Sacked Podcast: Brian Lake opens up on the depths of his post-career battles with mental health and alcohol

Two moments in Brian Lake’s life kick started a downward spiral which took him to a painful rock bottom. He opens up on his lowest moments and getting his life back.

Triple premiership star Brian Lake has revealed the depths of his post-career battle with mental health and alcohol issues after reuniting with his wife, Shannon, and overcoming his demons.

Norm Smith medallist Lake told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast his retirement from football and his break-up with Shannon in 2018 saw him lose all identity and kick started a downward spiral.

Lake spent time in a Thailand rehab facility and has had two separate stints in a Camberwell mental health hospital, one of them on his 37th birthday.

The ex-Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn defender was also given a community order for stalking Shannon while they were apart and was warned by a judge he would have been jailed if he had previous criminal offences.

But through extensive work with a psychologist, regular medication and re-establishing pillars in his life around family, work and community football, he is back on track.

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Brian Lake has opened up on his lowest moments after his football career. Picture: Michael Klein

Lake admits he will always have to work on his mental health but in a week in which former St Kilda defender Sam Fisher’s transition from football has been laid bare, Lake said his was a cautionary tale.

Lake, 40, can be found playing football with Caroline Springs or continuing his restoration project on the club’s coach’s box. Shannon is a regular at the club canteen.

Kids Bailee, Cohen and Mylee are never far from the football club environment.

Lake said he had made significant mistakes in his life but believes he has come a long way since those nights in a Japan jail when he had no regard for his reputation or the damage he was doing to himself and those around him.

“We are back together, it’s been 18 months now, so a lot of hard work had to go into it,” Lake told Sacked of his relationship with Shannon.

“Not just work on yourself but work with psychologists and marriage counsellors and issues that we have had individually and collectively.

“So it’s been very settling and the kids are in a good space as well.

“I made a fair few mistakes and I will put my hand up and say, “Yeah, I did that”, but I think people deserve a second chance.

“I’ve been lying low for the last couple of years. I have been heavily involved in local footy and people around me have seen the change, but everyone deserves a second chance.

“It wasn’t easy to put your hand up and say, “I need help” because you can be in denial for a fair period.

“I spent time in a mental health facility, a bit of time in Camberwell at a hospital there.

“I spent three or four weeks in the Thailand (clinic). It’s not easy spending your birthday in a facility. Luckily my family and friends could come in, but it was my 37th birthday.”

Lake leaves the Sunshine Law Courts in 2019.

Lake leaves the Melbourne Magistrate court in 2019.

LOSING HIS IDENTITY POST-FOOTBALL

LIKE few other footballers this century, Lake retired with his last step on the football field an elevation to a club few others inhabit.

Already the 2013 Norm Smith medallist, the 2015 grand final victory with Hawthorn made him a triple premiership-winner and dual All Australian.

Hawthorn told him two days after that clash it was letting him go.

It ended a 251-game career that included 197 games at the Western Bulldogs and 54 at the Hawks.

And yet for all the hospitality and business courses he undertook as a player, for the millions of dollars he made across his career, football and relationships were his rock.

By July 2018 as his relationship with Shannon faltered and he searched for meaning post-football, spending seven weeks on reality TV show Survivor, he arrived back in Melbourne to the news that would kickstart his descent.

“With the transition out of football you just feel a little bit lost and you try to replace footy because footy has been your everything,” Lake said.

“Within two years you have footy go, which was always going to happen, and then your relationship breaks down, which have been the two pillars of your life for 15 years.

“So with those two stripped away, you are laying there bare.

Lake went on Survivor in 2018.

Lake didn’t have any issues with the tough conditions.

“That is the stuff I have worked on with my psychologist, it’s your exoskeleton. It’s footy which was a false stability because I didn’t have anything else in my life.

“So you take those two steps away and I was laid bare. Who am I as a person?

“So I thought, stuff this, I’m going to Bali then (ex-Bombers player) Rick Olarenshaw said we are going to Japan for a footy tournament. So yeah, why not? I am a free spirit.

“Then I had a heated conversation on the phone with my partner and it’s Saturday night and you write yourself off with alcohol, get into an argument with a guy in the bar and you end up in jail.

