Former WWE Champion and former TNA star Kurt Angle was recently a guest on WWE Hall Of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin’s podcast The Steve Austin Show. You can check out some highlights from the appearance here:
On hiding his drug addiction from Vince McMahon:
“I remember taking that first pill and I was like, ‘well, this makes me feel really good. I feel like I can take on the world and I can’t feel my neck.’ And the affect it had on me gave me more energy than I normally had, so I liked that feeling. So I tried that. One turned to two. Two turned to four. Four turned to eight. And before I knew it, I was out of control. I was hiding it from WWE. I know there were times I was slurring. Vince, Vince McMahon, was like, ‘are you alright?’ I was like, ‘oh yeah, I’m fine.’ I really shrugged it off. And then, I made him think that he was going crazy.”
On his scheme to get more pills:
“Literally, by the middle of 2003, I was taking 65 extra strength Vicodin a day. I was getting it from 12 different doctors. I had a schedule book to make sure I didn’t ask them too early or too late. I had a schedule of when to call the doctor, when to get the prescriptions, which pharmacies to go to, so I didn’t hit the same pharmacy, like a CVS or Walgreens. Back then, you could hit different pharmacies and they didn’t know if you got it from a different pharmacy. Now, you can’t do that anymore. Yeah, you can’t do that anymore. I also was buying about 500 of them illegally every month, so I was… lets see, 1,500, 500, that’s 2,000 a month, I was taking. And that pans out to be about 62 to 65 Vicodin a day.”
On the only reason he went to rehab:
“Well, this is crazy. This is what an addict does. I had an attorney call me and say, ‘listen, you need to go to rehab’ and I said, ‘well, why?’ He said, ‘it’ll help with your DUI case,’ I said, ‘oh yeah, that’s a good idea! Yeah, I’ll go to rehab,’ hoping they’ll drop my DUI. I didn’t go because I thought I had a problem. I went because I thought it would help my DUI case. When I got there, I realized I had a really serious problem. You learn so much in rehab.”
(All transcribed quotes courtesy of Wrestling Inc.)
