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-fuelled scandals that ended his NRL career prematurely, 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 father, but he had to hit rock bottom before he could get to this point.

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

That led to him being deregistered by the NRL and forced to play bushfooty with Atherton Roosters in far north Queensland, before being kicked out of the NRL for good after a series of alcohol-related indiscretions, including the infamous bubbler that saw him fake urinating in his own mouth.

Carney gets a hug from his mother Leanne after returning from being deregistered by the NRL to win the Dally M Medal playing for the Sydney Roosters

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

“My life was going fine, or so I thought, until our relationship got really serious,” he said Triple M’s Rush Hour with Gus, Jude and Dell.

‘My wife became pregnant with our son Lion and her love for me would of course always remain the same.

“But she said, ‘Before you bring a boy into this life and into this world, I can’t imagine you continuing to hurt yourself.’

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

“Then we broke up for a while, and that was hard because [of] my values ​​growing up.

“When people said, ‘Oh, if you want children, what do you want to be like?’ I said, ‘I want to be like my father.’

“So I lost that value because I wasn’t with my son 100 percent of the time.

“And at that time, the next week, I got along really well with him. When I had a week off, I lived like a rock star and didn’t care about myself or who I was.”

Carney was a precocious talent, but a series of alcohol-induced incidents held him back

This ‘bubbler’ image, in which Carney says he was merely pretending to urinate in his own mouth, ultimately ended his NRL career

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

“This time I went to rehab to show that I was committed to doing it and holding myself accountable 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 did was the last 10 days of that month [thinking] “I’m going to drink on Saturday, I’m ready to go.”

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

‘And I thought: I can’t change too much. But I am living proof that a lot has changed.

“And that’s not because of money or fame or glory or whatever it is. It is over [the fact] that I am present in my life.

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

Carney said that even when he was sober, he thought about drinking again, which led him down a bad path

Now, Carney is 14 months clean and enjoying life with his family after confronting his inner demons

Carney then explained how dark those days had become as he drank heavily during the time he was away from his son.

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

‘And not that I drove drunk or did anything wrong or anything like that. I physically couldn’t get myself up to shower and get ready for a day of going to work.

‘That was trying to tell me something. It was time, that was the given moment.’