Ex-Liverpool star hid painkillers in bag on pitch – 'they should have killed me'

Chris Kirkland was using more than six times the maximum dose of Tramadol every day to deal with the pressure of playing professional football – and says players are still taking the banned drug today

Posted Thursday, October 10, 2024 by Dailystar.co.uk

Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland has opened up on the horrific Tramadol drug addiction which took over his career and could have killed him.

In 2001, Kirkland, aged just 20, became Britain's most expensive keeper when joining Liverpool from Coventry City in a deal worth £6m. Starting as understudy to Anfield No.1 Jerzy Dudek, Kirkland was given his chance in the 2002-03 season after Polish stopper Dudek suffered a drop in form.

Ex-Liverpool and England goalkeeper Chris Kirkland has his own mental health initiative 'Make Talk Your Goal,' at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire

A long-standing back injury eventually sidelined him and saw his Anfield and England career hit the buffers. His back complaint was just one in a long list of "freak injuries" as Kirkland calls them, from broken fingers to a broken wrist and a lacerated kidney – and it was also the one which eventually led to his Tramadol addiction.

For the six years after leaving Liverpool, Kirkland bounced around various clubs with loan spells at West Brom and Wigan, to a permanent deal with the Latics before more loans to Leicester and Doncaster. It was his move to Sheffield Wednesday in 2012, though, which sparked the increase in his use of pills.

The recurrence of his back injury just days before the season opener saw Kirkland decide to self-medicate with Tramadol, which he had been prescribed before for the same injury. But the pressure of another injury also increased his anxiety about missing games – and he was soon taking the pills for the mental side of things, rather than the physical.

"My problem was being away from home,” he told the Athletic. “I was missing everything: picking my daughter up from school, watching her school plays, walking my dogs in the afternoon. All the stuff that was part of my routine when I was at Liverpool and Wigan was gone.

"I started leaving at 5.45am and getting to the training ground hours before everyone else. I got really anxious about it, so I started taking more tablets for the anxiety. I was on a slippery slope.

“Tramadol is meant to be a maximum of 400mg a day. I got to the point where I was taking 2,500mg a day. I was taking them out on to the pitch in my goalie bag. It wasn’t for the pain. It was because I was addicted. They were the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing I thought about at night.”

Kirkland kept the medical team at Sheffield Wednesday – and even his wife – in the dark about his problems, using the internet to get hold of the tablets he felt he needed which are now on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned list.

“They’re not performance-enhancing," Kirkland said. "They’re not going to turn you into Superman or make you save every shot that comes in. They’re dangerous. That’s the issue. I was fainting, heart palpitations, hallucinations, violently ill. They can kill you. They should have killed me. They nearly did."

Kirkland said his addiction got "worse and worse" and eventually he didn't even want to play football. A spell at Preston after losing his starting place at Sheffield Wednesday was meant to be his last. But he decided to join Bury who had just reached League One and it was a training camp in Portugal which saw his addiction escalate to the point of becoming life-threatening.

After a poor first day of camp, Kirkland says he "took loads of tablets and they obviously sent me mad”, to the point where he was on top of the apartment block, in tears, thinking about taking his own life. "Enough,” he says. “I was going to jump off.”

A last-minute call to his wife, who convinced him to get help, saved his life. With a spell in rehab after some time away from the game, Kirkland is now in a better place, having had a relapse during the Covid pandemic where he was once again ordering and taking unknown pills bought off the internet which left him disorientated and "not knowing who I was".

These days, two and a half years clean, Kirkland spends his time fundraising and working with the LFC Foundation, the PFA and others to raise awareness, including helping current players who reach out to him with their own tales of addiction to painkillers.

“I’m not saying it’s every other player, but it’s more than you would think,” he said. “It’s on the banned list now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone gets caught with them."