Wasim Akram confesses he was addicted to cocaine

Akram, who has taken 916 international wickets for Pakistan, said the cocaine addiction only went away after the death of his first wife Huma in 2009.

FILE PHOTO: Pakistan captain Wasim Akram during a press conference at Toronto in 1999. | Photo Credit: V. V. Krishnan

Wasim Akram, in his upcoming autobiography Sultan: A Memoir, has admitted he was once addicted to cocaine, The Times revealed in an interview with the legendary fast bowler on Saturday.

Akram, who has taken 916 international wickets for Pakistan, said the addiction went away after the death of his first wife, Huma, in 2009.

“I liked to indulge myself; I liked to party,” Akram has penned. “The culture of fame in south Asia is all consuming, seductive and corrupting. You can go to ten parties a night, and some do. And it took its toll on me. My devices turned into vices.

“Worst of all, I developed a dependence on cocaine. It started innocuously enough when I was offered a line at a party in England; my use grew steadily more serious, to the point that I felt I needed it to function.”

Akram has also elaborated on how the substance dependence changed him as a person. He writes, “It made me volatile. It made me deceptive. Huma, I know, was often lonely in this time. She would talk of her desire to move to Karachi, to be nearer her parents and siblings. I was reluctant. Why? Partly because I liked going to Karachi on my own, pretending it was work when it was actually about partying, often for days at a time.”

Eventually Huma found out about this, when she got a packet of the drug in Akram’s wallet. However, she only reacted by asking him to get help. “It was getting out of hand. I couldn’t control it. One line would become two, two would become four; four would become a gram, a gram would become two. I could not sleep. I could not eat,” the former Pakistan captain writes.

Akram, later agreed to go into rehabilitation in Lahore. “Movies conjure up an image of rehab as a caring, nurturing environment. This facility was brutal: a bare building with five cells, a meeting room and a kitchen. The doctor was a complete con man, who worked primarily on manipulating families rather than treating patients, on separating relatives from money rather than users from drugs.”

Huma later succumbed to mucormycosis and that seemed to have changed everything. “Huma’s last selfless, unconscious act was curing me of my drug problem. That way of life was over, and I have never looked back.”

Akram, who is presently married to Australian Shaniera Thompson, has played 104 Tests and 356 One-Day Internationals. He was also a part of the 1992 World Cup-winning side.