In his worst moments of battling alcohol and drugs, Wayne Lineker revealed that he drank vodka every morning and was prohibited from taking his granddaughters to school.
Celebs Go Dating star and Ibiza club owner Wayne Lineker has given his first TV interview on Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain, vowing to ditch his hard-partying ways following a terrifying health diagnosis and hospitalisation.
Speaking to co-hosts Ed Balls and Susanna Reid, the 63-year-old revealed just how bad things were during his darkest moments of his battle with drugs and alcohol addiction. Wayne revealed shockingly that at one point, he would down vodka and Redbull for breakfast every day.
After describing 2025 as both the “worst but the best year of my life”, he admitted that after 37 years drinking “very much every day, enough was enough”.
He said, “I found myself in a never-ending cycle of lack of energy in the mornings when I woke up. My breakfast of choice was a cheese and tomato toastie and a vodka Red Bull. I was drinking all day, every day. It was a never-ending cycle I couldn’t get out of because I didn’t want to spend the whole day in my villa on my own, hungover, anxious.
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He continued, “I reached out and got what I called my magic medicine at the time, I’d have a drink. I was acting so uncaring in the morning because I was acting strangely, doing some silly things, and producing some crazily popular videos. Really, it was the turning point.
When Wayne’s own son, who also lives in Ibiza, informed him that he couldn’t pick up his granddaughters from school, he also faced a difficult realization.
I have two granddaughters in Ibiza that I regularly collect from school, and my son Duane called me one day at the office. He said, “Dad, we can’t have you picking up the girls from school any more.” “
Asked by Susanna if he thought he’d become ‘a danger to the safety of the children’. Wayne replied, “Yeah because I’d always got alcohol in my system or drugs. Even though I might have been compos mentis the next day reasonably, I’m not alert, I’m not being myself. As much as an upset that was, it really hit home.”
The brother of football pundit Gary also opened up about his recent brush with death amid his pneumonia battle – which saw him forced to remain in hospital over Christmas, before being discharged before the New Year.
“I was close to death, twice. I actually went to Dubai and caught an infection of what I thought was very similar to Covid so I was worried. I jumped on the plane, put a mask on and went home”, he explained.
When I got home, which was about eight or nine weeks ago, I was extremely ill, and it appeared like my infection was getting worse. My phone was on the other side of the room when I went to bed late at night at 2am. Two hours later, when I woke up, I was completely unable to move.
Explaining the agony he was in, the Celebs Go Dating alum continued, “I wasn’t paralysed but the pain I received attacked the lower spine in my back and I managed to crawl to the phone, got out of my bed. It was probably the worst two minutes of my life, I was in so much pain but I had to call an ambulance. I couldn’t explain to them where I lived.”
I called my daughter to let her know that she was awake in Dubai and that she was paralyzing me. She called her mother, who lives very close to me, and she was very upset. She called the ambulance in at three in the morning and arrived at three in the morning. It was so horrifying because your entire body is affected by the infection.
Asked by Ed if he thought the alcohol and drugs he’d consumed in the past made his health battles so bad, Wayne responded, “The way I see it, I went to rehab for five weeks. While I was in rehab, my immune system crashed.
Your immune system responds, “Where’s my alcohol? ” after such a long period of time and heavily. I’ll force you to pay if you don’t give it to me. “
Wayne told Ed and his co-host Susanna Reid that his big hope now is to open a rehab centre, to help others following his own difficult experiences. He explained that his target audience are the “small percentage who can’t stop when they have started, who I wanted to get a message to help.”
Source: Mirror
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