The former professional footballer has struggled with his mental health for most of his life. But it took five suicide attempts for him to admit how badly he wanted to end it. He talks about how he turned the corner – and his hopes for his new post with the charity Mind
‘How are you?” I ask Clarke Carlisle. Usually when you meet people it’s a nicety. Not with Carlisle. He smiles ecstatically. “I’m incredibly well, thank you. Yeah, really, really good,” says the former footballer and incoming chair of the mental health charity Mind. “I have been consistently well – not just stable, but well – for three or four years now.”
Few people understand what it is to be mentally unwell quite like Carlisle does. And few understand what recovery means like he does. “It doesn’t happen by accident. Once you get stable that’s not the end of the journey. And that seems to be the MO of our society these days. You do something, you go into hospital and they patch you up, then send you on your way. And that’s the same with mental health. You might get some pills, have a counselling session, you might have a hug and a chat with someone, and they think that’s the end of the journey. And it’s not.”
It has taken him a lot of work to get to the stage where he holds down a senior day job with the gambling support charity Betknowmore, believes in himself again, enjoys family life and truly wants to live.
In his 20s, Carlisle looked as if he had it all. He was a handsome centre-back playing for clubs including Blackpool, Queens Park Rangers and, at his peak, in the Premier League for Watford and Burnley. He was also the chair of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), hugely respected by his fellow players. Clarke appeared on the BBC’s Question Time, more than holding his own with MPs on the hot political topics of the day. In 2002, he beat 11 other players to win a TV quizshow hosted by Carol Vorderman called Britain’s Brainiest Footballer.
After making more than 500 appearances for nine clubs in a 17-year career, he hung up his boots in 2013. Carlisle was one of the last footballers you would have expected to struggle on retiring. There were so many opportunities for him – in business, media, coaching, you name it. But struggle he did. In December 2014 came the shocking news that Carlisle had tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a lorry. It wasn’t his first attempted suicide. Nor was it to be his last. There have been five in total, Carlisle says.
For most of his life, he has suffered with depression. Despite Carlisle’s success, he believed he was a failure. Retirement exacerbated this. After his experience with the PFA, he thought he would walk into a senior executive role. But, he says, he was patronised by the corporate world. “The condescending nature of business to sports people is off the scale. They said things to me like: ‘You’re very intelligent, aren’t you?’ For what? ‘You’re very well spoken, aren’t you?’ For what? Is it for a black man, or is it for a footballer, or for both?”
Fortunately, he got himself a £100,000-a-year contract as a TV pundit for ITV. But he was still finding it hard to adapt from his footballer lifestyle. He and his first wife were due to make a down payment on a £675,000 house when Carlisle heard that ITV wasn’t renewing his contract. Yet again, he told himself he had failed. He tried to gamble his way out of it, as he had done many times before. So many athletes are attracted to gambling, he says, because their life is predicated on win or lose. “When I went in the doors of the casino, I was coming out with half a million pounds or nothing.” He came out with nothing. Two days later, he jumped in front of the lorry.
Astonishingly, Carlisle survived. But he was a mess. He was airlifted to Leeds general infirmary, where he was stitched back together over the next two days. “I remember being in the air ambulance and the paramedic said: ‘This guy is DOA.’ Dead on Arrival. And I remember thinking: ‘Happy days!’ But I wasn’t.” He pauses. “Thank … God,” he says fiercely. A short while later, the crew asked him his name and what year it was. “‘Clarke Carlisle, 2014,’ I said. Then I went: ‘Fucking hell! I’ve not even got amnesia!’”
Carlisle, 46, has always had a good sense of humour. He talks incredibly movingly and perceptively about depression, but you sense he could just as easily turn his hand to mental health standup.
Today, he lives in Newcastle, where his wife comes from, but we meet at the Guardian’s office in London. He’s dressed in shorts and a polo shirt on another fizzing summer day. Carlisle is little changed from his footballing days: now bearder with a few extra scars. He always had plenty of scars – the souvenirs of a defender’s life. But these are more painful reminders. The most dramatic slices are from his crown to his left eyebrow, like a steep contour – a result of his 2014 suicide attempt. He’s got a dog-tag tattoo on his upper arm to mark the date of it. “Small steps,” it says.
The young Carlisle was gifted. He left school with 10 grade A GCSEs (five of them A*s), then went into his football apprenticeship. But nothing he did seemed good enough for his father, a former semi-professional player and God-fearing old-school disciplinarian. All the young Carlisle wanted was approval, and he rarely got it.
In professional football, he found it much the same. But now it was machismo rather than God that dictated the terms. He appeared hard as nails, bantered with the best of them, but the culture was eating away at his insecurities. After his first training session at Leeds United, he returned to the changing room to find his new shirt and shoes shredded – a practical joke, an initiation ceremony, call it what you will; he drove home in tears. In professional team sport, he says, your best friend can also be your greatest rival – an injury for you is an opportunity for them. The football narrative “You’re only as good as your last game” invites insecurity. And if you show vulnerability, it’s pounced on. Despite his success (three appearances for England under-21s and an £8,000-a-week salary at Burnley) he was struggling. His drinking and gambling spiralled.
Carlisle has often been labelled an alcoholic and gambling addict. He says it’s up to others how they see him, but he doesn’t accept those terms. If you do, he says, you render yourself powerless. Today, he doesn’t gamble. He says he could happily drink and leave it at one or two pints, but he chooses not to. Alcohol was not really the cause of his problems, he insists, just the symptom. He had to deal with the motivation behind his drinking. “Once you address your motivation and put positive coping strategies in place, the action is largely irrelevant.” He used alcohol to obliterate his fears and to escape.
After the suicide attempt in 2014, Carlisle was diagnosed with recurrent complex depression disorder and borderline personality disorder. He left hospital with a cocktail of meds, dismantled what was left of his life and began to rebuild it. He and his wife, with whom he had two children, separated. In 2016, he met Carrie Armstrong. They married the following year, and now have two children aged eight and six.
