‘I didn’t care, I just wanted to die so bad’

and I didn’t know what to do. I was waking up and didn’t want to be alive. I was making everyone’s life a misery; no one could talk any sense into me at all.

“I would get very low at times and start thinking these crazy thoughts.

“I bought a brand new Ferrari convertible in the summer of 2016. I was in it on the highway and I got the car up to 190mph and was heading towards a bridge. I didn’t care about nothing, I just wanted to die so bad.

“I gave up on life but as I was heading to the bridge I heard a voice saying, ‘Don’t do this, Tyson, think about your kids, your family, your sons and daughter growing up without a dad’.

“Before I turned into the bridge I pulled on to the motorway. I didn’t know what to do. I was shaking, I was so afraid. I said I’d never think about taking my own life again.”

Fury, long since stripped of his belts and boxing licence, sought professional help but it was a Halloween party that sparked the comeback that has led to a fight against current champion Deontay Wilder in December.

Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Fury said: “I was out at Halloween last year dressed as a skeleton, but I was 29 and everyone else was younger. I thought, ‘Is this what I want from my life?’

“I left early and went home into a dark room, took the skeleton suit off and prayed to God to help me. I’d never begged to God to help me before and I could feel tears running down my cheek.

“I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. I almost accepted that being an alcoholic was my fate but after praying for 10 minutes, I got up and felt the weight was lifted off my shoulders.

“For the first time in my life I thought I was going to be OK.”

Talking about his fight Wilder, below, Fury believes that altitude training even Lennox Lewis could not handle will be key to victory, having been building up for the fight at Big Bear Lake in California – 7,000ft above sea level.

Fury said: “I was speaking to Lennox Lewis on the phone and he told me he got out of there after a week. He said he hated it and it was too hard.

“I was already very fit, could fight 12 rounds on the pads. Here, I am tired after three or four rounds. The air is thin and it’s hard to breathe.” Fury is training at Abel Sanchez’s gym by the famous lake, where former world middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin was the latest great to use it as a base.

It is also a remote area with phone reception limited, which means there are fewer distractions for fighters.

Fury joked with reporters at a Los Angeles media day this week that he had been “wrestling bears at 6am” in a nearby forest.

But he said: “When not training, I am thinking about training. When I’m not thinking about training, I’m sleeping and when I’m not sleeping, I’m eating.

“I don’t leave Big Bear. I went down a mountain to Ontario [in California] last week, just to check everything was going right – I was feeling very tired in the gym. I went to sea level and I was very fit.”