Snooker: O'Sullivan leaves demons behind in new pursuit of world title dream

After battles with depression, drink and drugs, 'The Rocket' relies on medical help to regain his status in snooker

The only regret I have about my one-frame match, winner takes all, against Ronnie O'Sullivan is that there is no referee in a dickie-bow to announce us, perhaps, as the Rocket against the Reliant Robin.

We are upstairs in the snooker room of the Groucho Club, Soho. It would be nice, too, to have more than one person in the audience. On the other hand, that one person is Steve Davis, who is sitting around waiting to do a radio interview, and keeps up a lively commentary. He reminds me, when I am deep in a reverie of admiration induced by O'Sullivan's potting genius, that it is the responsibility of the player not at the table to replace the colours. "When you get better," Davis tells me, "you will eventually start getting annoyed having to pick the balls out of the pockets."

At least he says "when", rather than a giant-sized "if". And O'Sullivan is full of encouragement, observing that my bridge hand is the business. If only I could deploy it to string together a break of more than eight. In the World Snooker Championship, which starts today at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, he can expect rather more robust opposition. Which is the way the former champ likes it.

"When I played John Higgins in Ireland [in the final of last month's Irish Masters], it was like Tyson against Holyfield, slugging it out over 12 rounds." O'Sullivan pauses, then slams a red into the corner pocket. He then misses a black, deliberately I suspect, and watches while I miss an easy red. "Tut," says Davis. "Someone always tuts."

O'Sullivan tells me that, in that match against Higgins in Ireland, he played a standard of snooker of which he had barely realised himself capable. "I like playing Higgins, and [Stephen] Hendry. They play the game the way it should be played. They attack the balls, score heavily, keep you on your toes. Against some players I think to myself: 'If I play half-decent, then I'm going to win'. And then they play better than I've ever seen them play, and I think: 'Christ, I've made a ricket'. Because then I have to get focused again as if I was playing Hendry or Higgins."

It was also Higgins he defeated in the final of the 2001 World Championship, a triumphant end to a tournament which could hardly have started less promisingly. O'Sullivan's fine autobiography Ronnie (Orion, £17.99) chronicles his battle with depression, and relates that, on the opening Saturday two years ago, he felt so low that he called the Samaritans. Later that day, in a startlingly candid interview with Radio Five Live, he declared that the World Championship would be his last professional tournament.

Until that interview, even Del, his close friend and mentor, had been unaware of the depths of his despair. When he came off the phone, Del told him he had to get medication. They contacted his doctor, who quickly dispatched to Sheffield a prescription for Prozac. O'Sullivan popped his first Prozac before the second-round match against Dave Harold, and has been popping them ever since. Nobody – not even Stephen Hendry, who makes no secret of his dislike for O'Sullivan – has suggested that he should be prevented from taking Prozac, on the basis that it enhances his performance as a snooker player.

"Why should they?" says O'Sullivan, when I raise the issue. "It's not my fault that I suffer from depression. I've tried drink and other things to make me feel good but they started taking their toll. Prozac just creates a chemical, seratonin, which everyone else creates naturally."

None the less, his doctor told him to stay on Prozac for nine months to a year. It has been exactly two years. "There's no chance of me coming off now, just before the World Championship," he says. "I do want to come off, to be more present, if you know what I mean, but I'll do that in the summer. "I'll make sure I'm in a nice hot place, relaxed, playing some golf. The doctor said the best time to come off is when I haven't any tournaments, because there will be some sort of reaction."

O'Sullivan looks me intently in the eye as he tells me this. He might be economical with the truth on the subject of my weaknesses – "perfect, you made perfect contact there," he says, as I miss a fairly straightforward yellow – but he is admirably open about his own.

He tells me about the extensive help he has had from psychotherapists, Mike Brearley among others. But O'Sullivan was unimpressed by Brearley's suggestion that he might be struggling with his right-handed cue action because deep down he made a connection with the right-handed stabbing action with which his father, Ronnie Snr, killed a man in a pub brawl 10 years ago (a crime for which he is still serving an 18-year prison sentence).

"I was a little bit sceptical about that," he says, "but, for that one thing I disagreed with, Mike Brearley told me a million things that were good for me. He helped me through that stage of my life."

That stage of his life is partly recounted in a chapter in his book called "Off The Rails". It makes compelling, and alarming reading. Indeed, O'Sullivan's former girlfriend Sally, the mother of his daughter, Taylor, whom he rarely sees, left a message on his answer machine after she had read the newspaper serialisation, saying she had not realised what a state he had been in. "I hope I'll be a proper dad to my little girl one day," he tells me, his dark eyes moistening. "What is it they say, that it's easy to be a father, but hard to be a dad?"

Inevitably, like any celebrity who careers off the rails, O'Sullivan wound up at The Priory clinic in Roehampton for a month. "At first I felt a lot better when I came out. I went to AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings, NA [Narcotics Anonymous] meetings, I didn't have a drink or a drug for nine months, but I still felt as if I couldn't bleeding breathe. That made me angry. I'd done everything they told me to, but I still felt shit. My snooker was in good nick – I won four tournaments – but I felt shit as a person."

The Prozac has changed all that, but it has not changed O'Sullivan's addictive personality. In fact, he feels that snooker players should have addictive personalities. There are plenty of other players, he says, naming some, who are hooked on drink, drugs, food, or gambling. And there are those hooked only on snooker.

