Kurt Angle Candidly Speaks About Regretting Past Drug Use

The Joe Rogan experience. Well, throughout my career, was there anything that I would change? Yeah. Well, we'll get into this topic, I guess. After I broke my neck the second time, the first time in WWE, I was introduced to painkillers. And when I started taking them, I really liked it. I mean, it masked the pain. I couldn't feel the pain. It kind of gave me an energetic feel. It didn't make me feel nauseous like it does a lot of people. And I started taking them. I was taking one every four to six hours, like I was told. But after a while, you build a tolerance. And one doesn't work anymore. Then you have to take two. And two led to four. Four led to eight. Was this OxyContins? This was extra-strength Vicodin. OxyContins are a lot more powerful than Vicodin. But I was taking 65 extra-strength Vicodin a day. Whoa. That's how out of control I got. And I was hiding it from the company. And I mean, I was in serious trouble. And does that even make you high at that point? Does it just keep you from going into withdrawals? It kept me from going through withdrawals. But there were times where I passed out. I mean, the company knew. Some of my friends knew. You know, I'll give you an example. There was one point. This is how bad it got. There was one point in my career where my brother called me. I was at a house show, an un-televised show for WWE. It was the night before I was going to have the biggest match of my career with Brock Lesnar the next day. It was an Iron Man match on SmackDown. And my brother calls me and says, hey, your sister just died of a heroin overdose. And it crushed me. I mean, I was crying. I was in such pain thinking about my sister, who was only 40 years old, dying from a heroin overdose. And the thing is, I wasn't able to talk to her because I told her eight months prior, if she doesn't get clean, I'm not going to talk to you. So I didn't talk to her for eight months. And then this happens. And so here I am. I'm in the hotel room. And I look at my pills. I said, fuck it. I took 20 of them, threw them in my mouth, chewed them up, and swallowed them. I didn't wake up until 5 o'clock in the afternoon the next day. And I had the biggest match of my career that night. So what time did you have to be to the arena? And did you do it? Well, we had to be there at 1, but I didn't get there until 530. Right. But yeah, I ended up doing it. The WWE was trying to call me the whole time. They were like, they wanted to tell me that, hey, you can go home, plan a funeral for your sister. You don't have to do this match. But I kept thinking, I know my sister will want me to. And I knew that I wouldn't have to feel that pain of losing my sister, at least for that hour. So I went ahead and did it. And it was actually one of my best performances of my career, which is kind of crazy. But that was a really rough time. The painkillers are the one thing that I do regret I did in the company. I wish I was never introduced to them. But do you think you had to take them? It sounds like you were in such excruciating pain all the time. There were times I needed to take them, and there were times I didn't. But I was so far deep into it that I had to. I mean, I'm not going to lie to you. I would go to sleep at night. I would have 15 pills sitting on the desk next to me for when I wake up, because I knew I was going to have withdrawal when I got up. I'd wake up sweating, shaking, and I'd grab those, throw them in my mouth, chew them up, and swallow them. Fifteen at a time? Fifteen at a time. Most people, 15 at a time will kill you. Well, it didn't kill me. I took 20 at one time when my sister died. So I've been really lucky. I've been blessed. Honestly, I don't think I should be here today. How did you get off of them? Okay. Well, what happened was I left the WWE because they wanted me to go to rehab, and I didn't want to go. So I ended up going to another company called Impact Wrestling, and I got my painkiller problem under control there because I found a doctor that got me on MS Cotton. There are two morphine pills. They're very tiny, but they'll keep you from going through withdrawal. So I would take one in the morning, one at night, and no more painkillers. They were painkillers because they were morphine, but they were high dose. It was just two of them that I had to take. Well, I started having anxiety about breaking my neck over and over again, so they put me on Xanax. So now I'm taking Xanax, and then I switched to TNA, Impact Wrestling, and everybody drank there. So I started drinking alcohol. So I'm mixing, having these cocktails, and I'm so out of control that I'm driving, okay, from town to town, drinking a 12-pack of beer, and I got four DUIs in five years. I lost my reputation, everything I worked for. I was at the lowest point in my life, and I remember calling my wife from jail after my fourth DUI, and she said, listen, I can't do this anymore. You either go to rehab, or I'm taking the kids, and I'm leaving. So I went to rehab because I didn't want to lose my wife and my kids, and I was scared in rehab. I literally thought, I was so nervous. First of all, the withdrawal was the worst experience I ever had. I'll never go through that again because I'm never going to take another painkiller. That was the worst thing I've ever done, or drink another drop of alcohol. That was the absolute worst thing I've ever been through, and I forget what I was going to say, though. So with the rehab, how do they get you off of it? They don't do it cold turkey, right? Do they? They do. Yes, they do. I thought they were going to wean me off. They put you in a room and let you sleep, and they check on you every couple hours. How many days? About six days for me to go through the withdrawal symptoms. Oh, my God. It seemed like forever. Seemed like six months. So six days, you just in a room by yourself. Yep. Just thinking. Yeah. You know what? You want to stay in there, and they start forcing you out. You got to come move around. You got to come out and talk to people. You got to live your life, and you're so exhausted. For the first two and a half weeks, I didn't want to move. I just wanted to stay in my bed, but they were forcing me to get out of bed and conversating with people and trying to go and eat and go to meetings and do all that stuff you do in rehab. So it was really tough. How long did it take before you felt normal? Well, I would say two weeks where I really felt normal, but the thing is, the last two weeks, because I spent a month in rehab, the last two weeks, I was so nervous that I was going to fuck up again. Like, I literally didn't want to leave rehab. I was scared that I was going to go back to it right when I got out. So many guys do. It's so crazy. That's why. Like, I hear all these stories, and I'm like, oh, it's going to happen to you too, man. But the one thing that I kept going across in my mind was going through withdrawal. I don't want to do that again. And I know if I start taking them, I'm going to have to experience that again, and I don't want to. It was that bad? It was that bad. What is it like? Like, what is withdrawal feeling? OK, you're sweating because you're hot and you're cold at the same time. You're shitting your pants. You're throwing up. You can't think straight. Your body's shaking. You're getting hot sweats, cold sweats. You feel like you don't have anything inside of you, no insides, no organs, nothing. You feel like you're hollow. It's just the craziest thing. It's the most painful thing I've ever gone through. And, you know, I'm sure people have been in a lot more pain than that with certain things they've had done to themselves. But for me, that was the worst.