Kurt Angle's Tragic Real-Life Story

Kurt Angle isn't the only wrestler to battle drug addiction. However, his fight's been particularly ornery, and probably should've killed him a while back. In addition to the Olympics, Angle says he's broken his neck several times as a pro wrestler. One break in particular led him to start taking painkillers, which he unfortunately discovered he enjoyed very much. Soon, as he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2006, he found himself chowing up to 65 pills a day, of all sorts: Percocet, Vicodin, Lorcet, and more. He even had a system where he'd go from doctor to doctor to get various prescriptions and collect pill bottles.

In August 2005, he suffered a laundry list of injuries in a match, but this time he refused to take any more pills. He apparently steered clear of them for a while — a year later he told the Tribune-Review he was still clean — and worked on cleaning his life up. That, unfortunately, didn't last, as shortly thereafter he was on more substances than ever. During a 2014 CBS interview, Angle admits to a seven-year battle with a potentially lethal cocktail of morphine, Xanax, and alcohol, one he had only kicked about a year before. At the time, he was winning his addiction battle, though he knows drugs are too stubborn to stay down without a constant fight. Just like him.

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