Kurt Angle has revealed the true cost of his addictions.
Having well-documented neck issues that go all the way back to the 1996 Olympics and never one to take it easy in the ring, Angle has wrestled through the pain to remain on the active roster and has been on the operating table multiple times as a result.
When the Hall of Famer broke his neck at No Way Out 2003 while feuding with Brock Lesnar, the main event of WrestleMania 19 looked to be in doubt. It was at this point that Angle was introduced to the painkiller Hydrocodone/paracetamol, better known as Vicodin, by a WWE doctor.
Going into detail about his painkiller addiction on the True Geordie podcast, Angle described how he would take 65 extra-strength painkillers a day and how the addiction surpassed his desire to wrestle:
“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,”
Continuing to describe the severity of his addiction, the former World Champion revealed the intricate system he set up to make sure that he got his fix:
“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,”
When asked about how much this addiction was costing him, Angle revealed that although it was in the thousands of dollars, his WWE salary was able to easily cover it:
“$7,000 a month, but remember, I was making a lot of money [laughs], so the money wasn’t really an issue,”
Angle has discussed his battles with addiction at length on his blog, The Right Angle. In a new update in November 2023, Kurt Angle has informed fans that he will require neck surgery in 2024.
Kurt Angle Attempted To Change WrestleMania Plans
Although Angle did main event WrestleMania 19, the Olympic Gold Medalist recently revealed how he planned to insert himself in a previous marquee match. As revealed on his podcast, Kurt Angle described how he called Vince McMahon 2 weeks before a WrestleMania to pitch a change in line-up to the WWE Chairman.
In the same interview, Kurt Angle revealed his close bond with a current WWE star.
H/t to Fightful.