AFL great Dani Laidley reveals depths of past drug addiction and how she said ‘no, no, no’ to rehab

AFL legend Danielle Laidley has laid bare the depths of her past drug and gambling addictions, revealing she once bet $10,000 on a basketball game and cocaine made her “feel 10-feet tall”.

From the heights of sporting greatness to the lows of addiction, arrest and self-harm, all while grappling with a deeply profound secret: Danielle Laidley’s life has been an extraordinary journey of strength, vulnerability and recovery. In these exclusive edited extracts from her memoir, Don’t Look Away, the former football legend shares key episodes – starting with the confronting seconds when, out of control following an eight-day ice binge, she tries to end it all.

No, No, No: Melbourne, early 2020

Things go mostly to plan. I blow out and begin choking at least. And yet my body revolts, rousing me ever so slightly back into consciousness, until I’m kicking and thrashing. My roommate and I are separated by a single wall and she hears me banging, gasping for air. I’ve locked my door but she forces it open.

She slaps me and screams at me and makes sure I’m alive and awake.

Her name is Jada and she doesn’t deserve this memory.

We met in 2019. She’s a beautiful trans girl with dark hair and sad eyes. We live as best mates. Me 52, her 22. She’s the first person in my life to call me Dani. I’d give her my last breath.

Laidley is forever indebted to the first person who called her Dani. Picture: Alex Coppel

She gives me back my breath right now. She doesn’t need to do CPR but she shakes me into the world and she launches at me too. I’m dribbling shit from my mouth and she gives me a mighty spray. “What the f--k are you doing to yourself? I f--king told you to get off these drugs!” Jada would probably make a good coach.

I lash out at her for interrupting my plan. I don’t care, I moan. I can’t do this anymore.

She switches gears and sits there with me on the floor, both of us lying back on that toppled pile of pillows. She brings me down, nurses me through the moment and puts me to bed.

I drift off and she stays and watches over me as I sleep the sleep of the living.

Jada believes I need treatment for drugs and alcohol.

“Trust me, you need help to sort this out.” And she would know.

But I’m not hearing any of that right now. I’m like f--king Amy Winehouse – I say ‘no, no, no’.

‘Everything I’ve been looking for’: How my drug habit was born

I’ve never been much of a drinker but I give it a shake in my football retirement. It gets a little big on me, and fast.

My gambling is becoming an issue, too – as if betting $10,000 on a basketball game didn’t already qualify as an issue. In the summer of 2016 I basically end up a bit lost, and that’s bad timing because I’m about to be introduced to drugs.

I smoked pot in high school, of course, and have seen more serious substances now and then in football, but not as much as you might imagine. Drugs weren’t part of my football club.

Hovering over all of this is knowledge of the pain addiction wrought on my father and grandfather and those around them. So I’ve stayed away from substances, afraid of falling into the same cycle.

But now, leaving football, winding up alone and a little embarrassed by where my life has led, I suddenly find myself in places and with people where it’s normal to enliven life with illicit fuel – or to numb your pain with a naughty sedative.

Cocaine made a lost Laidley “feel 10-feet tall”. Picture: Alex Coppel

I’m out and about and get asked if I’d like a line of blow, and I say ‘no’, and I’m asked again another time, and another time I say ‘no’.

One night I say‘yes’. It’s as simple as that.

I’m at my holiday house in Echuca and there’s a black dinner plate in front of me, and on the plate is a pile of cocaine. I cut it with a credit card, split it into rails and snort it with a short plastic straw. Those first few lines are everything I’ve been looking for. I feel 10-feet tall.

I want that euphoria and calm and confidence again quickly.

This is how my drug habit is born.

‘Like an animal in a zoo enclosure’: Arrested May 2020

I have spent all night and most of the day driving around Melbourne. I’m mixed up and messed up and falling apart. I’ve done things I don’t want to think about, things I can’t outrun, things that are going to detonate in the media and go on public record. It’s inevitable. Eventually I pull over on Inkerman Street in St Kilda. I call the police and tell them they need to come and get me. ‘Don’t worry about my name,’ I tell the operator. ‘You’ll very quickly find out who this is.’

The police find me in my car with an ice pipe on the seat and $1500 stashed in my jacket, in case I needed to score.

I’m thrown into the back of a divisional van for the first time in my life. I can’t see anything. I marinate in my thoughts for all of three minutes, until they drive me into the St Kilda Police Station.

It’s 8.30pm on a Saturday night. You would think the streets of St Kilda would be busy enough to keep the cops occupied, but there are more than a dozen plain-clothed and uniformed officers here, all taking a look at me, as if they had heard in advance I was coming. I feel like an animal in a zoo enclosure – an attraction in some strange circus.

