Wayne Rooney used to "lock [himself away] and just drink" to cope with being in the public eye.
The 36-year-old former England striker made his first team debut for Manchester United when he was just 16 years old and he found it hard to adjust from his humble upbringing on a Liverpool council estate to the wealth and fame of being a professional footballer, so he used to isolate away from other people and hit the bottle to mask his emotions.
He told the Mail on Sunday newspaper: "It took a long time for me to get used to that and figure out how to deal with it. It was like being thrown in somewhere where you are just not comfortable. That was tough for me.
"I had made a lot of mistakes when I was younger, some in the press and some not in the press, whether that's fighting or whatever. For me to deal with that, deal with stuff that was in the newspapers, deal with the manager at the time, deal with family at the time, was very difficult.
"In my early years at Manchester United, probably until we had my first son, Kai, I locked myself away really. I never went out.
"There were times you'd get a couple of days off from football and I would actually lock myself away and just drink, to try to take all that away from my mind.
"People might know that I liked a drink at times or went out but there was a lot more to it than just that. It was what was going on in my head."
Wayne - who has four sons with wife Coleen - thinks the current crop of players are more "empowered" to discuss their mental health, but it wasn't the done thing 20 years ago.
He added: "Now, people would be more empowered to speak about that kind of thing. Back then, in my head and with other players, there was no way I could go into the United dressing room and start saying "This is how I am feeling" because you just wouldn't do it. Then you would end up suffering internally rather than letting your thoughts out.
"Locking myself away made me forget some of the issues I was dealing with. It was like a binge.
"Normally, that's with a group of lads but this was a self-binge, basically, which helps you forget things but when you come out of it, you are going back to work and it is still there so it was doing more damage than good."
The Derby County manager insisted he was never "an alcoholic" and he has a "fine" relationship with alcohol these days.
He said: "My relationship with drink now is fine. No problems. I still have a drink now and again. Not like I used to. Not like when I was playing. It's well in control.
"It was never at a stage where I thought I was an alcoholic. If I saw a couple of days' window, I thought "right, that's a couple of days where I can go at it and try and forget things". I would never be going into training drunk."
