, but I did get a lift from doing Addicted. Not only did I feel clean, but I was gratified that so many people got so much from it, some even recognising their own alcoholism and getting into recovery. To this day, people come up to me and say that it helped get them sober, or helped them understand someone close to them, and that was one of the main aims in doing it.
Steps Six and Seven are difficult to grasp as they are about asking your Higher Power to remove your defects of character, after you have been through the painful process of finding out what they were in Four and Five. They are often called the forgotten Steps for that reason. Well, I have had to go back to those over and again, to revisit and change my episodes of selfishness and arrogance, for example, should they resurface. Six and Seven never feel done with, in fact.
I found it simpler – though certainly not easier – to work Steps Eight and Nine, which talk of making a list of all persons we have harmed and making amends to them. The Steps are practical and achievable, though it takes some humility to go and see people who you may have damaged or embarrassed yourself in front of. You also have to be prepared for people to refuse any apologies, though you have to say sorry anyway for your own peace of mind.
First I had to make amends to myself, forgiving myself for some of the stuff I did. From that everything else flowed. I began saying my sorrys on a daily basis straight away when I got sober, but getting to Eight and Nine formally took me about three years, though I never made a written list. I knew who I needed to apologise to and I talked to most of them inside those three years. Step Nine talks about making amends ‘except when to do so would injure them or others’. Sometimes, there were people with whom it was best just to let things lie.
I very quickly realised I needed to speak to my mum, dad and family, and my stepdaughter Clare. But Oliver had just one memory of me as a drunk and that was being in a bar when very young. Did I really need to stir that up? As for my ex-wife Jane, who would make her own attempts to get clean, I thought the best way of taking responsibility for my role in the past was in being sober and bringing up the kids as best I could.
And then there were Arsenal team-mates. Some of them may have had their own issues and I didn’t want to intrude on them. They had their own paths to walk. Also, they probably had a lack of understanding about alcoholism – because I know I did when I was drinking. I wouldn’t want a recovering alcoholic with whom I had drunk in the past coming up to me saying, ‘I don’t drink any more and sorry for all the pain I caused.’ It would have been cruel and they would have run a mile.
It’s simple really. I carried, and still carry, the message of recovery through actions as much as words and if people want this, I am there. If they don’t, there is nothing I can do.
Mostly, the people I spoke to took it well. Martin Keown had trouble believing that I was an alcoholic. It is indeed difficult for those who haven’t got the illness to understand when looking at it from the outside. I remember being at Ilford Palais with Martin when we were young players and all he had to drink was a shandy, so it is going to be hard for him. Besides, he had left the club, playing for Everton and Aston Villa, when a lot of my worst drinking was taking place.
Also, sometimes educated people just don’t get it, believing alcoholism is simply a sign of self-inflicted weakness, though Arsène Wenger was very receptive and did things by understanding rather than confrontation. We had a great, grown-up relationship as manager and captain and that was fortuitous, for us both, at the time. We were both what the other needed. He needed a team leader who would help him adapt to the ways of the Premier League and I needed a manager who would show a benign tolerance when required. It was all meant to be, our trophies together the physical proof.
Having a sympathetic boss is not always the case for people who get into recovery. One girl at AA said she was having issues with hers and I said that sometimes it is best just to talk to them honestly, as we have things going on in our head that may not be accurate. She was unsure, and with reason. Not all bosses are like Arsène. They may be a raging alky themselves and look at you as if you’re off your trolley.
Arsène had had experience of what alcohol can do when growing up in a pub with his mum near Strasbourg, and he knew how it changed people. So if I did have an issue at work, more often than previously I didn’t bottle it up but instead went to him (though it was never the other way round if Arsène had an issue, I have to say – I’m not quite sure where he went or goes).
‘Yes, yes, you were angry today, Tony,’ he might say. He was very sweet and amiable.
I had a lovely six-year relationship with him, and today too in many respects, even through all that stuff when he just would not tell me what was going on when I was interested in jobs at Arsenal. It’s always worse in your head, imagining what people are thinking and saying about you. It’s futile and tiring and best simply to speak to them directly, I have found.
After I got sober, all my relationships improved, in fact. I was now attracted to a different type of person. I now liked conversation and the company of others, meeting new people and hearing their stories, particularly those in AA, who told of some hilarious exploits but without romanticising or glamorising them. We shared a common bond of knowing that there were more sick antics than amusing, after all. We were realistic and honest. Coming through it does produce a gallows humour, though.
