Arsenal legend Ian Wright has revealed he put his career in jeopardy by smoking marijuana the day before playing a match for Crystal Palace.
Wright, who played for Palace between 1985 and 1991, says he feared for his career when drug testers turned up after a game against West Bromwich Albion shortly after his 21st birthday.
"I'd been smoking weed since I was about 17, not in a smoke-myself-into-uselessness type of way and I wasn't worried about becoming an addict," Wright writes in his new book, "A Life in Football: My Autobiography," which is being serialised in The Sun.
"I'd been around weed smokers from a very early age, and recently it had become something of an end-of-the-week ritual. It didn't even dawn on me that I was doing anything wrong.
"We beat West Brom 4-1 that Saturday, the whole team came into the dressing room still excited and then the drug testers arrived.
"It's the first time I'd ever seen them and I panicked inside -- I've been smoking cannabis, less than 24 hours earlier, and if that test comes back positive that's it. It is literally all over for me.
"I'm practically paralysed while trying to act unconcerned. The guy says: 'Drug test, No. 9.' Mark Bright. I'm sure he's going to call my number next, No. 10. He calls, 'Drug test, No. 11.' Phil Barber. I sit down -- more or less collapse -- and think, 'Somebody's looking out for me, now I know it!'"
Wright says the near miss was a moment of realisation for him and that he stopped smoking marijuana from that point on.
"What hit me the most is how much I would have been letting people from my area down," Wright wrote.
"If I had got caught on that drugs test it would have been beyond them, they just wouldn't have understood it: 'What?! You got into Crystal Palace and you didn't stop smoking weed?'
"From that day to this I never smoked a spliff again."