Olympic swimming legend, Charlotte Dawson’s ex-husband, Cleo Bachelor of the Year, drug addict, escort agency owner, leader of a meth ring, prisoner… Scott Miller has had many labels in his lifetime, but two years after getting out of prison, he tells Woman’s Day he’s only interested in one title now – truth-teller.
“Obviously, sitting in there for years, you do a lot of reflecting,” Scott, 51, says of his three years behind bars.
“Now being sober and clean for a number of years, it’s easier to talk about. When you’re in it, controlled by addiction, you want to bury it and that’s what I did. But it’s about acknowledging what I did wrong and owning it. I’m a truth-teller these days. No more stories.”
Scott lives with his mum Jenny as her carer and he admits, “It’s a humbling time. It’s really confronting. No one was there for me more than she was. It’s the least I can do.”
As well as facing the hard times head on, Scott has also had to face his hatred of the water – the place he once felt most at home – that first developed after the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, where he won silver and bronze medals.
“It’s been therapeutic,” he admits.
“I wanted to get back in the water and find out why I was pushing away something that I loved so much my whole life. “Now if I plan to go swimming, I’m not worried about it all day. At the start, I was – it was really f**king hard.”
Living with “what if”
Narrowly missing out on an Olympic gold medal by 0.36 of a second has been a significant source of pain for Scott throughout his life, an “if only” scenario he’s never been able to get over. What others saw as a tremendous achievement for a promising young star, he still views as a “failure”.
After a shoulder injury forced him into retirement in 2004 at age 29, it was a rapid downward spiral – drug addiction, depression, an overdose and, in 2021, his arrest for running a drug syndicate.
“We didn’t have the support that athletes do these days,” Scott says of his life post-sport.
“Not many people knew about what it took to be a swimmer in those days, how isolated you feel and how hard it is to transition from being an athlete into normal life. “I really felt like I was on my own. Not handling that properly and not dealing with it… It all compounded for me.”
Owning his mistakes
Part of owning his mistakes is acknowledging there were others at fault too and that’s a “tough” truth Scott only got clarity on years after the fact.
“I was surrounded by sharks who didn’t really care about me – they just wanted to cash in on the good times,” he says. “Where were they in the bad times? Nowhere to be seen. That’s a really big lesson I’ve learnt.”
Scott’s brief marriage to Kiwi TV star Charlotte Dawson, nine years his senior, was a pivotal time in his life and a “painful” one. They only lasted a year as husband and wife before Scott’s partying – and a drug scandal in a public toilet – led to their split in 2000.
Living with lasting regret
He says they “made amends” in the years since they parted ways and Charlotte supported his sister Nicole immensely through her battle with stomach cancer while Scott was in rehab in 2013. But in 2014, a deeply depressed Charlotte took her own life and Scott admits he’s been harbouring a secret guilt over her death.
“I didn’t realise the depths of her problems until it was too late. There are some things I have regret for, definitely. “She befriended me on Facebook a couple of weeks before she committed suicide. I looked at it and I wanted to accept it, but I didn’t. I thought about it and I sat on it for a bit, then before I knew it, it was too late. “A part of me really hurts over that. If I did accept it and reach out to say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ maybe things would have changed. It’s something that’s tough, to be honest with you. That’s the first time I’ve said that to anyone.”
A second chance at life
Clean and sober since his arrest in February 2021, Scott is in his second act, driven by a desire to help others from veering off course like he did.
“I feel like I’ve got a future, some direction,” he says.
“For years, I was just caught in this riptide, a cycle of addiction, self-sabotage, just hating myself and punishing myself. “If my story can stop one person making the wrong choice, then my job is done. That’s what I feel like I’m here to do now.”
Scott’s now giving talks to electrical apprentices on the dangers of drugs and alcohol.
Lessons from looking back
He says, “I don’t hold anything back.”
If he could go back in time and give younger Scott valuable advice, he knows exactly what he’d tell him.
“Have a plan B,” he says.
“Everything was about swimming, I was all in and if anything went wrong, I didn’t have a back-up plan. When I look back, that was my biggest problem, I never prepared for life after swimming. “That’s the message I’m trying to tell these kids. What happens if you get injured and you can’t be an electrician any more? Are you going to start smoking meth like I did? I hope not because it will be the beginning of the end.
If you’re struggling with drugs or alcohol, please phone 0800 787 797 or visit alcoholdrughelp.org.nz.
For the Suicide Crisis Helpline, call 0508 TAUTOKO.
