Sometimes in London, things would get out of control on a night and things could really have ended badly.
I watch all the Arsenal games I can and I've even got this thing that, when something happens in the game, my phone goes ping.
The way I experienced the love of my father was when I succeeded at football. That self-belief was a way you got rewarded. In the way he always had my back, he was the most amazing father. But his way was not always correct and once I became a professional and earned a lot of money that tipped the balance in our relationship.
When I was injured, and couldn't get the excitement from that absolute living-on-the-edge feeling on the pitch, gambling gave me adrenaline. Obviously the higher the risk, the higher the adrenaline. So you go for high stakes.
Messi has a fantastic vision of the game and technically he is incredible. The things he does are not easy and even more impressive is the speed at which he does them. But the decisive thing for me is not the fact that he scores a lot of goals now, but how he plays within the team. In that way, he is even better.
If you find a football player who says he is happy to sit and watch and not play then I think he needs to find another job.
The key thing was that I had no one in my life saying 'no.' Everyone I knew was just saying what I wanted to hear.
I sometimes forget, after arriving at Arsenal as a 16-year-old, that I'm only on trial with the big guns.
I switch from the No 26 jersey to No 52 jersey because of a professional fortune-teller my mum knows.
Southern Europeans, especially the French, have always been quicker off the mark and braver when it comes to men's fashion and experimenting with colour.
A lot of people think that it is all about the money, but money does not matter if you are not happy.
Looking back definitely gave me upset because there are moments which were very hurtful and difficult to talk about.
When I had a lot of injuries on the pitch, I couldn't find that excitement level of going on, playing in front of 60,000. There wasn't anything that lived up to that. The only time I could get that competitive feeling was going to the casino.
I didn't want to be just another guy who played football and lost all his money and didn't use his brain.
I consider myself lucky to have experienced the stuff I have. The experiences on and off the pitch is something I could never get again.
Personally, I think I pay a big price with my body, my time and with never being able to have privacy when I am out and around other people.
I am not complaining. It's a natural part of being a professional football but it is definitely a price to pay when, for example, you can't go out to eat in a restaurant with your girlfriend without photographers chasing you.
The biggest thing I miss because of football is that I really, really love to go on a skiing holiday but as long as I have my career, I can't do that because of the risk of being injured. That is one thing that has been taken away from me by football that other young people can do. They have the freedom to decide how to spend their time.
I would lie if I said that I didn't enjoy the money I earn in football. It's always fair to ask whether players are worth the incredible amounts of money we earn and ask whether we earn too much. Somehow I believe that we must be worth our salaries because that is how the mechanism of society works.
If I cannot play at Arsenal, then I do not want to sit on the bench - but every player thinks like that.