Former AFL star Wayne Carey’s clash with security at Perth’s Star Casino this week isn’t the first time he’s been linked to a suspicious bag of white powder.
The only difference is that on this occasion he denies that the bag in question contained an illegal substance. In the past he has been open about his illegal drug use. Admission to heavy cocaine use was the final straw that ended his first marriage and nearly cost him his life.
In his 2009 biography The Truth Hurts, Carey devotes an entire chapter to his drug use and says he first tried cocaine during a trip to the United States in 2002 after an affair with Kelli Stevens, the wife of his teammate Anthony Stevens, left, had fallen out of favor with kangaroos in North Melbourne.
Carey says he did a 14-hour cocaine kicker in Memphis to watch Mike Tyson vs Lennox Lewis fight.
Waynes Carey’s mug shot after the star stood before a Miami court charged with assaulting a police officer when he was accused of assaulting his girlfriend in 2007
‘The King’ celebrates after winning the AFL Grand Final with North Melbourne in 1996. Carey says his cocaine use began six years later on a trip to America
“It was a purely impulsive decision,” he says in the book. “I guess my self-esteem was devastated. I pretty much didn’t give a shit about what happened to me. I felt so miserable that I thought, ‘Why don’t you try it?’
At one point, Carey snorted so much of the drug that his nose began to bleed uncontrollably.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I was going to die but I soon stopped the flow and in no time I was feeling good again. I was ready to keep partying.
“Having never tried drugs 12 hours ago, I was now snorting coke at regular intervals. It was typical of my all-or-nothing binge personality. It wasn’t enough to have a beer or a line of cokes. It had to be a total bender.’
Carey says later during that trip he flew to Cancun, Mexico, where his drug use escalated.
Carey began a relationship with actress Kate Neilson (pictured), which he says opened the door to a whole new drug scene
“Not content with my cocaine misadventures, this is where I tried ecstasy for the first time,” he wrote.
Carey decided to make a comeback in football and vowed to stay away from drugs after returning to Australia. The self-imposed ban lasted a month.
With five clubs vying for his services and a decision looming, he said the pressure has sent him into a downward spiral. He set out on a Friday night with his choice of new club to be announced the following Monday.
“Over the next three and a half days, I did cocaine and ecstasy in hotel rooms, at the Crown Casino, at friends’ houses, in pub bathrooms, and at a strip club. It was the bender that ended all benders,” he says.
“After Friday night’s session I went home and slept for a few hours before starting again on Saturday lunchtime and then pretty much lasting through Monday.
Carey says when he got tired of drinking beer, he’d snort a coke or pop an ecstasy pill just to get back the fire and stay in the party mood
“When I got tired of drinking beer, I’d snort a line of cokes or pop an ecstasy pill just to get back on the fire and keep the party spirit going. As the bender dragged on, a few people dropped by and a new batch of buddies arrived – and that’s my memory of that long, long weekend.”
Included in the rotating cast of characters were friends of Melbourne gangland character Jason Moran.
Carey says if former team-mate Johnny McNamara hadn’t “rescued” him from a Port Melbourne pub on Monday morning, he would have overdosed.
“I would have gone on and on, so strong was the urge to erase the pain,” he wrote. “In fact, I have no great doubt that I would have continued until I killed myself. I felt so absolutely helpless and self-destructive.’
Though he’s still married to his pregnant wife, Sally, Carey began a relationship with actress Kate Neilson, which he says opened the door to a whole new drug scene.
Carey (pictured with Kate Neilson as he left a Melbourne court in 2009) says he hid his heavy alcohol and cocaine use from his peers while working as an assistant coach with Carlton and doing media work with Foxtel
“Kate and I went to parties where there were all kinds of professional people, high achievers and recognizable faces that did drugs,” he said. “There’s almost an unofficial cocaine users’ club and you tend to see the same faces at different gatherings.
After two seasons with the Adelaide Crows, Carey retired from playing and went into assistant coaching at Carlton and media relations at Foxtel. He says he hid his heavy alcohol and cocaine use from his colleagues.
“For some reason I thought I was the invisible man,” he wrote. “I figured I could sit in a pub or a club with Kate and all her friends and go to the bathroom every 40 minutes and people wouldn’t notice. I lived in fantasy land.
“The Foxtel makeup girl became my best friend, erased the bags under my eyes and transformed me into something almost presentable for the TV screen.”
Carey is pictured with his wife Sally McMahon at a Kangaroos event in 2005 – the year he claims she discovered his heavy use of cocaine. The couple would split in 2006
Carey says his wife found out about his drug use in the final weeks of her pregnancy.
While staying with friends in a vacation home on the Mornington Peninsula over the 2005 New Year’s holidays, Sally became suspicious when Carey and other guests regularly disappeared into the bathroom to snort cocaine he had brought with them.
The next morning, she found a bag of the white powder in his discarded jeans on the bedroom floor.
Carey tried telling his wife that the drugs belonged to someone else at the party, then that it was speed rather than cocaine, as if that made it any better. Sally didn’t buy any of it. She moved out of her Port Melbourne apartment and went home to her family in the New South Wales town of Wagga.
Their daughter Ella was born 11 days later.
“I was doing drugs three nights after Ella was born,” says Carey. “So much cocaine I went insane.”
The 51-year-old insists the ziplock bag of white powder he dropped on a gaming table at a Perth casino did not contain any illegal substances
The couple officially separated in late February 2006, six weeks after their daughter was born.
Carey would have more drug and alcohol-related meltdowns over the next few years — including one that saw him locked in a Florida jail cell for resisting arrest — but there was one thing he regrets more than anything.
“Sure, I regret the affair with Kelli Stevens and the impact it had on Stevo (Anthony Stevens) and the kangaroos and many other people including Sally,” he wrote. “But it’s a lot harder for me to forgive myself for the five years that I not only neglected my marriage, but trampled on it.”
Referring to the Crown Casino incident last Thursday, Carey, 51, says the ziplock bag of white powder he dropped on a gaming table did not contain any illegal substances but contained “crushed anti-inflammatory drugs”. he used for pain relief.
He has not been charged with any offense despite being banned from Crown for two years and stepping down from his duties as a commentator on Channel 7 and Triple M.
