[Red Moon]

Rodney's bottle of vodka a day hell

I'M A CELEB star Rodney Marsh attempted SUICIDE in a black depression after becoming an alcoholic on a bottle of vodka a DAY.

The former England football ace fell into a devastating spiral of decline during a two-year separation from his wife of 34 years Jean.

And he quit his deadly boozing only when medics told him his liver was one-and-a-half times too big—and he had just SIX YEARS to live.

The 63-year-old QPR, Manchester City and Fulham legend said: "I was out of control. I had completely lost life's plot and was as low as I had ever been. "I couldn't see any way out. There didn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel and I didn't really know why I was feeling that way."

Things went wrong as his glittering career neared the end and he moved his family to the US where he played for Tampa Bay Rowdies. He soon sent Jean and their two children back home as alcoholism took hold. "I didn't drink in the morning, but as soon as training had finished I couldn't wait to have a few beers with the other players," said Rodney.

"After that, I'd go to my apartment and sit by the pool with a bottle. It would be the same routine every day.

"I would climb into a bottle of vodka and drink until I collapsed in bed. It wasn't long before I was getting through a bottle a day," Rodney revealed in his autobiography Priceless.

He returned to the UK but he and Jean, now 63, lived apart. He added: "Deep down I was unable to come to terms with the end of my career at the top level .I couldn't see any way out." So he got in his Mini Cooper and drove it through red light after red light in west London.

He said: "Not only was I blind drunk, I was also not myself mentally. I truly felt that I did not want to go on. I just simply didn't care whether I lived or died.

"As I hurtled through London, I could see the traffic signals turn red but I drove through anyway. I was hoping a car would hit me and end it all."

Rodney thanks his lucky stars he never made it all the way to Twickenham, instead ending up in a pal's flat where he collapsed in a stupor. He admitted: "I could have killed someone."

He returned to Tampa Bay where his liver condition was diagnosed during a scan for back pain.

"I thought I'd picked up an injury but then the doctor told me my liver was one and a half times the size it should be.

"He said I'd be dead before I was 40 if I carried on drinking like I was. It shook me completely.

"One of the first things I did was to phone Jean. I never drank like that again and by the following year we were back together."

Source: News of the World