EXCLUSIVE: COLLINGWOOD 1990 premiership star Gavin Crosisca has confessed he is an addict who used illicit drugs throughout his 25-year playing and coaching career.

Crosisca says he led a double life kept secret from his teammates, his wife and his three children.

Crosisca was addicted to alcohol, cannabis and amphetamines (speed).

He lost his house, his business, his coaching career and, for a time, his family.



Love drove me to find Gavin help

"It's cost myself and my family enormously - emotionally, spiritually, materially, mentally, it cost us everything, especially my wife," he said.

"It ended up completely devastating my family and my life as I knew it.

"I regret hurting my wife and family the way I have.

"My addiction was triggered when I had my first drink (of alcohol) as a 15-year-old."





Soon the teenager became a daily user of cannabis, something that was a constant during his playing career at the Magpies before spiralling into a full-blown amphetamines addiction while trying to coach at senior AFL level with North Melbourne, Hawthorn and Carlton.



Pictures: Crosisca's AFL career

His "taste" for speed gripped him while celebrating the Pies' 1990 premiership, and 21 years later his life and prospects had been destroyed.

"It brought me to my knees last year. Nicole, my wife, admitted me into a rehab facility where I spent 30 days, before continuing with three months of intensive therapy at a residential rehabilitation facility, which opened my eyes to a new way of life."

Crosisca has been "clean" since May 5 last year.

He has dedicated himself to his studies, educating himself in the drug-and-alcohol field, and his first lecture was to the senior players at Collingwood a fortnight ago.





"I want to make this my life. I will tell this story every day for the rest of my life if it makes a difference."

He has slowly rebuilt his relationship with his wife, Nicole, and children Joshua, 13, Riley, 10, and Teagan, 9.

"All I'd known was masking, covering feelings and emotions up with drugs for so long. On reflection it's a lot of manipulation, a lot of lies, a lot of dishonesty.

"If ever I was confronted it would be defensive responses from me, blaming others."

Crosisca, nicknamed "Bagger" because of his confrontational nature at Collingwood, says addiction became a way of life after his first drink in Brisbane while celebrating his selection in the under 16 All-Australian team by drinking a bottle of Bundaberg Rum.

"That was a complete blackout situation. That first drink, I knew that was when my addiction started and cannabis started straight away then.





"I woke up the next day in the laundry (at the house where the party occurred). I could imagine the parents of the boy, they would have been very, very distraught with my state.

"I remember vomiting a lot and that just started it."

Crosisca, who played 246 games for the Magpies between 1987 and 2000 and was an assistant coach at North Melbourne, Hawthorn and Carlton for six years, says his addiction ruined his "career, his finances and his family".

"Before I came to Collingwood my addiction was on fire inside me. I actually brought a reasonable amount of cannabis down here when I first moved to Melbourne and I thought that was going to be it.

"I was hoping I'd be able to work my way through it, put it behind me and then look at getting into a positive football career."





He lived with other Collingwood recruits at Coventry House.

His mother, Kay, who moved to be with him and was the house mother, died suddenly of a heart attack in 1988.

"Through 1990 I might have started the consistent cannabis use daily. It was something I needed or believed I needed to sleep. It was a night-time thing.

"I was completely isolated back then."

Crosisca went to great lengths to keep his drug use away from his Collingwood teammates.

"I had a house in Ferntree Gully, I remember Graeme Allen (Collingwood football manager) saying to me 'What are you buying a house out there for?'. I certainly wasn't going to tell Gubby I was going out there so no one would pop in and catch me stoned on the couch.

"It was purely for isolation so I could be on my own."





Crosisca tried speed for the first time with a friend at a one-day cricket match at the MCG during the summer before the Magpies' drought-breaking 1990 premiership.

"It was just out of the blue, going to a one-day cricket match at the end of 1989.

"I had a taste of it and (sigh) ... To change the inside of me that I was feeling it was perfect for me, it just gave me confidence, it allowed me to communicate well and it changed the person I thought I was.

"It was a once off and then the next taste I had was in our Grand Final celebrations."

Crosisca was one of Collingwood's best players in the celebrated 1990 premiership; he wasn't to know just how that victory would be a life-changing experience.

Collingwood partied like never before as 32 years of Magpie agony finally came to an end on that fateful day in October.





Crosisca wanted the joy and the drinking to go on forever.

At the Tunnel nightclub someone had the solution.

Speed came back into Crosisca's life socially for the next decade before it engulfed his life, becoming his daily companion once his playing career ended until he hit rock bottom last year.

"As my career ended I was able to move on to the drug of choice, speed. It then took over my life.

"As an addict the choice was taken away. My family's got a long line of alcoholics, I was - it's a term we use - restless, irritable and discontent as a child."

Crosisca's grandfather, Cliff, and father Paul were alcoholics. His father died of organ failure due to alcoholism in 2010.





The two had seen each other just twice since Crosisca was 16 after his parents broke up not long before Gavin's first drink.

"I used to go to bed every night saying to myself that was it, no more. I've got too much to lose.

"I've got a beautiful wife, I've got three great kids, what am I doing? I'd go to bed and pray, just to get me through this, let me stop.

"And the next morning it's all I'm thinking about, scoring again. I had that feeling of complete powerlessness over my addiction for years."

The turning point for the Collingwood champion came when his wife Nicole could no longer cope with his behaviours and threw him out of the family home.

Weeks later she "kidnapped him" and forced him into rehabilitation at the Malvern Private Hospital.

It would be the "light bulb moment".

"I needed an intervention for me to get help."



For confidential counselling and support, contact DirectLine on 1800 888 236.





Full interview EMT tonight at 8.30pm