"You've got to be obsessive. But not just in snooker. Look at Paula Radcliffe, she runs 150 miles a week. And I remember speaking to Jamie Redknapp, who had the same injury as Ronaldo, and had just come back from some clinic where Ronaldo had been. He said: 'Ron, his work ethic was incredible. He was up every morning before everyone else, he trained twice as hard as everyone else'."

We are now in the Groucho Club lounge, O'Sullivan having emerged the victor in our frame by the narrow margin of 70 points.

"To be the best you need obsessiveness," he continues. "That's what separates Hendry and Steve Davis from the likes of Jimmy White and John Parrott. Of course you need balance as well, or you end up like Van Gogh, cutting your ear off. I'm getting that balance now. I'm feeling as good as ever, the way I did when I was 14, 15, 16. I don't know what happened after that."

What happened, among other things, was that his father went to jail and so, briefly, did his mother, Maria, for tax evasion. You don't need to be Mike Brearley to see some connection between those two events and O'Sullivan's troubled psyche.

After all, it was his father who instilled a sense of discipline in him – demanding, for instance, that he always went for a run before a session down the snooker hall. So when the old man was banged up, in 1993, the discipline went.

It is back now, to the extent that, since his book was published, he has finished with his girlfriend, Jo. "I want," he says, "to be as good a snooker player as I can possibly be. And unfortunately that means being selfish. A relationship is about give and take and I'm not prepared to give. I might want to practise in the evenings, and in a relationship you have to take the other person's feelings into account. The relationship I'm concentrating on now is with myself and the game."

He rejects the theory, proposed by the reigning champion Peter Ebdon, that he has already passed his career peak. "Peter thinks a lot. He does a lot of thinking, and thinking can get in the way sometimes. We're only hitting balls around a table with a stick. I don't think I've peaked. I'm excited about hitting my peak. I had my first 147 in competition when I was 15. That hasn't been equalled. If I'd carried on like that I wouldn't like to say how many world titles I would have by now. I was so strong at that time, and I'm getting there again."

O'Sullivan, in his teens and even earlier, was a remarkable prodigy. He made his first century break when he was only 10, another record that endures. And, still only 27, he is second on the all-time list of century breaks, behind Hendry.

The Scot, I venture, is not his No 1 fan. "No, I said something in the heat of the moment [to wit, that he wanted to "beat up" Hendry, which Hendry interpreted as meaning a physical beating, while O'Sullivan insists he was referring only to snooker] and he took it personal. "I've tried to make it up, but he's made it clear that he doesn't want to know."

I ask whether he anticipates much psychological warfare between players at the Crucible? "Some of the players try to play mind games, yeah. A certain player might blank you, or fall asleep in front of you before you're due to play him in a match. There's one person in particular who does that to me, but I've been told that when we're in the same room he can't stop staring at me, and if I look at him he looks away."

O'Sullivan grins. It is impossible not to like him. And if the press officer he once headbutted at the Crucible takes issue with that observation, all I can say is what O'Sullivan himself says, that, thanks to Prozac, he is, to a large extent, a different person now.

"I've got my senses back," he says. "I think I will win in Sheffield, although Mark Williams, John Higgins and Stephen Hendry are just as capable. "What it's about is not only playing your best, but believing you're better than the other person. It's about imposing your rhythm on them. If you do all that, then you'll win."

I tell him that, impressed with his fitness both mental and physical, not to mention the way in which he pipped me in our earlier frame, I am going straight to the nearest bookie's to slap a tenner each way on him. He smiles. "Don't back me each way,' he says.

Ronnie O'Sullivan the life and times

Born: December 5, 1975, Wordsley, Wolverhampton.

Lives: Chigwell, Essex.

Family: Father, Ronnie Snr, is serving 18-year sentence for murder after stabbing Charlie Kray's chauffeur. Mother, Maria, has also spent a spell in jail for non-payment of tax.

Hobbies: Football, the gym, spending time with family.

Nickname: The Rocket.

Current ranking: 1.

The early days: Made first century when he was 10 years old. At 15 yrs 98 days he became the youngest player to make a maximum break in tournament play, during the English Amateur Championship in Aldershot on 13 March, 1991.

Playing career: Has won 27 titles in all, his most important being the 2001 Embassy World Championship, when he beat Scotland's John Higgins 18-14 in the final. He is one of only five players to win both the World Championship and the UK Championship in the same year. When only 19, he earned £285,101 prize money, more than any other teenager has managed in a single season.

Tournament wins: UK Championship, (1993, '97, 2001), British Open ('94), Benson and Hedges Masters ('95),Asian Classic ('96), German Open ('96), Scottish Open ('98, 2000), Regal Scottish Masters ('98, 2000, 2002), China International Open ('99, 2000), Irish Masters (2001), World Championship (2001), European Open (2003), Citywest Irish Masters (2003).

Miscellaneous: Made fastest maximum in 1997 World Championship in 5min 20sec.

Speciality: Wrong-handed play. He got into trouble after playing left-handed against the Canadian Alain Robidoux.

Career Lows: Given a two-year suspended sentence after attacking a press officer during the 1996 World Championships. Beat Ken Doherty in the final of the 1998 Benson and Hedges Irish Masters, but was later stripped of the title after failing a drugs test.

They say: "His best is amazing, his worst abysmal. He is capable of beating anyone – or beating himself." Snooker journalist Clive Everton.

He says: "Once snooker becomes an obsession it can isolate you, and once you get isolated you become miserable."