‘Drink brought me to the worst period of my life’

FORTY-EIGHT hours in a Manchester prison cell in 1996 and a conviction for grievous bodily harm was the wake-up call former All-star hurler John Leahy needed.

Yesterday, the addiction counsellor at the Aiseiri Treatment Centre in Wexford urged young people to beware of the tell-tale signs. “It was only when I finally took alcohol out of my life that I realised that a pattern had developed. I got five or six more years out of hurling that I would never have got had I continued to drink,” he told students at Waterford Institute of Technology yesterday.

“I do feel that the GAA does not do enough where drink and the drink culture is concerned. They take in a lot of money in drinks sponsorship. It’s okay in its own right, but they should be doing something like what the students are doing here today to highlight the other side of drinking.”

He added: “Drink had such a grip on me. I don’t want to end up locked up for a few nights again. Drink brought me to the worst period of my life and I don’t want to go back.”