Everton's Dele Alli opens up about pill addiction, sexual abuse as child

Everton midfielder Dele Alli has revealed that he was sexually abused as a child and dealt drugs before he was adopted by an "amazing" family who helped him to turn his life around.

Alli, a former England international, also said in an interview with Gary Neville on The Overlap that he recently spent six weeks in rehab as a result of an addiction to sleeping pills.

Alli joined Everton on a two-and-a-half-year deal in February last year in a bid to revive his career after seven years at Tottenham Hotspur. He moved to Turkish side Besiktas on loan for the 2022-23 season and came out of rehab last month.

"It's been going on for a long time without me realising it, I was doing (sleeping pills) to numb the feelings I had - I didn't realise I was doing it for that purpose," the 27-year-old said.

"I've definitely abused them too much. It got really bad at some points and I didn't understand how bad it was but I was never dealing with the root of the problem - when I was growing up the traumas I had, the feelings I had and I tried to deal with it all by myself. I lost myself for a few years."

Alli, who was part of the England team that reached the 2018 World Cup semi-final in Russia, was born in Milton Keynes in central England to a Nigerian father and an English mother. His father left shortly after his birth.

He spent two years in Nigeria with his father as a child before returning to England. At the age of 13, he was taken in by Alan and Sally Hickford.

In the interview, he spoke emotionally about his troubled childhood. He said he was sexually abused by a friend of his mother when he was six-years-old and was dealing drugs by the age of eight.

"At six, I was molested," he said. "I was sent to Africa to learn discipline. Then I was