Tennis icon Boris Becker spoke openly again about his addiction to sleeping pills in the new documentary “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker”.
In the film, which premiered at the Berlinale and will be shown on the Apple TV+ streaming service from April, the 55-year-old described his slide into addiction early on in his career: “In 1987, I couldn’t cope with the pressure constantly having to deliver and win, no longer avoiding it. I traveled from tournament to tournament, suffered constantly from jet lag, couldn’t switch off and eventually couldn’t sleep either. After two long years I was exhausted.”
According to Becker, he then sought advice from the German team doctor. “He said he had some light sleeping pills for me. It gave me six hours of sleep and made me feel good.”
But it turned out quite differently. “They were strong and addictive. You don’t wake up refreshed after five or six hours. It’s like you’re foggy. At some point I couldn’t sleep without the pills,” says Becker. “Without the pills, I was up at night. I was talking to people, going out, drinking. I wasn’t living the life of a professional athlete.”
Tennis: Low point for Boris Becker before the Wimbledon final in 1990
A low point came in 1990 before the Wimbledon final against Stefan Edberg. “I took my last pill at 5 a.m. in the morning. I woke up at 11:30 a.m. completely dazed, the game started at 2 p.m.,” Becker recalled in the documentary.
Unsurprisingly, the first two sets of the game went to Edberg. In sets three and four, however, Becker hit back. “A big comeback, but then I would be nervous,” he said.
In the end Edberg won 6:2, 6:2, 3:6, 3:6, 6:4. “I just thought: ‘You stupid idiot. You could have beaten him’. Right after the final I threw the sleeping pills out the window,” said Becker, who already wrote in his 2003 autobiography “Wait a minute…”. confessed to his drug addiction.