'My life was a mess' - Sunderland striker makes brave addiction admission

New Sunderland striker Aaron Connolly has bravely lifted the lid on his battles with addiction as he fights to get career back on track.

Aaron Connolly - Sunderland striker makes brave admission / IMAGO / Focus Images

New Sunderland striker Aaron Connolly has opened up about his struggles with alcohol, admitting it has dogged his once promising career.

Connolly is close to a Sunderland debut after joining as a free agent in September. He was on the bench against Leeds but Regis Le Bris admitted he was never going to be used. He has also featured for the under-21s, scoring in a win over Derby County.

The 24-year-old was once one of the most promising strikers in the Premier League when he made his breakthrough at Brighton, but his career hit the rails with failed loan spells before a permanent switch to Hull.

However, he has now bravely lifted the lid on his career so far and revealed the huge part addiction has played.

Starting with his Premier League debut when he scored twice, Connolly told Sunderland's official website: "Tottenham, It was one of the best days of my life, but also one of the worst because the following five years was from that.

“I just stopped working, stopped doing the things I should have kept doing. I started to believe the hype, and I just didn’t turn into a good person after that. I was tough to be around. Nobody could tell me anything, I’d done it all myself, nobody else helped me get to where I’d got to. That’s what I believed.

"It’s obviously not true, but that was genuinely what I thought at the time. I didn’t know how to deal with it, if I’m being honest. My parents tried, but they weren’t living with me. I was living with my ex-girlfriend at the time, and it’s hard because I didn’t ever feel like I had that authoritative figure to keep me grounded.

“My parents did try, but I just let myself believe everything people were saying online and it just took over. I always say to my parents, I started to live the life of a footballer without the football side of it. That was the hardest thing to admit at the time, that I wasn’t doing all the things that had got me to the position where I could go and get my house and treat my family, and do all that sort of stuff.

“It hurts to look back and speak about it because I know if I had done everything right, maybe I would still be in the Premier League. Maybe I wouldn’t, but at least I’d know I’d given it all I could to try to stay at that level.”

Connolly arrives at Sunderland after starting the process of rebuilding his reputation at Hull, where he scored eight goals last season.

He left when his contract expired, though, and immediately got himself help rather than another club, hence his delayed signing for Sunderland.

“It was obvious I had a problem with alcohol for a good few years,” he said. “I had my parents, who never drank before and were always telling me when I was younger to stay away from alcohol. That was always their thing because of addiction to alcohol in my family.

“I didn’t listen, clearly. It got me into a lot of trouble and a lot of problems, and it just became something that I relied on. It felt like my buzz used to come from football, and winning games and scoring goals, and it got to a point where the buzz was more from drinking alcohol than going out on a football pitch.

“I used to look forward to the games finishing so I could have time to go and have a drink and socialise. I say socialise, but it was just an excuse to go and get drunk, to go straight to alcohol, and that was where I got my buzz from, whereas before, it was always the buzz of football and being around an environment like I am now. For three or four years, that just wasn’t there.

“I had one of my best seasons last year at Hull, but off the pitch, my life was a mess. The manager at Hull, to be fair, always looked after me, and always tried to help. But it just got to a point where, it wasn’t like life wasn’t worth living, it wasn’t a big dramatic thing, but it was just that my life was so unmanageable and I couldn’t control what I could do and couldn’t control my alcohol.

“It just got to a point where I had to make a decision where I needed to go to a treatment clinic, and I spent a month there in the summer. I just said to my agent, ‘I don’t want you to contact any clubs. I’m not doing this for football, I’m doing this so I can get my life back, and if stuff in football comes with that, then that’s a bonus’.

“It’s an addiction, and the toughest thing I ever had to do was go in there. There’s no price tag or no amount of money in the world that can cure it. It’s a disease, an illness. But going to the clinic was the best and worst month of my life.

“I just hope this might help people. I had everything every young boy would dream, but I couldn’t get hold of my addiction without that help.”