Claims that surfing is still a closed shop raise questions whether the sport has changed enough to prevent another tragedy

“I remember finding him on the mattress, barely alive,” recalls Lyndie Irons, wife of the late three-time surfing world champion Andy, pain etched on her face. “I’d go to Foodland and act like everything was fine and I had a dying heroin husband at home.”

Harrowing scenes like this spill from Andy Irons: Kissed By God, a new documentary currently touring Australia that charts the irrepressible surfer’s life, drug addiction and struggles with bipolar disorder, which culminated in the Kauaian’s 2010 death in a Texas hotel room, aged 32.

Promotion for the film promises the “true, untold story” of the once-in-a-generation surfer, whose brazen yet stylish approach to terrifying waves saw him wrest three consecutive titles from Kelly Slater. It partly delivers on that promise, featuring extensive interviews with friends, family and sponsors – many who’d previously been tight-lipped – to paint a fuller picture of Irons’ battles with prescription opioids and bipolar.

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But much of Irons’ story was revealed in an Outside magazine story weeks after his death. Brad Melekian’s Last Drop cast serious doubt on the initial announcement from Billabong and Irons’ family that he had suffered dengue fever when he died. It also revealed a history of alleged substance abuse that had previously left Irons comatose, during a wild Indonesian boat trip.

While some sources went on the record, others requested anonymity, which Melekian said was symptomatic of a tight surf industry – ruled by a “code of silence” – that had known of Irons’ problems since 2007.

The response by another American surf writer Chas Smith, who called it a “moralistic”, “tawdry” and “insidious” take, was emblematic of much of the surf industry’s reaction. But in Smith’s new book Cocaine and Surfing, he admits his folly, calling Melekian’s piece one of the best pieces of surf journalism ever.

Smith picks the scab of surfing’s rich “love affair” with cocaine, detailing smuggling attempts by the likes of Hawaiian Jeff Hakman (who co-founded the US arm of industry giant Quiksilver) in the 1970s; and American Mike Boyum and Novocastrian Peter McCabe, who were jailed in New Caledonia in the 1980s.

He also delves into competitive surfing’s drug-soaked history, which has included two other world champions – Australia’s Mark Occhilupo and Tom Carroll, both who have spoken extensively about their addictions.

Given this storied past, it’s curious why surfing seemed so intent on keeping Irons’ problems secret. Some high-profile figures, however, questioned whether breaking the story when Andy was alive would have changed anything. “Had he had more outside pressure to change, that might have pushed him over the edge more quickly,” Kelly Slater told the Courier Mail in 2013.

Either way, within a year of Irons’ death the former Association of Surfing Professionals introduced drug testing across the world tour. An investigation by The Inertia earlier this year questioned five high-profile surfers, including three-time Australian world champion Mick Fanning, who vouched for the rigour of the now World Surf League’s drug testing methods today.

Brazilian star Caio Ibelli said he was tested at least six times in 2017, with another surfer revealing the WSL added blood testing to the tour this year. Current women’s world No 3 Tatiana Weston-Webb has praised the surfers’ access to a full-time psychologist – another legacy of Irons, perhaps.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andy Irons strikes a classic pose as he emerges from a barrel at Teahupoo in Tahiti in 2000. Photograph: Getty Images

Surfing’s most recent catalyst for change has been its thirst for mainstream acceptance. Next month, the WSL will host the first World Tour contest in a wave pool, allowing it to schedule heats during primetime, with the technology also potentially opening the sport up to millions of new landlocked surfers.

According to the WSL, the league today is worth $13bn with top athletes earning between $1m and $3m a year. In 2020 the sport joins the Olympics. Surfing has grown up. But Australian surf writing doyen Nick Carroll, who penned the tell-all biography of two-time world champion and former methamphetamine addict brother Tom, says in Smith’s book the ingredients that led to Irons’ death linger.

“[Drug abuse] was enabled, nay encouraged, among AI’s parents’ generation, and exacted through the romanticising of great surfers and their drug habits,” Carroll says. “Put a booming industry and million-dollar salaries on top of that and, well, boom. AI fell into this matrix of enablement in which his addictions were able to flourish and he hasn’t been the only one.

“… drug use in elite surfing has become less acceptable post-AI but that matrix of secrecy and enablement exists, weakened, but still there.”

Indeed, Smith alleges another “accident” about three years ago involving a famous surfer, with the industry remaining silent. “This time the surfer didn’t die,” Smith writes. “A blessed thing, but it meant no autopsy, no toxicology, no way to the truth.”

Whether the sport has changed enough to prevent another Irons-scale tragedy is debatable, but what is undeniable after consuming surfing’s latest drug exposés is just how miraculous the Kauaian’s world-beating achievements were.

Thankfully, despite their traumatic scenes, it is the vision of Irons standing tall and unflinching in the belly of a cavernous Tahitian tube, that lingers the longest.