Darron Gibson opens up on his addiction to sleeping pills and a seizure which nearly killed him

Ex-footballer Darron Gibson opens up on his addiction to sleeping pills and a seizure which nearly killed him, but also saved him.

The 36 year old went from playing for the likes of Manchester United and the Republic of Ireland, to injury and addiction hampering his career, also having spells for Royal Antwerp, Wolves, Everton, Sunderland, Wigan, and Salford City.

His struggle began with a severe knee injury around 2013, with pain and subsequent insomnia leading him to rely on sleeping pills.

Over time, this dependency escalated, compounded by alcohol use, spiralling into a full-blown addiction.

He reveals that three years ago, while watching the Manchester derby at home, Gibson suffered a terrifying seizure, directly linked to his overuse of sleeping pills.

During the seizure, his physical symptoms were so severe he bit chunks out of his tongue, his eyes rolled back, he went blue, with his wife, Danielle, initially thought he had died.

This life-threatening event became a turning point, acknowledging that without this wake-up call, his addiction might have led to his death.

But following an ultimatum from his wife and the seizure, he pushed on towards recovery, leading him to confront his addiction rather than continue hiding it.

Thanks to therapy and his wife’s support, Gibson managed to regain control over his life, retiring from football in 2021, citing the fear of injury and its impact on his mental health.

And these days has turned his attention to raising awareness, and also being a stay-at-home dad, having turned his life around significantly since those dark days.

Gibson’s decision to speak out about his addiction and the seizure was not just a personal revelation but also aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of dependency on medication and the importance of seeking help for mental health issues.

🗣️ “I was having epilepsy tests. But truth was I’d taken 18 sleeping tablets”

The former Manchester United and Everton midfielder Darron Gibson reveals his mental health struggles, his wife’s ultimatum and how he overcame his addiction ⬇️https://t.co/IZc5ZlJhFI

— Times Sport (@TimesSport) October 13, 2024

In an interview with The Times, Danielle spoke on the seizure that nearly led to his death: “He had gone so stiff and the sweat was dripping from him and he was biting chunks out of his tongue.

“I was trying to stop him doing that, but I couldn’t lift him. His body was so wet and his eyes were like a roulette machine, they were whirring around so fast. It lasted about three minutes and then there was a stillness. His lips turned blue and I thought he had died. I just thought, in a really sad way, that whatever demons he has been living with, he is at peace now.”

Gibson came round and was rushed by ambulance to Wythenshawe Hospital, where he spent two days under observation.

“They were doing brain scans and epilepsy scans. I knew deep down what happened, but I was too embarrassed to tell them. Finally I said: ‘Listen, it’s not that.’ I had taken 12 sleeping tablets the night before and about six more before I sat down to watch the match.”

Darron joined Twitter, but in 2011, received abuse by some Man Utd fans, leading to him deleting his account.

In 2012 he signed for Everton, endured a good debut season for them, and life was on the up having married Danielle in the summer 2013, with Wayne Rooney being his groomsman.

But then things took a turn when cruciate ligament while playing for Ireland in Dublin saw him struggle to deal with his injury.

“He didn’t go into training, the physio would come to the house and there was nothing in his world that felt like fun or joy,” Danielle said.

“It was just getting up and sitting on the sofa with the ice machine. He withdrew. I also withdrew and we kind of lived parallel lives. I didn’t know how to help.”

Darron said: “I had all the support I needed, but I thought I could deal with it all myself.

“With therapy you can’t just push somebody into it and say ‘that will fix you’. They need to be ready.”

Gibson had sleep issues, taking the odd pill, but the knee injury led to insomnia and an increasing reliance on sedatives.

“I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t know how to deal with it. I felt that I was the strong one so I had to be strong all the time.”

Then came his alcohol problem, saying: “I could go out on a Saturday night when I first started and back out on a Sunday and there was no social media, so you could get away with it.

“I had a lot of injuries and some of them could have been prevented if I had lived a bit better. I didn’t live really bad, but I would probably have played at the top level for longer if I knew then what I know now.”

He suffered more time out, breaking a bone in his foot, Gibson crashed his car into some bicycles and a petrol pump at a garage near his Cheshire home.

Upon arrest, he had been barefooted. He received a lengthy driving ban and a 20-month community order for drunk and careless driving, and failing to stop at the scene of an accident.

It came following a night out with his Everton teammates, a birthday party, where he drank mixed alcohol with painkillers.

With his time at Everton coming to an end, he left his family at home in Cheshire, moved to Sunderland, a spell that went badly, and he got injured again, also spending life in an apartment in the northeast on his own.

