Ronnie O’Sullivan opens up about drugs addiction and how parents going to prison cause him to ‘lose his way’
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Published 25/08/2022 at 08:01 GMT
Ronnie O’Sullivan has described his drugs addiction when he was younger as “horrendous” with his difficult spell costing him “quite a few years”. O’Sullivan told Eurosport’s The Breakdown podcast that struggled when both of his parents went to prison during his teenage years which affected him on the snooker table. Stream top snooker action live and on-demand on discovery+
‘It was horrendous’ – O’Sullivan opens up about addictions which cost him ‘a few years'
Ronnie O’Sullivan described his issues with drugs when he was younger as “horrendous” when opening up about his addiction on Eurosport’s The Breakdown podcast.
O’Sullivan went through a period, after he had won the UK Championship in 1993 to become the youngest ever ranking event winner at 18 years old, where both of his parents were in jail.
His father went to prison in 1992, then his mother in 1996, which led to a difficult spell for O’Sullivan during his 20s, which he explained to Eurosport's Greg Rutherford and Orla Chennaoui.
The Breakdown returned this week for the second part of its first season. Previous episodes have included conversations with Sir Chris Hoy, racing driver Jamie Chadwick and sprint legend Mark Cavendish. You can listen here.
“I didn’t know to go through that,” O'Sullivan said on the Eurosport podcast.
“It was horrendous. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, it was bad.
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“I never smoked a cigarette until I was 19. I was a really good boy and brought up to be quite disciplined, professional and my dad was quite disciplined so it was good for me.
“When my dad went to jail when I was 15 that was a big blow for me, then my mum went to jail when I was 19. Once she went to jail, I just lost my way.
“I had six years where I let myself go a little bit so I wish I could turn the clock back and not do that so it was what it was.
“I lost quite a few years through that sort of behaviour but I had a good time.”
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'Like playing Djokovic'
O'Sullivan also told Eurosport's The Breakdown podcast that he sees comparisons between how he defeats opponents and how tennis star Novak Djokovic does.
"It's not so much what you're thinking about, I know once I hit a certain spot that he is not going to be able to stay with this," O'Sullivan told the Eurosport podcast.
"He might go a frame, two frames, three frames, or whatever, but he is going to crumble. Not through any fault of his own: just his game, physically, mentally, it all just comes down.
"It all eventually falls apart for them, do you know what I mean? I just think 'you can't keep this up, I can'.
"So it might go 4-4, but then I'll go 12-4 up. I just think that I'm going to keep playing like that continuously and you've had to put everything into that 4-4, but you can't keep doing that.
"Some days you can try everything and it just doesn't happen for you. I just look at it over a career and think 'have I been on top most of the time?'
"I like to think that when I get in that gear and that zone, I become quite strong," he continued. "They [his opponents] could not sustain it for longer periods of time so I was able to pull away.
"I play to quite a high level for a lot of the time, which is quite difficult. It is like playing Djokovic at tennis: you might win the first set, nick it 6-4, and you have to give it everything, but then he starts to get into you and you just see them thinking 'I can't deal with this fella'.
"It is a bit like that: you know you have got them, but it is a matter of time and you have to just go through the process. You can't get too confident or cocky, you have just got to go through it.
"It can be tough. Snooker is a tough sport. You are sitting in your chair and a lot of it is out of your control. A lot of the time you are sitting in your chair and you have to process a lot of this dialogue in your head."
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