A TRAGIC alcoholic who got hooked on booze when he discovered his dad's home brew is lurching from the gutter to prison in an alcoholic haze.

Blackburn magistrates were told that John Bailey first tasted alcohol before he left school when he climbed into the loft and discovered the booze - and then hid the empty bottles under his bed.

And the court was told that now, more than 20 years later, his life had plummeted to a level were he lived his life in a haze of alcohol.

Bailey told the court he had been thrown out of hostels such as the Islington Motel, Cherry Tree Lodge, Union House and the Salvation Army and that he could not buy alcohol in any of the town's major stores.

He said he normally bought his booze from a shop in Johnson Street and when asked by Michael Blacklidge, defending, where he went to drink it since an interim anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) was imposed, he told of a nearby disused house.

"There is no gate on the back yard and there is an empty toilet building there," he said.

"There's no toilet, just a plank of wood on some bricks.

"I sit in there and drink out of sight of everybody."

Bailey said he couldn't remember how long he had been homeless but said he had been thrown out of all the town's hostels.

"The last place I had somewhere to live was when someone got me a place at Shadsworth House," said Bailey.

"I didn't like it there because there were too many people injecting drugs and threatening me."

Bailey told the court he needed help with his drink problem and said he genuinely wanted to give up.

The court heard that since the interim ASBO was imposed on October 26 Bailey had breached it nine times by being found drunk in a public place and Mr Blacklidge said it was not easy to resist the application for a full order.

"In the general scheme of things the prohibitions are not particularly onerous or particularly wide ranging, its a means to an end" said Mr Blacklidge.

"But I would suggest it's not the way to deal with the problem because it doesn't deal with his alcoholism, it deals with the after-effects."

Bailey is currently serving a 42 day prison sentence for the latest breach of the interim order.

The magistrates made an ASBO for the minimum period of two years.

The order prohibits Bailey from being in possession of an unsealed container of alcohol or being drunk in a public place anywhere in Blackburn with Darwen and using abusive, insulting or threatening behaviour in the borough.