Collingwood great Gavin Crosisca has admitted to snorting lines of speed in the toilets during AFL matches while he was an assistant coach with North Melbourne in the early 2000s.
The 56-year-old played 264 games for the Magpies from 1987 to 2000 and has previously confessed to using a range of drugs during his playing days, but now he has come clean about how he reached new depths of addiction once he quit as a player.
‘I retired, [my] body was done, and instead of planning and looking into what I was going to do to support my family for the next 50 years, I just couldn’t wait to start using speed to medicate again,’ he told the Dos and D podcast.
‘It just made me feel great.
‘I got an assistant [coaching] role at the Kangaroos under Denis Pagan … but I just started using drugs and it was just horrible for the next eight years.
‘That mental handicap and disability, and just the need and want and obsession to use, you don’t ever want to experience it because it’s just horrible, and I couldn’t stop.
Crosisca (right) was working as an assistant to legendary coach Denis Pagan (left) when he was so addicted to speed that he had to take a hit before and during AFL games
A premiership winner with Collingwood in 1990, Crosisca said fans can go back and see that he was always last onto the field after halftime because he was snorting speed in the toilets
‘[I had] my wife, kids, beautiful home in Hawthorn, and I was using speed daily.
‘I’d have some before the game, for sure, and then if you looked at the games that I was an assistant [for] or when I was working in the AFL system, you’d generally see me come out last at halftime because I’d be going into the toilet and having a bit of a line.’
Crosisca has overcome his addiction, went public with his problems in 2012 and now works as a director at Sober Living Rehab.
But the effects of his years as an addict still echo with him today.
‘When you become addicted at the stage I was at, it [speed] just gets you to normal,’ he told the podcast when he was asked if the drugs helped him function at a high level.
‘It depletes your dopamine [a naturally produced chemical in the brain that helps people feel pleasure], it damages that part of your brain so ferociously because it’s always high, [so] when you haven’t got it, it just plummets to really low.’
Crosisca gave a raw account of what drug abuse cost him when he first came clean to the public.
‘I used to go to bed every night saying to myself that was it, no more. I’ve got too much to lose,’ he said.
The veteran of 264 AFL games (pictured right playing against comedian Dave Hughes in a 2014 legends match) sunk so low due to his addictions that he once planned to stage the robbery of a pub he co-owned so he could steal $60,000 to fuel his habit
Crosisca (pictured taking a mark against Hawthorn in 1998) has completely turned his life around and now works as a director at a rehabilitation business
‘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.’
Crosisca hit rock bottom when he planned to stage a robbery of a pub he co-owned so he could collect the $60,000 takings to fuel his drug habit – before finally getting sober.
In his playing days, he admitted he often boarded interstate flights with joints on him, and was often terrified a sniffer dog would alert authorities.
In April last year his captain on Collingwood’s 1990 premiership team, Tony Shaw, told him on live radio that he would’ve had him sacked from the club if he’d known about his drug problem.
In 2023, Australian Idol winner Kate DeAraugo revealed the former State of Origin player played a huge role in helping her beat the drug habit that almost killed her.
‘That was the greatest support and the greatest comfort,’ she said.
‘It didn’t matter how famous or important he was and it didn’t matter how famous or important I was. He understood how I felt.
‘Despite all the noise and the fame, being able to relate to someone in the darkest times is the most important thing.’