You do Step Nine once, though I am a firm believer that if anyone comes back into my life to whom I still need to make amends I will do it. After that Step, I reached what are called the maintenance steps in AA. Ten, Eleven and Twelve are all about how I conduct myself today, having cleared up the wreckage of the past, and how I live well and to the best of my ability. It is called alcoholISm, after all, not alcoholWASm.
Today, I don’t turn anyone over, don’t nick anything, don’t lie and don’t smash up places as I once did through my drinking. It doesn’t mean I don’t do and say things I regret, however, which is where Step Ten comes in – continuing to take personal inventory and, when I’m wrong, promptly admit it.
I do have the ability to do that these days, unlike in the past, though my pride does try to stop me now and then. Admitting you’re wrong is tough, especially when you’ve believed for a long time that it is a sign of weakness, not strength. When I do swallow my pride, it pretty much always turns out for the best and people respect you for it. In the past, I probably didn’t think I needed to apologise, with the arrogance and even invincibility that active alcoholism produced in me.
That word invincibility always reminds me of an encounter with Ken Bates, the old Chelsea chairman, when I was just 20 and at the PFA Awards dinner back in 1987 having been voted Young Player of the Year. I was sitting next to Ken, with George Graham the other side of me. I remember the first words Ken ever said to me: ‘I bet you t
hink you are fucking invincible.’
I was intimidated and turned to George, wondering who this bloke was. George just smiled.
In those days, I was confident I could play football all right, but I didn’t feel invincible as a person – and that is always the disparity within the alcoholic: big ego, low self-esteem. It can still affect me even now with that ability to think one day that I should be managing the biggest club in the world only to feel on another day that I’ll never work again. The difference nowadays is the insight I’ve gained through years of not drinking, the ability to understand what is going on with me.
The booze made me flash and turned me into something else. I was never really that kind of character. I was a working-class boy and flash was knocked out of me. You didn’t show it, even if you won the pools. You didn’t flaunt fortune by buying a Ferrari or something.
Now I am sober, life is a balance. If you have worked hard and earned the money to buy a Ferrari and your motives are good, why not? Not that I would. I don’t need one to prop up my ego. Anyway, it won’t carry kids around.
Today, though, it is a simpler decision than in the past – just buy it or don’t buy it. Once, early in recovery when I was thinking everything through, it would have been, ‘Can I justify it? Am I buying it out of ego? What will people think?’ No wonder I couldn’t get dressed in the morning. The whole day seemed so long with all the decision-making. And no wonder people turn up at AA meetings so tired. There is a saying that recovering alcoholics get much more out of the day than other people.
I tried to simplify my life as much as possible and now I try to begin days with the prayer and meditation that Step Eleven tells of. It is about seeking to improve contact with your Higher Power and accepting that power’s will for you that day, whatever it may be.
In the early days, I was told just to get through 24 hours without a drink and that seemed like such a long time, especially when you are waking up alert at 6am. I’m not religious but it was nice to go round to the little church near me in Putney to be there and at peace. I would then come back home and do some stretching and yoga.
After dropping the kids off at school, I would drive to work, train, eat well, come home, put my feet up, have a snooze, get up at 4pm and walk the dog over the park. Then it would be a bit of supper with the kids before getting the nanny in and taking myself off to an AA meeting. I would stretch before bed, take my personal inventory to see what I had done well and badly that day and to learn the lessons, before finally surrendering myself to sleep. A simple life but a great grounding for a lasting sobriety.
I also work to try to remember, and live by, the prayer of St Francis of Assisi which AA has adopted as the Step Eleven Prayer. I know I am going to fall short frequently, but it is a credo to aspire to:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where there is error, I may bring truth. That where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted. To understand, than to be understood. To love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
Finally to Step Twelve, which says that having had a spiritual awakening as a result of the Steps, we should try to carry the message to alcoholics who still suffer. That means helping others to discover and bring into their own lives what has freely been given to you.
Well, I can do that individually and have been on calls to talk to people when they have asked for help. I have also sponsored people – taken newcomers under my wing, if asked – though not always with success. One guy I took through the Steps kept relapsing and I had to let him go. It helped me, mind, by getting me back in touch with the Steps. On another occasion, I went to see a footballer who had relapsed and took him through Step One, as James did with me.
Given the travelling I have had to do and my lifestyle, I have done less in recent years. It is not being fair to people if I am not available to them. My way of using my attributes best to help others was to write Addicted and establish Sporting Chance. You’ve got to give it away to keep it, after all – which is another of those paradoxes of recovery.
