“My life was a disaster”

New Sunderland striker Aaron Connolly has opened up about his struggles with alcohol, admitting it chased his 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 would never use him. He has also featured for the under-21s, scoring in a win against Derby County.

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

However, he has now bravely lifted his career so far and revealed how big a 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 next five years went be from that.

“I just stopped working, I stopped doing the things I should have kept doing. I started believing the hype and I didn’t become a good person after that. I was hard to be around. No one He couldn’t tell me anything, I had done it all myself, no one else helped me get to where I was. That’s what I believed.

“Obviously it’s not true, but that’s really what I thought at the time. I didn’t know how to deal with it, to be honest. My parents tried, but they weren’t living with me. living with my ex-girlfriend at the time , and it’s hard because I never felt like I had that figure of authority to keep me grounded.

“My parents tried, but I just believed everything people said online and it took over. I always tell my parents that I started living the life of a footballer without the football side of it. It was the harder to admit at the time, that I wasn’t doing all the things that had gotten me to the position where I could go find my house and take care of my family, and do all those kinds of things.

“It hurts to look back and talk about it because I know that if I had done everything right, I might still be in the Premier League. I might not be, but at least I would know that I had given everything I could to try and stay in this level”.

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

He left when his contract expired, however, and immediately helped himself rather than another club, hence his late signing for Sunderland.

“It was obvious that I had a drinking problem for quite a few years,” he said. “I had my parents, who never drank before and always told me when I was young to stay away from alcohol. That was always theirs because of the alcohol addiction in my family.

“I didn’t listen, of course. It got me into a lot of trouble and a lot of trouble, and it became something I relied on. It seemed like my humor came from football, and winning games and scoring goals, and it getting to a point where the buzz was more about drinking alcohol than going out on a football field.

“I was really looking forward to the games being over so I could have time to go and have a drink and socialize. I say socialize, but it was just an excuse to go get drunk, go straight to alcohol, and I went from there getting my buzz out, whereas before, it was always the buzz of football and being around an environment like me. 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 Hull manager, to be fair, always looked after me and always tried to help. But it got to a point where, it wasn’t like life wasn’t worth living, it wasn’t a dramatic thing, but it was that my life was so uncontrollable and I couldn’t control what I could do and I couldn’t control it my alcohol

“It got to a point where I had to make a decision where I had to go to a treatment clinic and I spent a month there over the summer. I just said to my agent, ‘I don’t want you to contact no club”. I’m not doing this for football, I’m doing it so I can get my life back, and if there’s football stuff with it, that’s a plus.”

“It’s an addiction, and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was get into it. There is no price or amount of money in the world that can cure this. It’s a disease, a disease. But going to the clinic was the best and worst month of my life.

“I just hope this can help people. I had everything any kid would dream of, but I couldn’t have overcome my addiction without this help.”