Retired Ghanaian footballer Charles Duah has made a public confession about his addiction to Indian hemp and cocaine.
The former attacker who played for Ghana Premier League side Accra Great Olympics in the 1995 season also admitted to lying to handlers of the Ghana’s men’s senior football national team as well as his father.
Duah reveals to Enoch Worlanyo on Accra-based Asempa FM that his alcoholism began when he was ‘painfully’ dropped from the Ghana squad for the 1995 FIFA U17 World Cup in Ecuador, a tournament Ghana won after beating Brazil in the final.
“I had not taken alcohol until the day I was informed that I was not going to make the trip with the squad to Ecuador due to some paperwork and issues with my passport. I became very sad and bought myself a bottle of Guinness and that is where it all began,” he said.
From then on Duah, who also featured for former Ghanaian top-flight sides like Okwahu United and Suhum Maxbees FC, started his dope addiction and reveals he smoked weed and sniffed cocaine on daily basis.
“I smoked at least twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the evening. There were a group of players at Olympics who were also smokers so we form a smoking gang. But I must say that I never took some of the weed to the national team camp but anytime I was dropped from the team those who knew I was addicted to smoking blamed it on my addiction to smoking but that was not the case,” he further confessed.
He says his schoolmate introduced him to cocaine at some point and he became delighted with what he describes as weed cocktail.
“There was one time schoolmate of mine visited me at my home at Abeka Junction and brought along cocaine so we started smoking and that day I really felt good about it,” he added.
The soft-spoken ex-player also admitted he lied to handlers of the Black Stars to extort money from them when he was dropped from the team ahead of a trip to Egypt.
“There was one time I was dropped ahead of a trip to Egypt. I was asked to go to Accra Sports Stadium to collect my transport allowance but I lied about the situation that I was travelling to Kumasi so that the money would be increased but I was only going to my residence in Accra,” he revealed.
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