Gregory Robinson
Hulk Hogan has spoken about the devastating impact fentanyl had on him after he was given it following a string of awful injuries.
Hogan’s antics and persona made him a huge hit among WWF (now known as WWE) fans since his debut in 1977, while his platinum blonde shoulder-length hair, a horseshoe moustache and bulging muscles are known everywhere.
The WWE Hall of Fame inductee - whose real name Terry Bollea - says his illustrious career left him dealing with a number of serious injuries, which left him in excruciating pain.
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The retired pro wrestler, 70, told podcaster Joe Rogan that withdrawals from the drug left him experiencing hallucinations of his wife’s teeth falling out of her mouth.
During a conversation with Rogan, the wrestler said the savage WWE schedule back in the day took a serious toll on his body.
He said ‘everything’s fused’ regarding the state of his joints and back, for which he had 10 back surgeries in search of a relief.
"I've had 10 back surgeries. My knees and my hips are so old now because I had the left knee scope three or four times, the right knee scope three or four times, then I had them replaced," he said.
"Then I had the hips replaced, and they're all over 20 years old."
Hogan said it was normal to visit doctors as he travelled to different cities while touring to get fistfuls of pain medication in an attempt to treat his growing list of painful injuries.
But the wrestler’s tolerance reached such a high level, physicians began giving him fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid drug that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the CDC.
Fentanyl is very addictive because of its potency and the CDC says that the drug, along with other synthetic opioids, are the most common drugs involved in overdose deaths. Over 150 people die every day from overdoses related to synthetic opioids.
“They almost killed me with that stuff,” Hogan said on Thursday’s episode of Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience.
After Rogan audibly gasped, Hogan added: “I didn’t even know they gave it to me.”
Fentanyl caused Hogan to flail around in his sleep in such a violent manner he was injuring himself in bed.
“I would wake up worse off than when I went to sleep,” he recalled.
One night he woke up and found his body twisted out of shape, with his head going in the opposite direction of his shoulders.
EMTs had to rush to his house and transport him away for treatment.
"When I came back, I said, 'That's it, I'm done,'" he said in the episode.
Afterwards, Hogan vowed to get off fentanyl in just two weeks.
"I sweated through the bed and all the way through the mattress several times," he told Rogan.
"I saw my wife's teeth come out [of her head] and talk to me. I saw a plastic squirt gun come out of her chest. This was just coming off of the fentanyl. I lost 35 pounds."
You can listen to the full podcast here.