Road to recovery

Anyone tuning in to Soccer Saturday on Sky Sports will hear the insights and predictions of ex-footballer and manager Paul Merson. A long career in the beautiful game hasn’t been without its demons, both public and private, as he explained to Greg Lansdowne.

How’s life?

It seems like a simple, routine question to many, but when you’ve been through the wringer like former Arsenal and England footballer Paul Merson, it’s a little more complicated.

“Yeah, alright,” he told Sorted. “Better than what it used to be like but it’s still hard. I’m not going to say it’s not. Some days it’s easy and some days it’s not so easy, but it’s a lot better than when I was in the addiction.” 

While the Londoner’s attacking flair on the pitch made him a favourite with fans everywhere he went (after leaving Arsenal he moved to Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, Portsmouth and Walsall), off the field Merson was fighting the triple threat of gambling, drink and drug addictions, the first of which has taken the longest-lasting hold. 

As well as being a prominent football pundit for Sky Sports following retirement from playing, the 54-year-old has often spoken candidly about his personal struggles. As part of a methodology to keep the demons at bay, Merson is Ambassador for Recoverlution – the world’s first platform which helps connect the 100 million+ global community of people in recovery.    

Research commissioned by Recoverlution found that over a third of people (38%) currently have, or have previously had an addiction disorder, or know someone in the same situation. That high figure makes it all the more important that someone with Merson’s media profile remains candid on the subject. 

“100%,” the 21-times-capped England international agrees. “Whatever I do – if it’s writing a book, say, and it helps one person – that’s a lot of people in reality because you’ve got to remember there are a number of people around them. It’s not just the addicts – it’s the family it destructs and the people close to them. 

“So for me it helps more than one person. But whenever I talk (on that subject), I’m always hoping someone can go, ‘I can really relate to that’. Because you think you’re alone – you do; if you are in addiction, you haven’t got well yet and are in it, you think you are the only one, and you’re not. That’s why I’m quite vocal. It’s just trying to help that one person.”

When Sorted spoke to Merson he had just finished a session with a performance coach, part of a programme keeping at bay the temptation to slip into past habits.   

“It’s not really a routine, but I have the tools now, if that makes sense,” Merson explains. “I have a network of people to talk to and who I need to talk to – for me the most important thing is to talk to people.

“Addiction wants you on your own – it wants you not to talk to people – so that’s why I say I have the tools now. I wouldn’t say I have a set ritual, because that changes day by day with three little kids. 

“Recovery is every day of your life, a day at a time,” he adds. “It makes me sick when people say ‘It’s Recovery Month in September or Mental Health Week. No it’s not, it’s every day and people don’t really understand what it’s like. When I hear about Mental Health Week, I’m like ‘Wow, it’s not a week, it’s every day of your life, one day at a time’. Addiction doesn’t come along in September – you’ve had your summer holiday, it’ll kick in again for September and let you off again in October. This should be every day. I think mental health should have an advert in the middle of Coronation Street every day it’s on, as it’s the most-watched programme on telly.”

Merson’s extensive list of career highlights include winning the PFA Young Player of the Year in 1989 – the same year he won the first of two top-flight league titles – as well as FA Cup, League Cup, and Cup Winners’ Cup winners medals, all with Arsenal, and appearing for England at France ‘98. 

Having made his Gunners debut during the 1986-87 season, the teenage striker continued to develop the ensuing campaign – scoring five goals in just seven First Division starts. When Arsenal reached the League Cup Final (then sponsored by Littlewoods) against Luton Town in April 1988, Merson was hoping to at least be named as a substitute (ultimately missing out to Martin Hayes on that occasion).

What can be looked back on as a tell-tale sign to future problems during the build-up to that game was an interview in the Arsenal matchday programme. When Merson was asked if he had ever been to Wembley, he replied, “I’ve only been there for the dogs (greyhound racing)!”

By 1994, albeit it with an array of honours already in his trophy cabinet, Merson’s life was unravelling at a rate of knots. Towards the end of that year, he confessed to his trio of addictions in a Daily Mirror interview. After a period in rehabilitation, Merson gradually began to piece his playing career back together – all the while attempting to keep his troubles away.     

Of his three vices, the drink culture was most prevalent in English football during the 1980s and 1990s. While many former players recount tales of extreme imbibing in the past, either on air or during after-dinner speeches, it’s not a period of his life that Merson now recalls with pleasure. 

“I look back and think: ‘it actually wasn’t that much fun’,” he confides. “Without knowing you’re an alcoholic – and I didn’t know I was an alcoholic at 18 years of age – it ain’t much fun when you go out and you know you can’t go home. There were some laughs, especially with my best mate Perry Groves (former Arsenal colleague). We had some giggles – we did – but they didn’t outweigh the rest. 

“You’ve got to remember I got suspended from Arsenal twice – for two weeks – from drinking. I got done for drink-driving and it ain’t fun really. People will look at it from the outside world and think, ‘He’s living the dream, having a good laugh’, but you look back and it is quite sad. Not too many people have been suspended by Arsenal twice and carried on playing and been in a treatment centre twice. So there couldn’t have been too many laughs along the way. 