Some respect you for this way of life and who and what you are, others find it confusing, even strange, in my experience and I know I get comments that judge me. I have done 20 years of therapy on this subject and it is very poignant to me. As James said to me in the very early days when I would worry what people were thinking about me: ‘Tony, what people think and say about you has got nothing to do with you.’
It is indeed something I can have no control over, but at the start I wasn’t as good as I am now at seeing that. We are human. We do care. These days, there are no outside opinions that are going to dictate the way I live my life. Often, too, those opinions are more about the other person, and what they might feel about themselves, than me.
I can still get echoes of my previous life, though. The drinking dreams may be less intense than they were but the football ones are still vivid. I have even woken Poppy up now and then having kicked her, believing I am clearing a cross.
And I can get flashbacks when I am in a hotel room and go to the door first thing in the morning expecting the News of the World to come under it with a picture of me on the front page, making me break into a cold sweat. It is odd for two reasons: one, that I don’t do what I used to; and two, that paper is no more. It does show, though, the power of things that can trigger feelings.
One day, Atticus came home from school and said that one of the kids had told him that I crashed my car when I was drunk and went to prison. That was hard for him. I just said: ‘Atty, tell your mate that, yes, your dad did do that once but he is a recovering alcoholic now and doesn’t drink.’ I sat down with Atty and explained more, and I hope it helped him with any embarrassment he might have felt.
You never quite get immune to criticism but I have got better at handling it. I find it harder coming from people I love and respect, actually, and this still comes up in my therapy sessions, which I have twice a week when I am in the UK. If I’m criticised by people who don’t know me, I try to brush it off. I know I too can make judgements about people I don’t know and haven’t met and I am forever getting it wrong. If I am doing that, then others must be as well.
And people change, don’t they? Glenn Hoddle is a case in point. We had our issues as manager and player at the 1998 World Cup, but I have met him in recent years and found him a very approachable man with a sense of humour. Something right a few years ago may not be right today. How I deal with it in practical terms is quite simply talking about it and processing it myself. James always said that he wanted me to become my own best therapist. He said that with all the work I would do, I’d be able to tell what was bollocks and what wasn’t.
I recall when I was Harry Redknapp’s assistant at Portsmouth and went to watch a game at Southampton, not just because they do a great sausage and mash for the scouts. Matt Le Tissier was there, as he generally is, and somebody had told me that he had once overheard Matt describing me as ‘a weirdo’.
Well, how do you deal with that? Thoughts raced through my head . . . Did I need to say anything? I had played with him in the England set-up and maybe that was how he felt about me. Or maybe he never even said it. If he did, he may just have been having a bad day himself. Today, I am comfortable with myself and felt no need to do or say anything about it. It did show, however, how these things can be upsetting, and how my head can go, which is why I need a programme of recovery to tell me this is not a massive issue and I don’t need to drink to subdue the anxiety.
For a moment, I had it in my head that Matt hated me and would maybe put in a bad word for me if I ever went for the Southampton job, but
it was all just going on in my head. It was a perfect example of how I would drive myself nuts if I didn’t have therapy to talk these things through. No wonder I drank. No wonder I wanted to stop the thoughts racing in my head.
I remember when I used to do media interviews as manager of Portsmouth and a reporter would tell me what another manager had said about me or my team and then ask me if I cared to respond. I would say, ‘Well, to be honest, what he thinks has got nothing to do with me.’
At that point they would look at me as if to say: ‘Well, that’s not a fucking answer, is it? You’ve got to have a go back at him. Give me something to write.’ I didn’t care really. I had a job of work to do and was concerned only about myself and my own team.
I wonder occasionally if my sobriety, my attitudes and way of looking at life these days, has sometimes held me back in my career, stopped me from getting jobs. Maybe I raise too many issues for certain owners and chief executives, who might be uncomfortable around me as I hold up a mirror to their own problems, and they prefer to surround themselves with different types of people – drinkers maybe, certainly the dysfunctional. It was one reason I enjoyed Azerbaijan, it being a dry Muslim state – nominally anyway, as I am sure there is some drinking beneath the surface – with people who don’t drink.
Maybe people do think I am different. It might be because I am. In recovery, you are told that you are not special or different from other people – because you need to replace ego with humility – and alcoholics are not, by and large. We probably become so, though, and especially in football, which is a unique industry where there are not many of us – in recovery, at least.
It was one of the reasons I set up the charity. Football is rife still, despite higher standards of fitness, with addictive behaviour, be it drink, drugs, gambling, pornography or whatever. And depression within it, of managers and players, is growing. Very few are happy, joyous and free in the game.