Fadi Ibrahim reveals addiction to prescription pills after being shot

Fadi Ibrahim’s life changed the night he was shot five times and his girlfriend once. Years after he was forced to take highly addictive and powerful pain killers to numb the pain. LISTEN TO WHAT HE WENT THROUGH.

• What John Ibrahim’s family really think of him
• ‘Lose my number you gronk’
• ‘If you’ve been in jail, can you get a loan?’

For three decades, Sydney has regarded the House of Ibrahim with fear and fascination.

Now, for the first time, we take you inside the private world of this complicated family thanks to an enormous cache of surveillance material tendered to a NSW court.

There are more than 880 phone calls and texts that were covertly recorded by police over more than a year, revealing the truth about feuds, grudges and family lore, including the secret tunnel under patriarch John Ibrahim’s Eastern Suburbs mansion.

There are hundreds of police photos taken inside Ibrahim homes during police raids, and an even larger collection of surveillance photos taken by police tailing family members and associates through the city’s streets.

The material sheds new light on the family’s networks, reaching beyond brothers John, Fadi, Michael and Sam to the far reaches of entertainment, night-life, property and crime.

On their private calls, the brothers and their associates detail their rivalries and power struggles, as well as moments of “us against the world” camaraderie and black humour.

WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

It was a phone call that a businessman named Simon had to make, but was dreading.

Simon had borrowed $200,000 off Fadi Ibrahim as an interest-free favour, but was now well past the deadline to repay the money.

Worse, he also had to break more bad news to Fadi: he could only transfer $100,000 of the money. The rest would be coming tomorrow. Promise.

Simon made the call on July 14, 2017, but the voice on the other end was not the fierce tone of Fadi Ibrahim chasing a debt.

Instead, it was the slurring voice of a man in a very vulnerable state.

“I feel like shit, man,” Fadi said.

Perhaps insensitively, Simon responded: “How are you feeling? You sound it. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m at hospital trying to get off my medication,” Fadi said. “I have to get off my medication.”

HEAR FADI TALK ABOUT HIS ADDICTION

READ THE TRANSCRIPT: WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

It had been eight years since Fadi was shot out the front of his Castle Cove home by a would-be assassin who has never been charged. And every day since, Fadi’s life has been affected by ongoing serious health issues. An inevitable by-product of surviving five bullet wounds.

Where he was once an enthusiastic party boy, in recent years Fadi now exhibited reclusive behaviour, often relying on friends to check on him at his Dover Heights mansion and take him out.

In the years after the shooting, Fadi was forced to take very powerful prescription drugs that kept a lid on the pain.

It is not clear which medication Fadi is referring to in the call.

But in other calls, there are several references to Fadi treating his pain with OxyContin. This is a highly addictive opioid and powerful pain killer, which leaves the user suffering nausea, dizziness, sleepiness and other symptoms.

Fadi Ibrahim and wife Shayda at one of the family’s favourite restaurants, Catalina, for a New Year’s Day party in 2015. Picture: Supplied/Catalina

For Fadi, the positive was his medication numbed the pain. The negative list was much longer. Fadi formed a dependency on his medication. In one call he explained he took up to 10 to 15 tablets a day. He couldn’t function without it.

Weary of the impacts the drugs were having on his life, Fadi had checked into hospital when Simon called.

Fadi explained his recovery program had not been not easy.

“I was on really strong medication and I’ve been on it for a long time and it’s very addictive stuff…,” Fadi said. “They put me on this other f**king shit to get (him off the medication) man. F**k it’s killed my life, man.”

Coming off the medication meant he was in agony.

“Now all the pain … shooting … I can feel it man,” Fadi said. “But before, because I’ve been taking these tablets for so long, it has been numbing the pain, like dulling it. I didn’t feel it. But now I’m not on anything all the f**k pain is coming out.”

Despite his medical state, with six figures owed, Fadi still mustered the energy to talk business.

“Did you do the banking, brother?” he asked.

Fadi Ibrahim being wheeled into hospital after he was shot five times outside his home. Picture: Seven News

In his 2017 autobiography, John Ibrahim painted Fadi as an energetic and flamboyant party boy.

John wrote that Fadi revelled in the night-life and was “the dancer of our family”; the only one of the “Ibrahim boys who dances in public”.

“In honour of this fact I had a podium named after him at DCM, a club I once owned,” John wrote.

“He would use it to hype up and challenge fellow customers to a dance-off on opposing podiums.”

John wrote that he clashed with Fadi, believing his younger brother was too flashy and drew unwanted attention to the rest of the family.

“One of our last conversations (before the shooting) is a fight over things brothers fight about, including his f**king look-at-me’ lifestyle,” John wrote.

“Fadi’s flamboyant car has the licence plate ‘034’, his age. Or as I would’ve translated it, ‘WANKER’.”

According to John’s book, Fadi’s life changed “sometime before midnight”.

The shooter hid on the golf course across from Fadi’s house, John wrote. When Fadi pulled up in his Lamborghini, the gunman moved in and unloaded five shots through the driver’s side window with a silenced 9mm.

Fadi suffered bullet wounds to his stomach, chest and arm, John wrote. Only one bullet passed through his body. It was the one that hit his then-girlfriend, Shayda Bastani, in the leg.

