The Secret Life Of a Pro-Wrestler, Personal Experience Part 9: Addiction

The Secret Life of a Pro Wrestler is a complex one. We try and think about what they go through. We only see what goes on, on camera. We never see behind the scenes. Until this series.

To understand things in this series I ask you to check out the other articles in the series. To better understand this one, check out Part 8 if you have not already

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/148126-the-secret-life-of-a-pro-wrestler-personal-experience-part-8-path-of-no-return

Now to Part 9

I did not know what to do, I wanted to be successful, I really did. But the problem was that even though I was doing well, I just knew it was going to end before to long.

How did I know? Because I knew that I was to small to be considered a contender for any World Championship, even the FCW World Title. I just found out my mentor Eric Escobar was suspended and so was my enemy Joe Hennig for doing an improv fight in the ring, which is against WWE policy.

Escobar was the FCW World Champion, so they had to do a tournament to crown the new FCW Champion. I quickly found out I was going to be in the 10 man tournament.

I saw that the tournament was going to be in two weeks, and I had to look like I was getting bigger. I just didn’t know how. I got approached by a trainer who offered me a chance to use steroids.

I wanted to say no, which I did to start. But he said they were safe and done orally, not with needles. I was happy to know that, because I hate needles and the prospect of getting steroids injected in my blood stream.

I was going to be using anabolic steroids, which are by doctor’s subscription only. And since the trainer had a medical license and was considered a doctor by the WWE, he could get pretty much anything he wanted medical wise.

The fact was he was a crooked man, and he saw that wrestlers wanted them. He did what he thought was the best thing, but knew it was wrong. Maybe he was protecting his job by doing this for them. Who knows?

But either way, he offered them to me, I did not seek him out. He said they were safe, but he never said they were addictive.

I saw that I had two weeks to get some muscle on me, so I figured I would take them throughout the day when I worked out.

I had never taken anything like this before. I had no idea what these pills were going to do for me, how they would make me feel, or side-effects they had.

But still I wanted to take them, I did not think about it of course. I just did it. You would think someone like my mentor and friend Eric Escobar would try and stop me, but the fact was he was not around.

He was suspended so he went to stay with his family, it was sort of a vacation for him. A one month, vacation of course. So I was alone, and knew nothing about what I was getting myself into.

The pills finally arrived, right away I grabbed mine and took them to my apartment I recently got around the Tampa area.

I did not want to take them right away. I was scared, I did not know what would happen still. There was just a prescription with the trainer’s name on it of whom I got them from.

Of course it had the name of the pill, which I will not state here. No side-effects were on it, or anything else. So I figured I would just go ahead and take one.

One and only one of course. I wanted to see how it made me feel, why take something that hurts me?

It will be out of my system later, it is just one, why not?

So I did it, and went to the gym. I felt nothing to start, I thought maybe it had to get into my system to really work. I worked out for about an hour that day.

I felt great, and nothing seemed to be wrong with me. So the next day I took one more, and headed to the gym for about 2 hours that morning. I started to feel like I had a lot of energy.

It was sort of like when you take an ADHD pill when you don’t have ADHD. It has the opposite effect, while it makes people with ADHD calm, it makes others hyper.

I felt energetic, I felt as if I could go on more than just two hours that day. I rested for a little while, even though I felt as if I didn’t need it.

I felt so good, I wanted more energy. I was going to work out more later in the day. So when I did I took another pill. I worked out for three hours. I ran, lifted, and anything else possible.

I started to die down in energy. I was still feeling great. It was if I was taking a miracle pill that had nothing wrong with it. But I got some rest, which everyone needs

The next day of course I wanted more, and I kept taking more and more every day for the rest of the week.

The following week I was out of it. I took two in the morning, then two again just a couple of hours later.

This was not good, but it made me feel good. I loved the energy I was having and the results it was giving me.

I had a match that week for the World Title Tournament, I had my match with Brett Dibiase the brother of two-time tag team champion and WWE Superstar Ted Dibiase.

I heard he was a nice guy, and when I met him, he did not disappoint. We went over a few things we were going to do for the show and since it was late, we thought we would work on choreography tomorrow.

The next day, I got up, ate, and took three pills this time. I wanted to have enough energy to do well in the work outs and choreography with DiBiase.

It is not that I did not have enough to do it, but I felt I had to have it to get by. Did I need it? No. But did I have to have it? Yes. At least I felt I did. I was addicted.

I could not live without taking it, or so I thought. I finally arrived at the FCW arena to choreograph with DiBiase. I felt a little pain in my chest. It was like heart burn, I figured it was the breakfast I had coming back.

I felt as if I needed a good burp, one that would get rid of the pain. But it was not like a gas thing, it was just the pain in my chest.

I still pressed on, and I started choreographing with Dibiase. We seemed to have a couple of nice moves that we knew the crowd would love. We felt as if we were going to have the best match of the night.

Then it started to happen, I had the chest pain get worse. DiBiase asked if I was ok, and of course I wasn’t but still said I was fine.

I came off the ropes and hit DiBiase with a clothesline. My chest immediately started hurting even more and all the sudden I hit the mat DiBiase just landed on face first.

I was awake but couldn't move, the last thing I remember was DiBiase waving and yelling for help, before I blacked out.