Ronnie O’Sullivan ballooned to 16st when mum was jailed after bingeing on takeaways while stoned and necking vodka
RONNIE O’SULLIVAN admits ballooning to 16 stone after his mum was jailed.
That’s by bingeing on takeaways when stoned, while also necking copious amounts of vodka.
O’Sullivan is regarded as one of snooker’s greatest ever players.
The 47-year-old has won a joint-record seven World Snooker Championships – making this week’s exit to Luca Brecel even more shocking.
But in his younger years, O’Sullivan almost went off the rails.
While a young prodigy in the early 90s, the ace saw his father jailed for stabbing a man in a nightclub.
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Around the same time, his mother was also incarcerated for tax evasion.
And O’Sullivan turned to drink and drugs as he struggled to run the household in their absence.
He told : “I went wild for six years. Booze and spliffs, I love a joint. The only problem with a joint is that one follows another, and another.
“I would have any old drink, it didn’t matter. Then at 7am the sun would come up and I’d think, ‘Oh Jesus, I’ve done it again’.”
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O’Sullivan went on to detail in his autobiography how he ended up weighing 16 stone during that period.
He added: “I was smoking too much weed, I was bulk-buying too much Smirnoff. I’d always been capable of putting away a fair amount of food but now I found new gears.
“Calling up minicabs and getting them to deliver enough McDonald’s to feed most of D wing at the Scrubs, going down the list on the menu for the local Chinese and ordering so much you would struggle to actually take it away.
“16 stone, when my natural weight as a late teenager should have been 11, 12 max. A right old gut on me, my snooker waistcoats straining at the seams, being let out at the back and then abandoned altogether for a larger man’s cut.
“Puffing like a maniac in the evening, lining up the food beforehand, waking with the munchies and smashing a load more down.”