In March 2018, while making a journey to the Sunderland training ground to see the physio, he crashed into several parked vehicles, again being found guilty of a number of driving offences, but no jail term.

He said: “If I took sleeping tablets, within half an hour I wouldn’t really know what I was doing.

“I would be like a zombie. Mix that with alcohol and you have no idea what you were doing. There was a pattern; get a serious injury that I can’t deal with properly and then do something stupid.”

What a club @SunderlandAFC is! Here’s Darron Gibson, apparently over the limit, being loaded into a police car after writing off a load of cars….on match day! 😂 pic.twitter.com/S0ggMjiICI

— Neil (@MackemNeil84) March 17, 2018

Sunderland made the decision to suspend him, contract terminated by mutual consent, and as bad as it was, that was the turning point.

“The noise in the industry was that Gibbo had an alcohol problem, but that wasn’t the issue,” wife Danielle said.

“Darron was struggling with his mental health and didn’t know how to manage it, and neither did I.”

Gibson got therapy, talked of his feelings and addiction problems.

His defence counsel at the Sunderland trial mentioned about some childhood bullying that had also played on Gibson’s mind, something that still troubles him mentally, keeping quiet on it.

He returned home to Cheshire, life got better, he joined Wigan and was enjoying his time there.

Alex Bruce also helped him through things.

For Danielle, she was focused on therapy studies, but the biggest hurdle in their marriage was still to come, Darron was let go by Wigan in 2019, he signed for Salford City, then go coronavirus.

He was brought back for a game at Port Vale, at a time when Paul Scholes took over as interim manager.

“In the warm-up, my legs were burning. I called the physio and said, ‘I’ve got Covid again,’ and he said, ‘You can’t catch it twice.’ That was the thinking when it first came out. I had the worst game of my life and in the second half, no tackle, snap! My leg snapped when my foot got caught in the ground.”

Gibson had more injury woes, breaking his leg and dislocated his ankle, medics at a local hospital straightened his leg out and he was able to go home.

A private hospital where he was expected to be treated wouldn’t admit him when he contracted Covid a second time, meaning he had to stay at home, knowing that if the badly needed operation he was due to have was delayed any longer, the leg would start to set on its own.

“I got hold of the specialist and told him I was a pro footballer and if I don’t have this operation tomorrow I will never play football again,” he said.

“He rang me back a few hours later and said he could do the operation, but they couldn’t put me to sleep because I had Covid. They gave me an epidural and something in my arm so I wouldn’t know what was going on. I was awake for the operation and they put ten screws in a plate in my leg.

“I got back fit again, but in my head I just thought, ‘I can’t get injured again, I can’t deal with the whole thing that happened, nearly two weeks lying in bed in pain with a broken leg.’ I couldn’t sleep a wink for a week. Every time I closed my eyes I heard that snap.”

Gibson increased the use of the Zopiclone (7.5mg) sleeping tablets, available usually only on prescription.

“If you have got the money and the connections you can get whatever you want,” Gibson said. “I got given a number. Somebody said, ‘If you need any, text that number.’ ”

He had a seizure while watching his former club on the television. When they got back home, Danielle gave him an ultimatum: me and the kids, or the sleeping tablets.

“I was expecting him to give me a packet of sleeping tablets,” she said. “He brought out a plastic carrier bag and just said, ‘There you go.’ ”

“I didn’t sleep for a month,” Gibson said. “Literally I could not get to sleep. I was going to bed, just lying there thinking ‘f***’, but I knew I had to do it. I was grey. I looked horrific. Sweating. It was cold turkey. I still struggle to sleep at times, but when I was taking the tablets I was thinking ‘F***, I can’t get to sleep’ whereas now I just think, ‘There is nothing I can do about it. You are not going to fall asleep for a while, so just do something else.’ ”

On if he continued to take sleeping tablets… “I would be dead. If I hadn’t had the seizure, I possibly would not be here now, I was taking that many of them.”

These days, Gibson spends a lot of time at the gym, training four times a week, and loves catch-ups with former teammates including John O’Shea. But it’s his wife and kids that has his full attention. Danielle continues to build up her own counselling practice, having previously worked in a drug and alcohol support unit in Macclesfield and a nearby women’s prison.

Darron said: “It kind of went from me retiring to Danielle saying, ‘I am going to start this business.’ So I said, ‘I will look after the kids until you get up and running and see where it goes.

“I feel like I am 100 per cent there for my kids. For a lot of my childhood I wasn’t happy. I know I have got happy kids and it makes me happy.”