Former Tennis Star Björn Borg Nearly Died from Drug Addiction (Exclusive)

In the mid-’90s, Björn Borg awoke in a hospital room with no recollection of how he ended up there.

The former men’s tennis World No. 1 was scheduled to play the final of a senior exhibition tournament in the Netherlands when he suddenly collapsed on a bridge while walking with his father Rune to the venue. 

At a cocktail reception the night before, Borg had relapsed on drugs after struggling with addiction in the ’80s. In the morning, he told his dad, “I cannot make this. I’m going to have problems.”

“My father said, ‘No, I’m sure you’re going to make this.’ Exactly when he said that, I fell down on the street,” he tells PEOPLE. “I don’t remember anything. I woke up in the hospital with all these tubes and everything, and the doctor said, ‘You were really, really lucky at this time, because you were so close to dying.’“

Borg, now 69, reflects on his harrowing medical emergency and several near-death experiences throughout his life in a new tell-all memoir, Heartbeats, out on Tuesday, Sept. 23. For the first time, the 11-time Grand Slam champion — who shocked the tennis world with his early retirement at age 26 in 1983 — details why he left the sport behind and opens up about the decades-long struggle with substance abuse that followed.

A year after retiring due to unhappiness and a lack of motivation, Borg divorced his wife of four years, fellow tennis pro Mariana Simionescu, and entered a relationship with Swedish model Jannike Björling. He says that while he was dating Björling, they started hanging out with the “wrong people.”

“When I stepped away from tennis, I spent time with other people who were not interested in tennis. They were not involved with sports,” he says. “I went to different crowd, and that was a big mistake.”

He continues, “I think that’s why maybe the drugs came into the picture, little pills, too much alcohol, … because these were not really people I should spend time with.”

Borg explains that when he retired, he “had no plans” and no guidance in his search for happiness post-tennis, which led to him turning to drugs and alcohol “just to forget.”

In 1989, he married Italian singer Loredana Berté during what he calls “the dark years in Milan” in Heartbeats. Their fraught marriage, which ended with divorce in 1993, was defined by Borg’s continued substance abuse and resulted in Berté finding him unconscious in bed due to “a dangerous mix of drugs, pills and alcohol,” he wrote. 

According to UPI at the time, police called his overdose on barbiturates an attempted suicide, which Borg has since denied. Instead, he saw the incident as a wake-up call.

“I’m telling myself, ‘[I] have to do something. I want to survive. I don’t want to die. But, if I continue living this kind life, I’m not going to survive,’ ” he recalls.

To escape his addiction, Borg turned to what he knew best: tennis. He decided to stage a comeback to the professional tour at age 34, despite not picking up a racquet for five years, and committed to a strict training regimen.

“That was my rehab,” the tennis legend says. “During all the ‘90s, I didn’t play good tennis, but I was happy. I was starting to get my life back slowly, and that was very important for me.”

He remained clean in the early ‘90s but occasionally relapsed throughout the rest of the decade — including the instance that led to his near-fatal collapse in the Netherlands. 

“Why do you relapse? I can not explain that,” Borg says. 

Borg’s third wife Patricia Östfeldt, to whom he has been married since 2002, helped him drink in moderation and kept him away from drugs. He details in the book how Östfedlt, 55, “set firm boundaries from the beginning” of their relationship by keeping him away from bad influences and potential relapses.

Today, he resides with his wife in Stockholm, Sweden, but regularly spends time in Ibiza, Spain. He has two sons: pro tennis player Leo, whom he shares with Östfeldt, and Robin, whom he welcomed with ex Björling in 1985.

With the release of Heartbeats and “the truth” about his life and career out, Borg hopes people see him in a positive light.

Of his legacy, the Swedish icon says, “I want to be remembered as a great tennis player. I did a lot for the sport, for tennis. I want to be remembered as an interesting tennis player who helped to build, to improve tennis.”

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Heartbeats: A Memoir is available now, wherever books are sold.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.