DANNY MURPHY has opened up on suffering with a cocaine addiction after retiring from football.
The former Liverpool, Tottenham and England star, 47, hung up his boots after a stint with Blackburn in 2013.
Murphy has gone on to become a successful pundit with the BBC and can regularly be seen on Match of the Day.
Immediately after ending his playing career, however, Murphy struggled with addiction.
Appearing on the Ben Heath Podcast, he bravely revealed: "I initially dabbled in certain things to get the odd buzz and high.
"I think it was an accumulation of things so I needed some escapism from reality. And reality was facing up to problems.
"This financial problem, tax bill, relationship. How do I deal with problems when I don't play football?
"When you play football, the adrenaline and dopamine keep you forward thinking and energetic irrelevant of the other issues. These issues become huge without football.
"I had a spell on cocaine and smoking some weed. The drink, I could live without it. I wasn't an alcoholic. I could sit in a house with alcohol and not drink it.
"For a while I was (addicted to cocaine), yeah. I got to the point where I thought I couldn't do things without it. Which was nonsense, of course I could.
"You manage it initially, you do it once a week, twice a week, do it an extra third day and eventually it builds up.
"The escapism is what I was after and I got it for a while but then it grabs hold of you."
In addition to Match of the Day, Murphy has also worked as a pundit for talkSPORT.
After opening up on his cocaine battle, he spoke of how he went to therapy to combat his addiction.
He continued: "You get some help and start understanding behaviours and patterns.
"When I got help, I put myself around people who
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