The world of sports is one that, regardless of your profession, is filled with highs and lows.
Whether you’re a basketball player who hits the buzzer-beating final throw to win the game, a rugby player scoring a try to take your points total beyond the point of no return, or a defender crunching into a crucial tackle, you will have spent your life experiencing highs like no other.
When their careers come to a close, therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that some former sports stars choose to turn to drugs in order to give them the high they’d become so used to.
The question is, why is it so often cocaine?
What is Cocaine?
A tropane alkaloid that works as a stimulant for the central nervous system, cocaine is obtained from the leaves of two different coca species. The Erythroxylum coca and E. novogranatense both tend to be native to South America, which is why you will often think of the likes of Colombia as a country closely associated with cocaine.
Having been extracted from the plant, further processing is carried out in order to turn it into cocaine hydrochloride, a powdered substance that can be snorted, injected into a vein, or applied in a typical manner to the mouth, usually by rubbing it into the gums.
Not a novel observation but American art did lose a certain je ne sais quoi when everyone transitioned from cocaine to Adderall
— timothy faust (@crulge.urinal.club) 18 May 2025 at 20:35
When cocaine is taken by someone, it stimulates the mesolimbic pathway in their brain, which produces effects like intense happiness as well as a loss of reality and even sexual arousal. Cocaine users will often find their heart rate goes up, their pupils dilate and they begin sweating heavily.
Depending on the route used to administer the drug, the effects usually happen between seconds and minutes of cocaine being taken, lasting as long as 90 minutes. It can increase the levels of serotonin and dopamine within the person taking it, crossing the blood-brain barrier.
Why Former Athletes Take It
Although cocaine is considered to be performance-enhancing, the majority of professional athletes choose to turn to it after they have stopped being involved in their sport of choice. The rush that people get from taking cocaine can contribute to heightened alertness, increased confidence and improved focus.
That is therefore seen as an unfair advantage when people are involved in competitions, whilst it is also a way of someone previously involved in high-level sports to rediscover the kind of major highs that they will have once had through whilst taking part in games and matches.
It is that high that many athletes miss once they have left their sport of choice, no longer getting the rush that comes from the cheer of the crowd when you’ve done something good or the spike in adrenaline that is part of achieving something within the game.
In the May of 2025, for example, Sir Bradley Wiggins admitted that he became a functioning cocaine addict after his cycling career was over. Having won Olympic gold medals as well as the Tour de France, Wiggins’ addiction became so serious that he feared he would be found dead. For him, it was also about self-sabotage.
It Fills a Void
The idea of turning to drugs as something to fill your time will almost certainly seem absurd to most people. Using drugs never seems like a productive use of time and that is as much the case for former sports stars as anyone else.
However, the truth of the matter is that sportspeople spend their lives following strict regimes, eating specific things and being in certain places at exact times. When they no longer work in that world, they lose any sense of structure and find themselves looking around for something to do with their time, whatever that might end up being.
Under fire Premier League Referee David Coote filmed snorting what appears to be cocaine.
The video was taken during Euro 2024 where he was officiating. pic.twitter.com/GDcWdVzsyp
— J Stewart (@triffic_stuff_) November 13, 2024
Danny Murphy made a career as a footballer, playing for clubs like Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Blackburn Rovers, retiring from the sport in 2013. In the wake of his retirement, the former attacking midfielder turned to cocaine in order to fill the gap of the ‘adrenaline and dopamine’ that he had grown used to experiencing as a player.
He soon became addicted, believing that he couldn’t do normal, everyday things without the cocaine to drive him forward. He soon realised that such a thought was ‘nonsense’, but it is a sign of how easy it is for someone used to getting their kicks from one area to turn to getting them from another.
