Troy Deeney has admitted he ‘lived for the weekend’ during the early stages of his career, loving the lifestyle of getting drunk and not caring what happened next.
Even if what happened next was violent.
The Watford captain, who joined from Walsall in 2010, has turned his life around since spending three months in prison for attacking a group of students in June 2012.
He fired the Hornets to promotion as skipper in 2014/15, and, in doing so, became the first Watford player to ever score 20 or more goals in three consecutive seasons.
The 31-year-old is a certified Vicarage Road hero, but Deeney himself is self-aware enough to know he was not always the man he is now.
“The hardest thing for anyone is to admit you have a problem and then to act on it,” says Deeney in talk show.
“I genuinely used to love a drink. I lived for the weekends and if that ended up in a scrap, so be it.
“That was the environment I grew up in. It was normal for me to act that way because everyone did it.
“Now I look back and think, ‘What an idiot’ — but I’d never change my past because it genuinely made me who I am today.
“I am still working on being completely teetotal and the anger issues are a work in progress.
“There’s a lot of deep-rooted stuff in terms of my childhood and not being happy with aspects of my life.
“All of this I’m doing with professional help. Every Monday, from 2pm until 5pm, I sit and talk and try to peel back the layers of the onion that is me.
“Once I’ve worked it all out, I’ll happily tell everyone the key but therapy is not for everyone and anyone who says it’s fun is lying.
“It’s a release and I do feel a lot of pressure and weight coming out. But for the next day I’m very tired, just from the emotional hit I take from offloading everything.”
