Kurt Angle reflects on his struggle with addiction.
WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle's past battle with addiction and substance abuse is well-documented. Angle has overcome these struggles, and now he uses his experience to help others,
Speaking on the True Geordie Podcast, Kurt Angle discussed his battle with addiction, and Geordie noted that he remembered the legend saying he used to take 65 Vicodin a day.
“Yeah, I’m not proud of it. I’ll tell you this. This is something that the doctors don’t tell you. When I broke my neck the second time, the first time in WWE, I met a doctor, and he introduced me to painkillers. He said, ‘These things are the greatest things in the world, you’re gonna love them.’ So I started taking one every four to six hours. After a while, your body builds a tolerance, and one doesn’t cut it. Then you take two, then two leads to four, four leads to eight. Before I knew it, I was taking 65 extra-strength Vicodin a day. This was within a six-month period of time. I mean, we’re talking almost enough to kill a horse, it was that bad. My focus was not wrestling anymore. My focus was, when am I gonna get the drug next? I became a druggie. I became an addict right away. 65 extra-strength Vicodin a day. The reason why I was taking them was not because of the pain anymore. It was because I was going through withdrawal. So if I took 15 painkillers, a few hours later they would wear off, and I’d start having withdrawal again, so I was taking more all day. More and more all day long every single day," Angle said.
Angle went on to describe how he kept taking more and more pills because he was trying to get away from the pain after his sister passed away. He detailed how he would see 12 different doctors, and he was buying 2,000 pills a month.
"I was taking more, more, more. All I was doing was trying to hide the pain, physically and emotionally, and it got out of control. I’ll give you an example of what I was doing. I had 12 different doctors that were giving me 12 different scripts of medication. I had to set up a calendar because you couldn’t go to the same pharmacy, so you had to have 12 different doctors, go to 12 different pharmacies. So I had all these different pharmacies on my calendar, and then it still wasn’t enough, so I had to buy 500 of them illegally from Mexico. So I was buying 2,000 painkillers a month just to keep my addiction going," Angle said.
When asked how much he was spending on that, Angle replied, "$7,000 a month, but remember, I was making a lot of money [laughs], so the money wasn’t really an issue," Angle said.
Angle has worked hard to overcome his battle with addiction. He previously started an addiction recovery program. More information is available here.
Angle has said that he was never Perc Angle. Check out his comments here.
Click here to see what Angle had to say about how a movie about his life story is in the works.
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