NRL Premiership-winning centre Matt Cooper says his painkiller addiction almost cost him his life.
Cooper spoke to News Corp about his abuse of the drug Endone, which he started taking last year due to a neck injury suffered while working with his father in-law.
Cooper said things got so bad, he thought he was going to go to sleep and not wake up.
“It was a cocktail of prescription meds, painkillers,” said Cooper.
“I was like, ‘I’m taking too many pills here.’ There were times there I was like, ‘I’m not going to wake up.’
“I Googled how people die from this drug and they just stop breathing.
“That is when I realised I had to tell my wife.”
The 37-year-old recently underwent a month of intensive treatment for addiction at a Sydney hospital.
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