James Wade has been fined £5,000 by the Darts Regulation Authority (DRA) over an incident at the 2019 PDC World Championship, despite Wade putting the scenes down to his ongoing mental health struggle.

The 36-year-old has been hit with the punishment after over-celebrating in front of opponent Seigo Asada at Alexandra Palace and questionable comments made after the game.

After beating Asada in the second round, Wade said: ‘‘I kept giving it to him, I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to hurt him in his face. I did it for my son and also a bit for the UK.’

The Machine swiftly apologised for the incident and cited a hypomania episode for his behaviour, and describes it as ‘one of his biggest regrets in darts.’

However, because Wade refused to see a psychiatrist and prove his well-documented mental health struggles, the DRA would not take them into account when dishing out the fine.

‘I got fined for it, I got fined £5,000 for it,’ Wade told Metro.co.uk. ‘They didn’t take into consideration my mental illness or anything, because I didn’t go and see a psychiatrist because I refused to go and see one.

‘Every time I go and see one it’s brought up again, I’ve had six years of seeing psychiatrists and I’m sick of it, I don’t want to do it.

‘It wasn’t taken into consideration because I had to prove that I have bipolar and ADHD. They know I do, but they wanted me to prove it.

‘I’ve had so many tests and loads of shit and I won’t do it, I’d rather just take the £5,000 fine and hopefully one day they’ll get bored of me.

‘Hopefully they don’t do it to anyone else because there are other people in darts who have got problems but they don’t talk about it. I talk about it to try and help people.

‘It’s really important, because now I’m fine, but if I’m having a funny five minutes I can’t deal with social situations and it needs to be understood.

‘Because you haven’t got a plaster cast or a scar, it’s not recognised by a lot of people.’

One of the sport’s most engaging characters, Wade has been dealing with his mental health problems for a number of years and has been very open about his struggles.

He believes that talking about his bipolar and ADHD is crucial to try and help others, something that is hard to disagree with, but it has made performing on stage all the more difficult.

Abuse from darts crowds is disappointingly commonplace in the game today, but the personal nature of verbal attacks Wade has had to deal with has had a heavy impact on him, and has helped lead to incidents like the one between him and Asada.

‘With my mental illness it [crowd abuse] has broken me before,’ Wade continued. ‘It really did. It really upset me, really hurt me.

‘People saying things like, “Go back to the mental home,’ which is a polite way of putting it. I’ve asked security before, on stage when I’ve had one of my hissy fits, I’ve told them to get them out the way and they say they haven’t done anything wrong.

‘It’s how that’s perceived and treated, but it does upset me.

‘I’m alright now, not too bad. I’ve only had one wobble in the last year, at darts. At home no one sees them so no one can judge me for them, unfortunately I had one at the World Championships and I’ve had a lot of criticism, but people don’t understand.

‘There was one lady on 5 Live who said it was a load of crap, what I said was happening, and how she got away with that I don’t know. Someone in the public eye that’s allowed to say something like that about mental health.

‘If she said that about a racist remark or something she’d have been sacked, so why does she get away with it on mental health? I’d love to meet her and tell her she’s that stupid and that ignorant.

‘Its up to people whether to believe me or not after the World Championship. It wasn’t exactly how it was portrayed on tele, one of the rants wasn’t really at him, he was just there, then he looked at me strangely and I did it.

‘I’ve watched it, I made myself watch it and it was awful, it’s one of the biggest regrets I’ve got in darts, but you can’t take it back.

‘People on the internet were saying I was racist and that was upsetting, because I’m not.’

Wade knew that things weren’t right going into the match and both he and his wife Sammi were aware that problems could occur if he was given a microphone.

The Aldershot man says he is still reeling from the aftermath of the incident and, while he is entirely sympathetic to Asada for having to deal with his behaviour, he also feels he has been harshly treated, by those in the darts media.

‘Live TV is very unforgiving,’ continued the world number nine. ‘I do some very stupid things sometimes. At the World Championships my wife said, “please don’t interview him,” because I hadn’t been right for two or three days before.

‘But Laura [Woods] said, “let’s give James the benefit of the doubt,” they gave the microphone to me and Sammi was like: “Oh my God, just get him off.”

‘Then I had more interviews afterwards and I was rude but unfortunately I can’t help it. Then I didn’t even sleep, in the morning I came out of it, I don’t remember much about the whole thing but it was awful, awful.

‘I still suffer paranoia from that particular scenario because I portrayed myself as a bad person and I’m not. I’m not necessarily the best person, I’ve got some, not-smoothed edges, but everyone has. It was a bad time and not very nice for the guy who was getting it from me.

‘I’ve not spoken to him since because it doesn’t matter what I say, it’s not going to change it. I made a public apology but it’s not going to change it, I can’t take it back. It cost me the next game so maybe I paid the price.

‘[Sky Sports pundit] Wayne Mardle said it was alright for Gerwyn Price to do that but as soon as I do it, I’m a bully, I’m a thug. I’m not going to repeat what Wayne Mardle said about mental health stuff but I had a conversation with him in Tenerife, what he said he wouldn’t repeat on social media.’

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