Shayda was credited with saving Fadi’s life. She remained calm and called triple-0 immediately. It solidified their relationship and the pair wed in 2010.

Police examine Fadi Ibrahim’s Lamborghini after he was shot by a would be assassin outside his Castle Cove home on June 5, 2009.

But before they could get married, Fadi spent an extended period in a coma and lucky to survive. When he finally checked out of hospital, he came out a changed man.

News reports at the time said he came out of hospital depressed.

According to friends, Fadi lost an enormous amount of weight and the injuries to his internal organs heavily limited his ability to eat, an affliction that still remains.

Unaware he was talking to an undercover police officer, Ibrahim family confidant Ryan Watsford described Fadi’s injuries at a Point Piper meeting in December 2016.

“He was in a coma for three weeks,” Watsford said. “He lost 40 or 45 kilos … he couldn’t eat for two years. He had to drink food through a straw.

“And he can’t stomach anything … you know when you get that really full pain (in the stomach) … like he can only have that chip,” Watsford said.

Approaching mid-2017, Fadi wanted to quit his medication.

Ambulance officers treat Shayda after she suffered a bullet wound to the leg in the shooting.

On April 27, 2017, he told his accountant Bahia Nasser, that he was leaning towards a stint in hospital.

“I’m actually thinking about going down to Melbourne again (to) go to the clinic,” Fadi said in the call. “I need to get off these f**king medication man.”

He explained that a previous stint had helped kerb his intake.

“ … It reduced it by heaps, right. But I’m still on two to three tablets a day,” Fadi said. “Before I was taking like f**k, 10 to 15 … so it reduced it by heaps, but I just want to be off it, man. I’m sick of it, man. I’m sick of needing it. I’m sick of getting up and I can’t be normal unless I take it.”

The accountant replied: “Yeah, but your situation’s hard. You whole insides aren’t in your body.”

When police were tapping Fadi’s phone in 2017, he would at times withdraw from the world and relied on friends, like business partner Ben Scott, to check on him at home and take him to the gym.

Fadi’s emotions sometimes overflowed at times when he thought his friends and family had forgotten him.

When Mr Scott called him on May 24, 2017, Fadi answered the call and said: “Go f**k yourself, like you give a f**k”.

When Mr Scott explained he had called Fadi a week ago only for his phone to be off, Fadi replied “Big shit”.

“You couldn’t come round and check on me?” Fadi said.

Mr Scott joked he didn’t because “I’m scared of your wife”.

“So my safety is less important than you being scared of my wife?” Fadi said. “ … my phone could have been off and I could have been in hospital, c**t”

While he was staying inside much more, Fadi still like to party occasionally, and it was concerning Shayda who put in an SOS to Mr Scott.

“She texted me about a week ago saying ‘Please Benny, I don’t want him partying anymore because … I’m worried about the OxyContinand this and that’,” Mr Scott said to Fadi in the call on May 24, 2017. “I wrote back, ‘Yes I understand …”

Compounding his health problems was the fact that Fadi was living on his mortgage and earning by lending money, which he borrowed off his house.

He was struggling to keep up with the financial demands of providing for a family.

“Right now it’s f**king scary for me man,” Fadi told Michael on May 15, 2017. “I’ve loaned about three or four guys some money right now. And my repayments f**king don’t even cover the money.”

Fadi and Shayda at Royal Randwick Race Course in 2010

Fadi’s other problem stemmed from the fact that despite being the third eldest of the four Ibrahim brothers, he was the smallest in stature.

Fadi felt his brothers pushed him around in their dealings with him, financial or otherwise. It weighed on him.

“My brother Michael, my brother John and my brother Sam,” Fadi told Watsford on July 14, 2017. “I can never say no to them and I can never ever, like, I’m too weak a person to sit there and pull them up when they’re wrong.”

He continued: “I just can’t do it to them. I haven’t got the balls to do it. They’re my brothers man. I don’t really want to f**king argue with them.”

But by July 2017, Fadi’s attitude to his brothers was changing.

Fadi explained he could deal with the conflict with his brothers when he was heavily medicated. But it was a different story now that he was clean.

“I used to just take pills,” Fadi said. “Every time it was stressful I’d take another f**king tablet and just dope myself out, you know what I mean … So I don’t have to deal with it.

“So, I let a lot of things slide, man,” Fadi said. “But now, f**k it, bro. I can’t hold things in brother. I’m not that type of person. I can’t hold things in.”

John Ibrahim talks to an associate at Royal North Shore Hospital after Fadi was shot in 2009.

Despite their conflicts, the Ibrahim brothers had a tight bond.

On July 14, 2017, Michael told the undercover cop Fadi’s anger was a result of him suffering drug withdrawals. Michael also said he and John were going with Fadi to Thailand.

“I’m going Tuesday with my brother John … because my brother Fadi, he’s got a house booked there ‘cause, remember how he got shot? He was on all that OxyContin and all that,” Michael said. “So we’re taking him overseas ‘cause he just got off it.”

The undercover asked if Fadi was off everything.

Michael said Fadi was on another drug, which was administered to help him detox but was still affecting his mood.

“But he’s still been snapping … it f**ks with your head,” Michael said. “So we’re gonna go to Thailand with my brother John, (friend) Mim, and Fadi. we’re gonna train there for 10 days.”

Originally published as Fadi Ibrahim reveals addiction to prescription pills after being shot