http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2163220/Coronation-Street-star-Bruce-Jones-shares-struggle-depression-This-Morning.html'I didn't know I had depression... but I'm getting back on track': Corrie star Bruce Jones shares his struggle on This Morning
By Holly Thomas
PUBLISHED: 16:03, 22 June 2012 | UPDATED: 17:18, 22 June 2012
Coronation Street star Bruce Jones shared the story of his battle with depression on This Morning today.
The 59-year-old described how he plans to get his life back on track after struggling with an alcohol addiction as a result of his condition.
He explained: 'I just started going for a drink and one drink lead to another... and then I went and got counselling for that,and I realised that if I carried on going on like this there was only one way you're going to go - and that's to the grave.'
Bruce was axed from Corrie in 2007 following allegations that he had launched a foul-mouthed rant against his co-stars.
He hit headlines in March 2010 when he admitted trying to kill himself and his wife in a 70mph crash.
A charge of assaulting his wife in the car park of a pub to which she had driven minutes after the incident was left on the file.
The actor, who played Les Battersby on the ITV soap, said this morning: 'Depression is a thing where you're sat on your own and you're bored, and you don't talk to anyone... and so you go to the pub and you drink it away and try and laugh it off.'
'I didn't understand fame and I always wanted to be an actor from a child... and being the actor you could get out of the depression you were in, but I don't know exactly where it went wrong.'
'It's like having a big building on your head... so what I'm going to do now is take one brick a part out of it and sort that brick out, and take brick by brick and sort the things out that went wrong or why it all went wrong.'
It's clear that this has been a long term problem, as Bruce revealed 'I think I've had depression for a lot of years and never realised it, and I think it started in my twenties.'
'I actually found Jean Jordan the Yorkshire Ripper body who was so badly mutilated by the Ripper.
'I didn't work for a year and I'd sit on my own. I'd just go for a drink and try not to think about it and all those years ago from twenty years of age having that in my mind.'
He added: 'I was working on an allotment and I'd gone over and there she was - a face in the bushes. I'd never spoke about it. I was ill for twelve month... and it just built up and built up.'
Bruce admitted that during his time on Corrie: 'Vicky used to ask, "Why are you sitting in your dressing room on your own, come down here with us"... but I'd just sit in my dressing room and write all this poetry, and get all this black stuff out that was in.'
'That was wrong, you shouldn't do it on your own. You can't face this on your own, you've got to speak to someone. I actually went to see a counsellor, my wife got me to a counsellor.'
Asked whether he might return to Coronation Street, Bruce said: 'I'm not so sure - I mean, I'd love to go back...I'm ready now. But I've got great friends around me and they are all working to get me back on that track.'
'Corrie was great, I loved Coronation Street - I loved the crew, I loved the cast - I love everything about Coronation Street,' he added.
As a final note on depression, Bruce said, 'If anyone has got this and they feel like they can't get out of that chair in the morning - ring someone. Speak to someone.'
