FORMER AFL footballer Chris Yarran has revealed how drug addiction ruined his life and AFL career, before religion helped turn his fortunes around.

In a startlingly honest video, the ex-Carlton and Richmond star details how being introduced to ice by a family member started his downward spiral that saw him quit the game last November.

Yarran played 119 games for the Blues before being traded to Richmond at the end of 2015 on a three-year deal, but failed to play for the Tigers before walking away from the sport citing mental health issues.

Now the 26-year-old has opened up about the ice addiction which destroyed everything he had.

"By the eighth year (of my career) – that was when my life started to fall apart," Yarran said in a video produced by the Potters House Christian Fellowship Church.

"I was introduced to methamphetamines by a family member.

"Drugs were something I despised my whole life.

"I remember as I was about to try ice, I said to myself: 'This will either be just a good night, or it will ruin me'.

"It ruined me.

"It destroyed my relationship, my career, my finances, my health, physically and mentally.

"I went from a fit, healthy athlete to a slob.

"I stacked on the weight, and that’s when I started to miss training, because I didn’t want to be seen in the messed-up state I was in.

"I would be awake for days, and that started to take a toll.

"I remember sitting in my bathroom for hours smoking meth, isolating myself from everyone, and that’s when my mind would take over.

"Once I didn’t get a kick out of smoking, that’s when I started injecting it."

Yarran reveals how he fought "darkness" during a troubled childhood and throughout his AFL career.

After his life spiralled out of control on drugs he tried counselling, visiting psychiatrists and spent four weeks in a rehab clinic for $1000 a night.

"The day I walked out, I was back on meth. This ended my footy career and I moved back home to Perth," Yarran said.

"I realised I was a person who had everything, and I lost it all."

But Yarran found religion, "accepted Jesus Christ into my heart" and "met God" and his life has turned around.

"The darkness was gone. Replaced with a light that gives me joy and peace that I had searched for in my career and in drugs," he said.

"I no longer had a desire for drugs, drink, gambling and partying.

"It was like I was made an entirely new person from the inside out.

"I was born again."