Connolly, capped nine times for the Republic of Ireland, moved to Brighton aged 15 and was a prolific scorer in the club’s Under-23 side.
Handed his league debut under then-manager Graham Potter in August 2019, Connolly caught the eye when he scored twice against Tottenham in his first start for the club the following month.
Looking back now, the forward, who signed for Sunderland on a free this summer, pinpoints that day as the beginning of his negative downward spiral.
‘That’s probably where my career started to go downhill when it really should have been carrying on upwards,’ Connolly told Sunderland’s website in an emotional interview to mark World Mental Health Day.
‘I just stopped doing the things that got me to that position. I just stopped working hard and you can’t do that. I started to believe the hype. I became a tough person to be around. Nobody could tell me anything.’
Connolly scored just three further goals in the top flight and said he did not heed warnings from his parents about his family’s history with alcoholism.
‘I didn’t listen, clearly. It got me in a lot of trouble. It just became something that I relied on,’ he said. ‘I just lost track of myself, of why I was playing football.
‘I was always chasing things that, before that Tottenham game, I was never chasing. I was never chasing money. I was never chasing people on social media talking about me. I didn’t start football for that reason.
‘It felt like my buzz used to come from football, winning games and scoring goals. It got to a point where the buzz was more from drinking alcohol than going out on a football pitch. I used to look forward to the games finishing so I could have time to go and have a drink.’
Unsuccessful loan spells at Middlesbrough and Venezia followed before Connolly signed for Hull City last year. Despite scoring eight goals last season he was released at the end of the campaign when he decided to check himself into a treatment centre.
‘It was too much. I couldn’t live the way I was living because it was killing people around me – my family, my friends – and mainly it was killing me really,’ he said.
‘My life was so unmanageable. I couldn’t control my alcohol. It got to a point where I had to make a decision that I needed to go to a treatment clinic.
‘I told my agent not to contact any clubs. I wasn’t doing this for football. I was doing this so I could get my life back. It wasn’t even the football that was taking the biggest battering, but my relationships, my family, my friends. Everything was failing and falling apart.
‘I couldn’t get hold of my addiction. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do to go in there. It was the best and worst month of my life. I learned so much in there.’
Having signed a one-year deal with Sunderland last month, Connolly is hoping to get his footballing career back on track now.
‘After the last few months, it’s great to just be back playing football,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a tough few months, so to be around a good group of people, good gaffer and good coaching staff, just in general good people, I feel refreshed.
‘I feel like that young kid that came to England again. I’ve got a purpose, I don’t have the weight of everything on my shoulders again. I feel like that 15-year-old that came to Brighton and was chasing a goal. My goal again now is to get this club back to the Premier League.’
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