Footy star Jeremy Howe reveals he took so many drugs to overcome an injury that his wife wouldn't let him pick up their three-year-old son
Howe suffered three separate breaks in his arm after he landed awkwardly during the Pies' round-one clash with Geelong in 2023, the pain of which he described as 'like a blowtorch to my arm'.
And that was just the start of his problems.
Surgery on the injury did not go according to plan and he had to return to hospital to treat an infection in the same arm, ultimately sidelining him for four months.
'It was the pills and the painkillers that got me the most,' Howe told Unfiltered with Hamish McLachlan.
'I've taken anti–inflams and I've taken pain relief to get through games flat-out – it's probably not ideal but it's generally what I've done.
'Taking so many antibiotics, painkillers, all at the same time, for a large period of time, 11 days in a row.
'I was in such a haze I had no emotion. I didn't know what I was doing. (My wife) Kahlia would bring (our son) Zander in and I couldn't pick him up, I wasn't allowed to touch him.
'I questioned everything - is this really worth this, is this what I want to be at 32? I'm not even capable of picking my son up.
'If I can't be a husband and I can't be a dad, footy just gets parked and that's genuinely when I thought I was going to scrap it.'
Howe, who has likened the trauma from his brutal arm injury to that of a car accident, says he still has nerve damage.
'I've got no feeling in my thumb,' he said.
'I don't know when that will come back.'
Howe was kept on 'about a dozen' antibiotics for a long while after his accident so that the infection didn't return, and that created its own problems.
'I was taking so many antibiotics and the strength of what they were, my gut started eroding from the inside and ended up having to go back into hospital and getting more pills trying to fight what the other antibiotics are doing while I'm still playing,' he said.
'I was questioning, is this really worth doing this? I don't want to be 40 and all of a sudden my intestines are gone. Cooked.
'I managed to wean myself off the antibiotics... It was either stop playing and get the metal out or scrap the antibiotics and pray the infection never came back.
'So we just stopped the antibiotics... and it (the infection) never came back.
'I got off them and it instantly made me feel better. And I managed to win a flag at the end of the year.'
In March 2025, the footy star and his wife welcomed their second child into the world just 24 hours before the Magpies' season opener against GWS.
The delighted couple shared the news that three–year–old son Zander now has a baby brother named Saxon.
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