My gambling isolated me from people & I’d to hit rock bottom before seeking help
CATS LEGEND RICHIE OPENS UP ON HIS ADDICTION HELL
GAMBLING first became an issue for Richie Power towards the end of his time at college in Dublin.
The ex-kilkenny hurling legend wasn’t partying due to training demands and found he had a lot of free time on his hands.
“I knew I had an issue,” he admits. “How serious it was, you can never put your finger on.
“I knew I was spending a lot more time in bookmakers and spending a lot more time concentrating on gambling than other things. That just stayed going for years, unfortunately.
“There is this voice in your head that is screaming for help and you just want to blurt it out and say it.
“Unfortunately, gambling addiction is one of those things that I still don’t understand myself.
“It isolates you from people and those closest to you. It doesn’t let you ask for help unless you hit rock bottom.
“That’s what I done and that’s how I started to get the help that I really needed. That was through family, through the GPA. That’s where it started for me.” Power (pictured below in 2014) says that an inter-county player is “not living the same life as another 22, 23, 24 year old.”
“You have so much free time,” he says. “You have no social life.
“If you’re in a relationship, that’s fine, but if you’re not in a relationship, you have an awful lot of free time at the weekends.”
Power never put a figure on how much he lost financially – and doesn’t want to.
“I suppose I have learned to not dwell
on that part of it, to be honest,” he adds.
“The financial side if it can be sorted. There is no doubt about that.
“It is more the mental side of it which was the biggest issue and what it does to you mentally.
“Financially, you know it is putting you into debt but you are not sure how much. Fortunately enough, I did not get myself into huge debt. Thankfully, I had that all cleared after a period of time but again it was more about getting the head right, getting the support at home.
“I mention the road to recovery an awful lot in the show and that is what it is about, it is about getting on that road and staying on that road.”
Power believes the Kilkenny management may have seen leaving him out as their way of helping him and “releasing the pressure of inter-county hurling.”
“It was something they didn’t want around,” he continues. “I obviously had gone through and awful bad dip in form.
“My form was very, very poor. I wasn’t performing anywhere near the levels that I should have been.
“Once I started training with Mickey Comerford, things started to gradually improve.
I was in a much better physical and mental state to get back involved with the team in 2014.
“Thankfully, that’s how it transpired but it could easily have gone the other way.”
The 22nd series of LAORCHA GAEL featuring eight GAA legends begins tomorrow evening at 9.30pm on TG4 and Richie Power is up first.