Boxing heavyweight champion Tyson Fury has admitted that he has been drinking and taking a lot of cocaine to help him deal with depression.
"I've been out drinking, Monday to Friday to Sunday, and taking cocaine. I can't deal with it (depression) and the only thing that helps me is when I get drunk out of my mind," Fury was quoted, as saying by Sport24.
Insisting that he had not been taking a performance enhancing drug, the 28-year-old stressed that he only started using cocaine in the last few months.
"I've done lots of cocaine. Lots of it. Why shouldn't I take cocaine? It's my life isn't it? I can do what I want ... That ain't a performance enhancing drug," said Fury, who said that he stopped using the drug on October 1.
While answering whether he was clean when he was fighting, Fury reiterated that he never took a drug to enhance his boxing performance throughout his career.
Last week, ESPN quoted a letter from the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA), in which Fury was found to have traces of cocaine in a test carried out a day before he pulled out of his re-arranged rematch with Wladimir Klitschko citing mental health problems.
Even if the charges are found to be true, Fury, who holds the WBA and WBO world titles, is unlikely to face a ban from competing as cocaine is not prohibited under World Anti-Doping Agency rules.
He had rescheduled the rematch for the second time from the original July date to October 29.
Fury had defeated Klitschko last November to bag the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO titles. Within two weeks of his victory, he was stripped of the IBF world heavyweight championship belt after he declined to face mandatory title challenger Vyacheslav Glazkov.
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