I regret my own parents not teaching me to cook. Thank god for my wife, a fantastic cook. Her name was Poppy Teacher [a member of the whisky family] when I met her, when I’d given up drink and self-medication. I encountered a loving family, very knowledgeable of the bad effects of alcohol, but I can still say I wake up with a Teacher’s every morning. That’s my joke.

I was raised in Dagenham, opposite the police station and the bakery. My early memories are full of fear – of going to school crying, where food was very similar to prison food. [In 1990 Adams crashed his car into a wall when more than four times over the drink-drive limit.]

My mother was a rather large lady. Nowadays they call it obese. She used to get Aunt Reni round and they would eat loads of cake. That’s my main memory of mum really. Back in the day, she’d do a sausage sandwich for me to take to a match. I remember making my debut and burping around the pitch from that sandwich repeating on me.

My dad never cooked. He brought the money home from lorry driving and mum said “I married your father because he had a job and didn’t knock me about”. Maybe there was some love there, but her food was very basic. I remember her doing a beef stew which radiated. It was probably diseased – and definitely larded.

We had drinking competitions on the bus after a match and I suppose our eating competitions were a gag, a joke, on that. How many cakes can you eat before feeling sick? It was juvenile stuff, really. But the service was so good, even back in 1982. Not a lot of clubs were doing it, but at Arsenal we always had smoked salmon.

When I was in prison [in 1990/91] I became a gym orderly and was doing three or even four gym sessions a day. The food just wasn’t giving me enough and I lost a stone, so a prison chef would slip me extra chickens, whole ones. He was the goalkeeper in the prison team.

I was named man of the match while playing drunk and that confused me for a while. I went to a psychotherapist, trying to figure it out. He asked if ever I’d done any of 20 things to get hold of alcohol, including stealing it. I said no to that one. Later, I recalled how I’d lean over and fill up my beers from the pump while bar staff were out of shot. Back then that wasn’t stealing – that was a laugh, a crack. That’s how I justified it.

Even when we had a culture in football of drinking ourselves silly, we were at least looking for a good quality formula for eating the right stuff – chicken first and then layering it, the proteins, then carbohydrates and so on. So if we’ve got a lunchtime kick-off, it had to be in the tummy three hours before, so all of a sudden for breakfast you’re eating chicken.

Tony Adams lifts the Premiership trophy after the final home game of the season at Highbury in 1998. Photograph: Professional Sport/Popperfoto/Getty Images

I put down alcohol but I couldn’t put down fish and chips. I sobered up on Friday 16 August 1996 at five in the afternoon after a three-day bender. I had a surrender moment – a moment of clarity – then went across the road to the chippy. I went to bed with fish and chips for the whole weekend, detoxing. I woke up on Monday with pieces of fried cod and potatoes.

We used to have a Christmas drink at Arsenal, starting at midday. For me and some others the bender usually went on for three or four days. After I gave up booze, I matched them cappuccino to lager. By 3am I’d done 23 cappuccinos; I was totally wired, shaking.

When I put down alcohol, I could eat a whole pack of Hobnobs, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, completely sticking them down me. Food is a fantastic thing. It’s my last joy, my last weakness, my guilty pleasure. I can have an ice-cream or burger and bloody love it. I’ve had three ice-creams already today.

Since leaving Arsenal I’ve worked in Holland, Spain, Portugal, China, Azerbaijan and Italy, and I ate locally in each. There’s a dish in Azerbaijan where every part of the cow is put into a drum and boiled for 24 hours. They’d give me a tapas free at every tapas bar in Granada [in Andalusia]. I saved myself a fortune.

I think the Emirates is the best stadium in the country. But we get a private car-park and go into an executive box with executive sushi. I remember going to watch football with my dad on the tube and having pie, fish or burger, with chips. That food is still alive and kicking in the lower leagues and so I’m threatening to take my boys to Millwall, where it’s still pretty much hot dog.

My mother made me scrambled egg on toast whenever I was ill. My wife’s not my mum, as she keeps reminding me, but when I get poorly I still want scrambled eggs done the way Mother did them.

My favourite things…

FOOD

At the moment I have a thing for vanilla cheesecake. But long-term it’s sticky toffee puddings. I have a sweet tooth and whenever I read menus I go straight to the desserts.

DRINK

I used to have a glass of wine at 6pm, then a bottle, then 3 or 4 bottles. I replaced them with a nice Ginger Beer, often in a wine glass. But I don’t go on a Ginger Beer bender.

PLACE I’VE EVER EATEN

The steak in La Poule Au Pot in Paris is fantastic, but there’s my old mate Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck for a real quality meal, small portions and “an experience”.

Tony Adams appears at the Edinburgh international book festival on 19 August; Sober: Football, My Story, My Life by Tony Adams is out in paperback on 23 August, £8.99. Order a copy from the Guardian Bookshop