Dani Laidley on Pride Day during the 2022 Australian Open.

I’m taken into the interview room and I begin to speak openly about my gender issues and mental health. But then I can’t be f--ked. I think of the police out there on the station floor, having a giggle – and the ones who laughed as they counted my $1500.

I decide they can all f--k off. I’ve answered a few questions – now I begin offering a belligerent ‘no comment’.

The interview room is small, and I can see a two-way mirror in front of me. You can tell because it has these thin silver lines, and in the black parts between them you can make out moving shapes, outlines in the darkness. Somebody is out there. I will remember this later.

I get my fingerprints done. My lawyer tells me I’ve been refused bail and I’ll be going to prison on remand. I start howling like an animal, but that’s not quite right. It’s more pathetic than that.

At some point I’m handcuffed and put in the back of a van and taken to the Melbourne Custody Centre below the courts in the city. I’m walked into a side room to be searched.

I take off my wig first. Because I’m transgender, the rest of the search happens in two parts.

A female officer is here to search my top half. That means I get to leave my bottoms on, but take off my top and my bra.

I feel as degraded as can be.

I put my top on and then a male officer comes in to search my bottom half. They take a photograph of my face with a Polaroid camera, which is uploaded onto the court system but also to the Law Enforcement Assistance Program. LEAP is the core crime database.

Any police officer on duty can now go into that program and see how my night has unfolded, which is what many of them do, checking out my wigless, strung-out mugshot. I look like a cross-dressing crack whore.

The book cover of Don't Look Away by Danielle Laidley.

My top goes back on, skirt and knickers come off. It’s humiliating. I bend over. Tears are streaming down my face now, and the crying takes on a different tone. I’m mewling like a baby.

I talk to my lawyer through a plexiglass screen, just like in the movies. Your arrest is already everywhere, he says. And worse, when you were being interviewed at St Kilda someone took a photo of you – I knew there was someone on the other side of the window – and it’s been circulated, then published. The Polaroid taken of you here today has also been published. It’s an absolute firestorm out there.

‘Welcome back to the family’: Rehab and return to AFL

It’s the beginning of the end of Melbourne’s long Covid lockdown in November 2020 when a meeting I’m not expecting to happen – or at least not so soon – takes place. I’m going to speak to the AFL head honchos. I can’t quite believe they’re making time for me right now.

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan and his right-hand man, general manager of football operations Steve Hocking, are coming off the remarkable achievement of running a successful season despite all the hurdles the year threw up.

I want this meeting to go well. I need it to go well. For so long I lived in fear of what the AFL world would think when they found out the secret I’d carried my whole life. Even though it’s out in the open now, I’m still feeling the shame and embarrassment of letting down my brothers I played alongside and my boys that I coached. I was overcome with gratitude when I found out how much the AFL did for me when I was in rehab and I want to make a good impression.

Dani has been welcomed back to the AFL family with open arms. Picture: Getty Images

I’ve written a report for our guests and it’s about my hopes and dreams – plans for what I might do to help. Diversity and inclusion are high on my list, having education and awareness programs within all workplaces and clubs, so that we might live without barriers.

We get down to business. I give everyone a snapshot of my life: what’s happening with my immediate family, the Laidley family history of addictive behaviours, my gender issues, what

unfolded over the previous 18 months that led to my arrest. I’m getting better at my own potted history now. By the end of my story I see only looks of dismay, surprise and care.

“To be honest,” Gil says,“I don’t how you are sitting there with what you have been through in your life.”

Gil goes on to talk about his own family, his ideals and the legacy he wants to leave the game, and how my cause could and should be part of that.

“Dani, our game is for everyone, and you right now may be the most famous transgender woman in the country. Our game must be inclusive, and you could be that perfect example – you have a unique skill set, with unique experience.”

A warm feeling rushes through my whole body.

“When you’re ready,” Gil says,“let’s meet again and drill down into what you would like to do”.

I tell him I have put together some statistical evidence about trans people and that I feel with the right support I could use the AFL platform to make a difference. That I hope that people will respect what I’ve achieved in the first part of my life. That I believe if people will give me an ear, I could deliver the right messaging and education.

I hand him my report, and he smiles.

“Dani, as long as I am CEO of this organisation, I will break down as many barriers as possible for you. Welcome back to the family.”

Don’t Look Away by Danielle Laidley will be published by HarperCollins on August 30 and is available to pre-order now from Booktopia.

Originally published as AFL great Dani Laidley reveals depths of past drug addiction and how she said ‘no, no, no’ to rehab