Jake Roberts has opened up about his struggles with addiction, discussing his multiple attempts to take his own life.
The story of Jake Roberts is one of huge contrasts. There are the highs of his achievements inside the ring, set against his battles with addiction outside of it.
The stark realism of this battle was presented in the documentary ‘The Resurrection of Jake The Snake’ which saw Roberts work with Diamond Dallas Page in order to try and get his life back on track.
Fast forward to 2022 and the two WWE Hall of Famers now host a podcast called DDP Snake Pit. On a recent episode, Roberts opened up about his struggle with addiction and how DDP helped him turn his life around. During one of these conversations, Jake “The Snake” candidly discussed attempting to end his own life.
“Nothing funny about suicide man,”
“You know I’ve been there in the past and I’ve considered that. Even attempted it a couple of times and I failed. I would’ve shot myself. I took handfuls of pills. Wasted drugs is not a good thing.”
During the episode, Roberts also called out Vince McMahon over what he does to certain talents. The former WWE star claimed that McMahon will try and “break the spirit” of people who want to leave the company or really want a job. Something he describes as “f**king wrong.”
“One thing Vince McMahon did that just made me want to throw up is when you got ready to leave, or if you really wanted that job, he wanted to humiliate you,” Roberts recalled. “He wanted to break your spirit and that’s just f**king wrong, man. Look at Terry Taylor. That’s, you know, that’s my only b*tch about Vince. Yeah, he screwed me over some money, yeah he could’ve done this, yeah he could’ve done that, that’s okay. But when you try to break a man’s spirit and try to humiliate him, why?”
Earlier on in the series, Jake Roberts also revealed that he left WWE in 1992 after the Chairman broke a promise made to him over a backstage role.
H/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.