Gascoigne battle with alcoholism ongoing

• AFP, Tuesday, September 24, 2013 2:24 PM

Former England star Paul Gascoigne said he might start drinking again even though he knows it could kill him. The 46-year-old recently returned from a treatment clinic in the United States, where he overheard doctors say he might die.

"I just remember one bit after the third day of being in hospital when he [a doctor] said, 'I don't think this guy is going to make it' and I sort of put my head up a little bit and I was like, tubes in my arms and an oxygen tank injecting round my heart and lungs and that," he said. "I just come forward and I went 'I don't want to die, I need to water the plants' and that was it and then I woke up two weeks later."

Gascoigne, who lives alone in Bournemouth on the south coast of England, said: "With me now if I did have a drink and relapse, it's like becoming tipsy and merry is OK for a couple of days but like the next mouthful I'm so down, I'm so depressed, I cry.

"I do all that because I know inside I'm hurting myself again. I know where I'm heading, a wooden box. Or I'm back in treatment or hospital. Or getting sectioned. ... I hope I don't die through it. Because I won't get any sympathy. At least I know if I did pass away through it I wouldn't be in this pain all the time. The pain's like I know probably in the future I am going to drink again."

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