Former Millwall captain Matt Lawrence reveals he 'died twice in four days' during fentanyl addiction battle

Matt Lawrence, the former Millwall captain who led the club to the 2004 FA Cup final against Manchester United, has revealed he was clinically dead on two separate occasions within four days after taking cocaine laced with a fatal dose of fentanyl on the streets of New York.

Lawrence, now 52, made 261 appearances for Millwall and later played for Crystal Palace before retiring in 2015. It was after his playing career ended that he developed what he describes as a crippling drug addiction — one that would bring him to the edge of death twice in the same week.

The first incident occurred when Lawrence collapsed on Bleecker Street in Manhattan after taking drugs in a nearby bar. “Everything else I know is from the accounts I’ve read,” he said, “and that’s that I walked halfway across Bleecker Street and passed out, stopped breathing and a Good Samaritan stopped the traffic. I didn’t breathe again until the emergency services gave me a Narcan shot in the middle of the road.” Three other people died from the same batch of drugs; the dealer responsible was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Despite being resuscitated and hospitalised, Lawrence did not stop using drugs. Days later, his body gave out again. “My muscles stopped working. I stopped breathing. I was given the last rites, it was that close,” he said. “There is CCTV footage but I haven’t been able to watch it. Again, luckily, this is the middle of Manhattan and the emergency services were there very quickly. This time I do remember waking up with a needle in my arm.”

Reflecting on how he reached that point, Lawrence said the gradual normalisation of dangerous behaviour was central to his addiction. “It’s scary how I came to normalise everything. Normalised buying drugs, which is illegal. Normalised being an angry person because that’s what drugs do. They make you snappy and argumentative. I managed to normalise dying because I came out of hospital and didn’t stop. I normalised dying twice in the space of four days.”

Lawrence has explained that speaking publicly is part of his recovery. “I’m talking because I need the catharsis. This is me purging my soul in a way. I need the reality to hit. I need other people to read it.”

He took the decision to get sober in August last year and describes himself as “an infinitely better human being” since doing so.