“But at that stage I didn’t really care because I have (had) lost so much.

“I am sitting in a cell and I don’t really care about anything at that stage and people say in poker terms you are on tilt. I was on tilt at that stage, nothing really phased me.

“Are you worried about your image? Nothing phased me, that was my mindset.

“You are going over there spending money and then you have lawyers, but I didn’t care.

“So you look through those last few years, it’s cost me a sh**load. But it’s where I have changed a little bit, got more stability in my life, but I still need a lot of work.”

THE UNDERLYING CAUSES

LAKE believes that the instinctive, impulsive moves he made as a star AFL defender were exactly the issues that hampered him away from the bright lights of the game.

Issues of abandonment and rejection that he had felt for some time – perhaps back to his childhood – fuelled anxiety and insecurities that he handled within the regulated and strict confines of an AFL club.

When he lost that security – moved on so quickly after the 2015 premiership – he used obsessive behaviours to find some control and instead lost any sense of it.

A photo of Lake using white powder in October 2018 led to the Thailand rehab trip, followed by his twin trips to the Camberwell facility.

Hawks officials Jeff Kennett and Graham Wright were among his visitors in that facility as he began the first steps to turning his life around.

The penny dropped when the counselling and advice he was receiving in those facilities began to resonate after so many futile attempts from those around him to drive change.

“When (your psychologist) starts talking about certain things it starts to make sense now,” he said.

“The jigsaw starts coming together and you can understand why you are like this. Impulsivity is one of the biggest things I have struggled with and it’s great in sportspeople but it didn’t help me with outside stuff.

Brian Lake returns home after being releases from a Japanese jail. Picture: Sarah Matray

“I remember I fought against the medication side of it, but I had issues as far back as 2013.

“I was missing sessions because I didn’t take my medication for two or three days and I was getting light-headed and dizzy and couldn’t function.

“I found ‘Survivor’ easy because you take all the stresses of work and paying bills away, but as soon as I left those places, that’s when the hard work happens.

“I still have bad days and inconsistent days, but it’s getting back to some triggers that I leave on my phone that I have to work on.

“So it’s a constant battle, but then you make sure you have got good people around you that understand that those triggers you have got can help you out.”

Lake’s Caroline Springs team, coached by ex-Magpie Brodie Holland, is on top of the Western Region Football League’s Division 1 ladder.

Last week Lake was thrown forward and kicked eight goals and yet the weekly routine is as important as the on-field suburban heroics.

“I’ve been renovating the coach’s box,” Lake said.

“If it’s painting the 50m arcs or doing stuff at the footy club ... It’s my time. I work for one of my good friends, Matt Sutton, his business is called Weldco, so we do welding compliance through OH&S.

Brian Lake is happy playing local football at Caroline Springs. Picture: Aaron Cook

Brian Lake spends a lot of time helping to build the club. Picture: David Smith

“Living across the road from the club doesn’t help, but Shannon is doing a fair bit of work in the canteen, it’s my second home. You work 9-5 and that’s my release. I can finish work and clock off for ‘Brian Time’, going to the local footy club. Playing it, coaching it, doing the Level 3 (coaching course) with AFL Victoria. It’s something I will move into.

“I would love to be in football full time, but unfortunately when you make a few mistakes it is hard to get back into that area. It’s why I threw everything back into local football because it’s where I am going to be for the next 15-20 years.”

The on-field sledging will never stop, even if it has changed from teasing about his name change from Harris to Lake at the end of the 2007 season to more recent events.

But when you have that stability – job, family, support structure, self-belief – it is so much easier to laugh it off.

“It’s been tough and no matter what you do, people judge you as soon as they look at you,” he said. “Brian, what has he done this time? You get heckled and I still cop it.

“It used to be about changing my name. What’s your name going to be this week, Brian? The jail stuff gets a run. But it hasn’t been too personal with the partner stuff.

“You put yourself on the line and people say, ‘What do you do it for?’ I don’t know why I keep doing it, 40 years old and when I finish I will have to move on to something else but footy has been my life since I started at the age of 11. I have to do something different but I can’t. I love football.”