Former NRL star Jason Smith opens up on his drug despair
EXCLUSIVE, The Courier-Mail
in 2 hours
JASON Smith scans the internet on his mobile phone, each Google entry a haunting reminder of a cocaine ordeal he accepts may forever haunt him.
“Look at this,” he says, sliding his phone across the table.
“The first mention of me is about cocaine.
“The next one ... cocaine.”
He thumbs the touch screen, shaking his head at the reams of drug-related data.
“The next one ... cocaine,” he says. “And this one ... cocaine. Another one ... drug trafficker.
“All these stories about me on cocaine. My four kids can go on the internet and look my name up and this is what comes up.”
In nearly two decades as a journalist, this is one of the saddest, shocking, sordid, searingly honest and most stupefying stories I have written.
It is a head-spinning tale of tears, depression, drug binges, alcohol abuse, cocaine couriers, suicidal thoughts, legal battles, total helplessness and, somehow, amid this maelstrom, enduring hope.
And the man at the epicentre of a narrative he never envisaged is Jason Smith, the 44-year-old former Queensland Origin star rated one of the most gifted rugby league players of his generation.
We meet at the Mill Street Tavern in Toowoomba, the pub Smith purchased six years ago after 17 seasons playing league at the highest levels in Australia and England.
At first glance, there is not a scintilla of the dark demons that lay within. Smith talks to an old lady at the bar. We shake hands. His eyes are genuine, smile vulnerable, handshake as solid as the pub’s foundations.
It is hard to fathom this grand old pub was the scene of the worst moment of his life, when, in January 2014, “about 10 coppers” marched in as part of a six-month organised-crime probe that led to his arrest for trafficking cocaine.
For the past 18 months, Smith has not spoken publicly. Today, he opens up exclusively with The Sunday Mail, speaking with raw honesty and craving no sympathy.
“I know I stuffed up,” he says. I let everyone down. My first thoughts went to my parents and the shame I have caused them. I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. I just want to tell the truth.”
Last week, Smith pleaded guilty to eight charges of possessing more than two grams of cocaine. The one-time NRL star was sentenced to three years imprisonment, but released immediately on parole. To a degree, he is a free man. However, it is the initial charge of trafficking, withdrawn six months ago by prosecutors, that Smith cannot reconcile and nearly tipped him over the edge.
“It has been the worst time of my life,” Smith says. “The day the police came in here and arrested me was one of the most shameful things I have experienced.
“They didn’t find a single drug during the search. They found kitchen scales, a spoon and a list of 20 names on a piece of paper from our punters’ club at the pub. But in any event I was charged with drug trafficking.
“I was in total shock. I thought, ‘What the f*** are you guys on about?’
“I am the first to admit I took drugs and at one point I was totally out of control. But I can honestly say I have never sold a single drug to anyone in my life.
“The label about me being a cocaine trafficker was simply ridiculous. I read one story saying I was the kingpin of a drug cartel. I’m like, where the hell are you getting these stories from? It was never mentioned I was a drug kingpin in court.
“I thought about committing suicide. I had it planned. I should never have thought like that. To be honest, I reckon I’m too gutless to kill myself. But I was just so angry on the world after being charged with something I know I didn’t do.”
The natural question is how did Smith land in this drug-crazed mess? How does a footballing phenom who played 15 Tests and 16 Origin matches morph into a cocaine addict? How does a man who amassed a property portfolio of $4 million, possessing an IQ in the top six percent of the population, seek solace in a three-day drug binge?
“I went through a terrible battle with depression around June in 2014,” Smith explains. “I was trying to get out of the life I was living. It started with drinking and then cocaine was my way of going into a different world.
“I missed the structure of football. A lot of athletes and army people will understand what I’m saying. I enjoyed that structured life. Football clubs would tell you when to turn up to training, what I had to wear, where I had to be and when ... that structure helped contain my depression.
“Unfortunately, there were plenty of red flags, but you only see them in hindsight.
“It got so bad, I couldn’t tolerate my kids. I had no energy to do anything. I’d just sit on the couch. My son would say dad do you want to kick the ball around and I’d say mate I’m too tired. It was killing me, but I had no energy to do anything.
“I turned to drinking. I wouldn’t stop at three, I would have 23. I was self-medicating. I could have half-a-carton of beer and a bottle of rum in a day.
