Footy bad boy Todd Carney reveals the depths of his alcohol addiction – and the shocking ultimatum from the love of his life that made him seek help

Todd Carney is clean and sober after years of booze-fueled scandals that prematurely ended his NRL career – but he has revealed he had to take the hard road to get there.

The former NRL bad boy is now happily married to MAFS star Susie Bradley and the couple welcomed their son Lion Daryl Carney in 2021. 

Carney has now been clean and sober for 14 months and is a proud dad, but he had to hit rock bottom before he could reach this point.

His NRL career was chequered with controversy, including being charged with drink driving and reckless driving, allegedly urinating on a man at a nightclub, vandalism, being sacked by the Raiders and banned from his home town of Goulburn, NSW.

That led to him being deregistered by the NRL and forced to play bush footy with far north Queensland side Atherton Roosters, before he was kicked out of the NRL for good after a string of alcohol-related indiscretions including the infamous bubbler that saw him pretend to urinate into his own mouth.

His new life with Bradley was just what Carney needed, until he realised he was still on a very dark path. 

‘My life was going fine, at least I thought it was, until our relationship got really serious,’ he told Triple M’s Rush Hour with Gus, Jude & Dell.

‘My wife fell pregnant with our son Lion and obviously her love for me, obviously was always going to stay the same.

‘But she said, “Before bringing a boy into this life, into this world, I can’t see you keep harming yourself”.

‘And she was honest with me. She said, “You think you’re a rock star and you’re not. Yes, I didn’t know you when you played rugby league and I don’t really care”.

‘Then we split for a little bit, and that was a hard time, because [of] my values growing up.

‘When people said, “Oh, when you want kids, what will you want to be like?”, I said, “I want to be like my dad”.

‘So I lost that value because I wasn’t with my son 100 per cent of the time.

‘And in those times, week on, I was really good with him. When my week was off, I was living like a rock star and just not giving any care for myself or who I was.’

Carney had been to rehab and alcohol counselling many times before, but this time he went of his own volition and was determined to make it work for the sake of his young family. 

‘I went to rehab this time to show that I was committed to doing it and made myself accountable for when I got out,’ he said.

‘I know, I was that person for a long time.

‘I’ll stop drinking for a month, okay. Well for that month all I was doing for the last 10 days of that month was [thinking] ‘I’m going to be drinking this Saturday, I’m ready to go’.

‘But now that I’ve given myself 14 months, my life, people say that when you stop drinking alcohol, it changes.

‘And I was like, I can’t change too much. But I’m living proof that it’s changed a whole lot.

‘And that’s not through money or fame or glory or whatever it is. It’s through [the fact] that I’m present in my life.

‘I can wake up every morning fresh and I can look at myself in the mirror.’

Carney then detailed how dark those days had become when he was drinking heavily during the time he had away from his son. 

‘The morning before I chose to go to rehab, I physically couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. I was down and out.

‘And not that I’d gone out and drunk drove or done something wrong or anything like that. I just physically couldn’t get myself up to have a shower and get ready for a day to go to work.

‘That was telling me something. It was time, that was the given moment.’