Danny Cipriani has revealed that his wife sent him to rehab after he cracked open his skull on a step and described how he nearly died after being hit by a bus on a night. The 35-year-old has made a number of shocking revelations about his history with alcohol and drugs in his new autobiography, Who Am I?, about his history with booze and drugs.
In extracts obtained by The Sun, he revealed that he fell on a stone step after becoming convinced wife Victoria was trying to kill him. He had been taking magic mushrooms and says in the book: "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."
An ambulance took him to hospital where he was still convinced there was a big conspiracy against him with the doctors and nurses in on it.
He said: "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."
After being discharged from hospital, he says his wife put him into the Priory for a week. Speaking about that time, he said: "When I go for a walk in the garden, the flowers and the birds don’t seem real. 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."
The former England rugby international details how he nearly died after being hit by a bus while on a pub crawl with a group of Sale Sharks team-mates more than a decade ago.
It was described as a moment of drunken madness that saw him sprint across the road and into the path of an oncoming bus.
Writing in his memoir, he talks about the event saying: "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," he added.
"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...'"
He adds: "People have a laugh at that, which is what I wanted. But no one asks me how I really am."