“I was a functional drunk – I was a good drinker and good at my job of playing football, which I believe was a God-given talent. I didn’t really have to work too hard – without being horrible – and obviously I couldn’t have if you are drinking that much and you’re doing what you’re doing and still playing at that kind of level. It’s hard to do all that and then do the other half of it. I do believe I was given a talent. I’m not being big-headed – I wasn’t a Dennis Bergkamp or Paul Gascoigne, I was on a lower level – but I still had that little bit of God-given talent.”

While the lives of top-level footballers are heavily scrutinised in the digital age, Merson was able to go about his business largely under the radar in an era without camera phones and social media. The TV analyst might have nearly 400,000 followers on Twitter, but the man himself stays well away, preferring to let his management company post updates. Had the platform been around when he was playing, Merson doesn’t think he would have survived long.   

“I would have been banned – simple as that! I’m not that bright, so what’s the point in going on it? You’re going to say something you shouldn’t say. I have common sense but I stay away. Phone cameras is one thing I’m most pleased didn’t exist – playing for England and sitting in drug dens. It was an addiction so I don’t think (their existence) would have put me off. You just take it somewhere else then. I stopped in the end because I’d had enough, but what these players live with now and that way of life is a lot different.” 

While you won’t find Merson Tweeting anytime soon, his newspaper/online columns and work for Sky Sports means his opinions remain much sought-after.    

“When I was playing my [ambition for retirement] was the way Michael Owen went – being a compulsive gambler, I thought I’d have a massive stud farm; I’d be a trainer. But I love being on Sky.

 “Being dyslexic, there aren’t too many commentators or analysts who struggle to pronounce the names, so I’ve had the best two jobs in the world – playing football and being on Sky. I’ve probably been in there 17 or 18 years now, which I’m very grateful and proud of. I love it, I look forward to Saturdays – I am addicted to football and have been since I was about eight or nine years of age.”   

Life, for Merson, seems more than just ‘alright’. 

LIVING THE LOADED LIFE

Despite a career of more than 600 league appearances, and well in excess of 100 goals, probably the best-known image of Merson’s playing days is his post-match celebration (first seen after Arsenal’s 1993 FA semi-final win over Tottenham at Wembley) when he simulated downing pints, then sticking his tongue out.

While the act was part of the usual cavorting of the Wembley victors – repeated soon after when he put in a Man of the Match performance as Arsenal beat Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup Final – it’s not a spectacle he cares to recall. 

“I don’t like it,” Merson confesses. “I remember doing a photoshoot not long after (for loaded magazine) with my boy, Charlie, who’s in his thirties now but would have been about five at the time. I’d played against Leeds, broken my nose and they did the photoshoot with me and him and he was doing the pint-downing celebration as well – at five. If we all knew then what we know now, we wouldn’t do it. 

“But the celebration originally came from my mates being in the stand and I was gesturing ‘We’re going to the pub’. At the time you think it’s funny – you do – but looking back now that was the way it was. I never got stick like: ‘It’s a disgrace what he’s done and now he’s got his boy doing the same thing’. It was sort of the norm. There was no social media and it wasn’t going to be on the BBC Nine O’Clock News.”

loaded magazine, the brainchild of editor James Brown, had launched just a few months earlier but had already established itself as the totem for the lad culture that dominated the UK media landscape over the rest of the decade and beyond. Merson was viewed as the archetypal ‘loaded’ footballer – for his reputation off the pitch, but also with the requisite skills on it. 

Brown interviewed Merson for that feature in issue six – dated October 1994 – at a time when the writer was also embroiled in his own battles with drink and drug addictions.

Brown recalls: “When I started loaded I was really interested in sportsmen who had good stories to tell and they weren’t just good at what they did. I was looking to interview characters and personalities and people who you think you’d like to be mates with. There were plenty of squeaky-clean athletes and footballers and that was how the clubs and players’ agents wanted them to come across. But I was just naturally more drawn to people like Steve Claridge, Phil Tufnell, Paul Merson, Peter Beagrie – people who had a little bit of character about them, were seen as wild cards and very much as the life and soul of the squads they were in.

“Merse didn’t say much in that interview – he was very guarded and he did seem quite beaten up and worn out but as [I was also] someone who had a drug problem at that point – and did use a lot of cocaine – I didn’t recognise that in him. As a football fan you don’t really want to think players need to take drugs to get high because surely the feeling of leathering one into the net at Highbury – even if you don’t support Arsenal – that feeling of euphoria must be better than anything else you can possibly get. Drink I could understand – it was part of the football culture.”                            

Soon after, Merson was forced to face up to his issues while Brown got clean by the end of the ‘90s – helped by the type of counselling support that continues to help Merson. 

Recoverlution is an online platform dedicated to content, community and wellness which connects people in recovery. As Recoverlution’s official Ambassador, Paul Merson is championing recovery all year round – especially throughout September, which is Recovery Month – to raise awareness of addiction and the importance of accessible help and support on the recovery journey. Find out more at recoverlution.com.