Kurt Angle has recalled spending thousands of dollars on painkillers every month as he battled with his addiction.
The Hall of Famer has been extremely candid about his personal struggles over the years – as well as the caused by his wrestling career – and he ended up paying a staggering amount on the pills.
Asked how much he was spending, he said: ‘$7,000 a month, but remember, I was making a lot of money. [laughs] So the money wasn’t really an issue.’
At one point, the former Olympian was taking 65 Vicodin a day, and it’s something he’s ‘not proud of’.
‘When I broke my neck the second time, the first time in WWE, I met a doctor, and he introduced me to painkillers,’ he recalled on the .
‘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.’
He got to a point where his priority was getting painkillers rather than his wrestling career as his addiction took hold.
‘The reason why I was taking them was not because of the pain anymore. It was because I was going through withdrawal,’ he added.
‘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.’
After his sister died, he ended up seeing 12 different doctors each with their own prescription.
He said: ‘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.’
