Dele Alli has revealed he was sexually abused at the age of six and selling drugs at eight.

In a raw and emotional interview with Gary Neville on The Overlap, in which Dele and Neville fight back tears, he gives a candid account of why his career has declined in recent years.

Dele admits that as an adult he was addicted to sleeping tablets and drinking to “escape from the reality” of his difficult upbringing before he was adopted by the Hickford family.

“It’s not something I have spoken about that much but there were a few incidents that give you an understanding. At six I was molested by my mum’s friend who was at the house at lot; my mum was an alcoholic. That happened at six. I was sent to Africa to learn discipline and then I was sent back. Seven, I started smoking, eight I started dealing drugs. An older person told me that they wouldn’t stop a kid on a bike, so I rode around with my football, and then underneath I’d have the drugs – that was eight.

“Eleven, I was hung off a bridge by a guy from the next estate, a man. Twelve, I was adopted – and from then, I was adopted by an amazing family, I couldn’t have asked for better people to do what they’d done for me. If God created people, it was them.”

Dele admits he was addicted to sleeping pills for several years.

“I got addicted to sleeping tablets and it’s probably a problem that not only I have. I think it’s something that’s going around more than people realise in football. With our schedule you have a game, you have to be up early in the morning to train, you have all the adrenaline and stuff so sometimes to take a sleeping tablet and be ready for the next day is fine. But when your dopamine system and you’re as broken as I am it can obviously have the reverse effect, because it does work for the problems you want to deal with and that is the problem – it works until it doesn’t. I definitely abused them.

“I was never really dealing with the problem which was growing and the traumas I had, the feelings I was holding on to; I tried to deal with it all by myself. My adopted family, my brother, there were times they would take me aside crying, asking me to just speak to them about what I was feeling, but I couldn’t do it. I lost myself for a few years, I was just turning everyone away, when I had the family that saved my life crying, asking me to tell them what’s wrong, and I just didn’t want to do it.”