“That’s when cocaine came into it.”
A fortnight ago, Smith’s longtime friend John Touma - who has been charged with cocaine trafficking - told The Courier-Mail of his hardship, saying: “People don’t want to know you. They don’t want to be in your life anymore (due to the charges).”
Under the terms of his parole, Smith is banned from talking to Touma, a former Sydney rugby league player he met 15 years ago during their playing days.
“The coppers had a phone tap on John but they never had my phone tapped. I wish they did tap my phone because they would see no evidence of me selling drugs.
“I haven’t spoken to John Touma since we got arrested. I met John a long time ago through football and he knows a stack of footballers. He played for Easts himself, so he was always around football.
“I spent about $20,000 on cocaine in eight months. (Couriers) were bringing it to me.
“I would buy half-an-ounce and I used to tell (them) to bag it into individual bags so I knew how much I was having.
“Some days I would have two grams. Other times I would have seven grams in a day.
“I was experimenting, trying everything. Cocaine gave me a better high. I was doing anything to get out of my reality.
“Drug addicts just want to escape their reality and when I was high and drunk it was a better place to be than the reality I lived in unfortunately.”
Smith says he hit rock bottom when his devoted wife Janelle, the mother of their four kids Jasper (aged 15), Dahria (13), Bud (11) and Willow (8), couldn’t take anymore.
They agreed for Smith to get away and sort himself out with a solitary stay in a motel room in Port Douglas. For three weeks, Smith didn’t drink and shunned drugs. He was clean. Then he returned to Toowoomba and the cycle of cocaine abuse started again. The pair had a gut-wrenching separation. Smith spiralled into a drug-addled stupor.
“I went on a three-day bender,” he recalls. “I slept about four hours in a whole week.
“I would stay inside a small unit and not want to see anyone. I was off my head. I had two eight-balls of coke in one night. That’s seven grams. I didn’t want to deal with life. It was a better place than where I wanted to be.
“I was hearing voices in my head. I was hallucinating. I thought the cops were in the roof and were going to come down and get me.
“I was turning my family away. I just felt empty.”
The bizarre paradox is that being arrested has proven Smith’s salvation. At his first drugs test after being charged, Smith tested positive to “all sorts of things”. In all the tests since, he has been clean. Wife Janelle has given Smith a second chance. He believes he will be medicated for depression for the rest of his life.
I ask Smith about his four kids. What do they think of his cocaine addiction? He searches for the right words. You detect a rivulet of guilt and regret that cuts to his core. His bottom lip quivers. Tears well in his eyes.
“I’m going to start crying ... sorry,” he says.
“My kids know what’s going on. They Google my name and all these stories come up about me being a drug trafficker.
“My two younger ones probably don’t understand what’s going on, but my older ones ... I just can’t talk to them about what I’ve been through.
“Kids at their school say stuff and I wish I didn’t put myself or them in this position. If they ask me one day, I will be honest. But right now, I find it all too embarrassing to confront.”
Enraged by the trafficking allegations, Smith was determined to keep fighting in court. In the end, he says he pleaded guilty to possession to “get on with my life”. He claims his six-month legal battle cost him $70,000.
“I could have kept fighting, but it would have cost me another $100,000 and another 18 months of my life. I just couldn’t fight anymore,” he says.
“I had to spend $70,000 to prove I wasn’t a drug trafficker, despite the fact the police never had any evidence I was a drug dealer. The reason there was no evidence was because I never dealt drugs.”
Smith’s battle is now three-fold _ repairing his business, his family and his reputation.
But rather than be bitter, Smith is trying to be better. He has opened his pub doors to charity functions and faced his Toowoomba folk at a Christmas Lights parade last year where he spent the night blowing up balloons for hundreds of kids.
Smith doesn’t pretend to be perfect, but he has one remaining wish.
“I hope the people of Toowoomba give me a second chance,” he says.
“For six months, I could feel people looking at me and judging me for something I never did.
“It is totally embarrassing. I have gone through hell and much of it I’m to blame for, but I just want to make my wife and kids’ lives better again.
“I never imagined my life would turn out like this. But I just want to enjoy my life from now on. I’m back coaching footy again ... it would be nice for people to come back to the pub and have a beer and meal with me again.”
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