Exclusive
DEAD SCARY
FORMER England rugby union star Danny Cipriani has revealed he drank bottles of vodka alone at home during the depths of his depression as he tried to salvage his international career.
And in further exclusive extracts from his searingly honest new autobiography, Who Am I?, Danny, 35, tells how he nearly died when drunk, dabbled with cocaine and even “crystallised toad” in a bid to get high and was once so out of it on magic mushrooms he thought wife Victoria, 42, was trying to kill him.
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I WANT to be seen. But not like this. It’s early 2010 and every time I make eye contact with someone, I imagine they’re thinking horrible things.
“What about that Danny Cipriani? What an idiot, had the world at his feet and chucked it all away.”
I enter the little corner shop and head straight for the counter. A woman with a little boy looks at me and smiles. But before she can say anything to me I order a bottle of vodka.
As I’m leaving, I hear the woman say, “Do you know who that was?”
I hide the bottle up my jumper and scurry home. It’s only a two-minute walk but it’s a race against time, before the walls close in and squash me.
Back in the house, I plonk myself on the sofa, pour myself a drink and take a long swig. For the rest of the day it’s just me and my vodka.
I’ve never felt so alone.
IT’S April 2013 and there’s a load of Sale Rugby Club lads dressed as Oompa Loompas, a few done up as characters from The Wizard Of Oz and I’m done up as some WWE wrestler, my face painted with gold and black thunderbolts on my cheeks.
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I still don’t drink a huge amount but, when it comes to team socials, I feel like I need to make an effort in order to fit in.
Even if it means dressing up like a d***head and doing the Otley Run, which involves drinking in 15 pubs in and around Leeds, plus the two-hour drive from Manchester.
What’s the worst that could happen? We’ve almost made it to the last pub of the crawl and I’m slightly over-excited. I sneak up behind one of the boys, whack him on the back of the head and he starts chasing me.
I’m running along, checking over my shoulder, and when I reach a bus stop, I look to my right, see a bus coming, assume it’s stopping and make a dash for it. BOOM!
If I hadn’t instinctively jumped at the last second and smashed into the bus window, instead of the grille, I’d have been wiped out. Legs crushed, maybe killed.
As it is, I’m flat on my back on a stretcher, surrounded by paramedics. As well as being concussed, I’ve torn the medial collateral ligament in my knee.
Not too bad, the season’s over anyway. When I get out of hospital, I can’t resist tweeting, “Heavy night. Feel like I’ve been hit by a bus . . . ”
People have a laugh at that, which is what I wanted. But no one asks me how I really am.
I suppose it’s just par for the course now, me being a f*** up.
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I’M still taking Tramadol (pre-scription painkiller) most days, partly for aches and pains but mostly to numb myself, give me a sense of relief, make me feel cocooned and safe.
Tramadol feels like a magic pill. I’ll pop one, invite mates over and have deep conversations, with no inhibitions.
It’s reached a point where I need Tram- adol to feel free, but I also know, somewhere deep inside, that I can’t be medicating for the rest of my life.
I dabbled with cocaine in the past, but, by 2019, have cut back on the Tramadol and for the most part I won’t go near anything man made. However, anything from the earth is cool with me.
I tried crystallised toad (a psychedelic) in America, which was a deep experience, and I’d like to give ayahuasca a go. Ayahuasca is a brew made from an Amazonian plant, which you drink as part of a day-long ceremony.
I’m told it opens lots of different doors in the mind, but I’ll probably have to go to Peru to try it, because it’s not the sort of thing you can buy from a geezer at Croydon bus station.
Mushrooms contain psilocybin, which turn all your senses up a little.
I’ve seen it described as a waking dream, which works well. And after a micro-dose, I’ll think about something traumatic from my childhood and see it from a different perspective. It will feel softer, less intense, and I’ll have more compassion for anyone else involved.
When I do take Tramadol, it’s to numb the mind and body, and I still distract myself with women, although far less frequently.
IN 2019 I’m voted Premiership Players’ Player Of The Year.
And a few days before our play-off semi against Saracens I’m named Premiership Player Of The Season. I also win the Rugby Writers’ Award.
So, there you have it: Eddie Jones (then England coach) thinks I’m the fourth best 10 in England, pretty much everyone else thinks I’m the best player in English rugby, in any position.
It’s nice to feel loved but I can’t enjoy it. I’m desperate to play for England in the World Cup.
When I look in the mirror, I see a mess.
IN 2020, with the new season a little over a month away, I don’t feel like I can be myself on the field, which is no good for me and no good for my team, Gloucester.
I thought I’d be able to reconnect after Covid, (former girlfriend) Caroline Flack’s passing and falling in love with Victoria, but my head’s just not in it. Around that time I overdo my mushroom intake and think Victoria’s trying to kill me.
I’m standing at the top of some stone stairs in the garden, thinking, “The only way to escape this terrible experience is to let go”.
So, I put my arms out, lean back, topple over and smash my head on the edge of a step. Victoria hears my skull crack and reckons she can hear gas coming out.
She’s crying hysterically because she thinks I’m dead. But a couple of minutes later I leap off the floor, run past her and lie down on the living room floor, with a cushion under my head.
Victoria calls an ambulance and the next thing I know I’m surrounded by people trying to give me CPR.
I’m losing a lot of blood but I won’t let any of them touch me. I still think Victoria is trying to kill me, but she’s the only person I want close.
I vaguely remember coming to, getting in the ambulance and arriving at the hospital, but the trip continues.
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I think there’s a big conspiracy against me and everyone is in on it, from Victoria all the way down to the nurses. While I’m lying in the hospital bed, doctors and nurses are constantly poking their heads around the curtain to get a look at me.
After being discharged, Victoria puts me in the Priory (private addiction rehab and mental health hospital) for a week.
I barely eat and lose loads of weight.
When I go for a walk in the garden, the flowers and the birds don’t seem real. This goes on for five or six days.
When I finally come out of this trip I realise that fear was driving it.
The fear of not being loved, the fear of not being enough. That told me there was still plenty of buried trauma that needed unearthing and sifting through.
Months go by and I still don’t know if I want to play again. It’s Victoria who encourages me to start making a few enquiries, because she can see my eyes light up when I talk about rugby. And eventually I conclude that there’s still more for me to do in the sport.
I meet Bath director of rugby Stuart Hooper and he says all the right things. I sign in March 2021, but it’s agreed I won’t play until the following season. So, on April 27, me and Victoria take the opportunity to get married.
We were supposed to tie the knot on January 6, the day after our one-year anniversary, but Covid scuppered that. And when we finally get around to it, it’s just me, Victoria, two of her friends and her son Kam.
We’ve agreed it’s just a legal thing, and that I’ll organise a special wedding on a beach in the Caribbean or the Maldives, which is what Victoria deserves, but I’m mad proud, nonetheless.
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I never thought I’d be married. I sometimes wondered if I’d even be alive at 33.
- Extracted by Douglas Wight from Who Am I? by Danny Cipriani, published by HarperCollins on September 14, £22.