#2036 - Kurt Angle

Into replacement discs? No, but you know what? I just got an email from a doctor in New York, and he told me he was doing it. And so I'm going to call him in this next couple of weeks to see if we can set up an appointment. Al Jamane Sterling, the former UFC Bantamweight Champion, he injured his neck really badly and then got fouled in a title fight. Actually, it was very controversial because Pyotr Yann, the Russian cat who hit him with the knee to the head while he was down, lost his title that way. So he lost the title because even though Al Jamane's a sensational fighter, everybody was giving him shit because he won the title because of that. So then he goes and gets a disc replaced in his neck, defends the title, and dominates Pyotr Yann in the rematch, beats him in the rematch, and then goes on to defend the title a couple more times, and then just lost it to Shugashone O'Malley. But he's got an artificial disc in his neck. It worked extremely well for him. It worked, and he's good. He's good to go now. I need to look into that. Titanium. It's a titanium articulating disc. So instead of fusing the disc, this titanium, see if you can find it online, Jamie, articulating titanium disc replacement for spinal vertebrae, cervical, I think. So Eddie Bravo has one in his lower back too. And they do. So they do lower backs too. Yeah, they do lower backs, and what they do is they, this is what it looks like. Instead of fusing your discs, which the problem with fusing your vertebrae is you no longer have any movement. With this, it allows you to have movement. And I think it lasts for a long fucking time. You know, it's crazy. I had a doctor when I broke my neck the second time. He wanted me to do fusion, and he told me that he's gonna have to do three levels, and then I'd have to retire. And I was like, oh, that might not be an option. It was the same doctor that Stone Cold Steve Austin had. And Steve still has problems to this day with the fusion. Everybody I know that had fusion has real problems. Yeah, see, that's why I'm nervous about getting it. And that's why I'm glad I found this doctor in New York City that can do it. I didn't know it was like there was a doctor out there that could do that kind of stuff. I'll connect you to Algermane. We'll find out who he used, but his results are excellent. I mean, he went on to defend the title. I mean, in wrestling, he's a wrestler. So he got caught in neck cranks, guillotines, fought his way out of stuff with this artificial disc. That's crazy. He's fighting with an artificial disc. Fighting and winning against the best in the world. That's ridiculous, man. Incredible. And it seems like that was a pretty quick turnover, because that rematch, there wasn't too much space in between. Yeah, it was pretty quick. I mean, I think he was back fighting within eight months. You know what? I was told that when you have that done, you literally are out of the hospital, and you're working out like three days later. Yeah. It doesn't really dehabilitate you that much. Yeah. You're back to your normal life pretty quickly. I think it might. I don't want to say. I'm obviously not a doctor. I don't know if you knew that. No, I didn't. I don't know what the best options are, but it's an option. And I think it's probably a better option in some cases than fusion. Oh, definitely. Yeah. It's allowed you to move. Who wants metal on their neck? Yeah. You lose your mobility. Yeah. Yes. Have you ever seen Yoel Romero run? Yoel Romero got his neck fucked up in Cuba, and they just fused the whole thing. Oh, boy. His neck is like, so when he runs, see if you can find a video of Yoel Romero running. His shoulders are high. He's, watch it. Look at him run. Oh, my god. So his neck doesn't move. No mobility at all. Zero mobility. Wow. One of the best athletes that's ever competed in the UFC with a fused neck. Oh, wow. He had like, there's no flexibility there. Yeah. There's no movement. There's no movement. So the movement is all absorbed in the lower spine, and obviously has giant traps and huge muscles and support. Would that give him spinal damage down the road? I mean, who knows? I don't know. But he had this done quite a while ago. This is when he was competing as an amateur wrestler. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. And he went on and was one of the, I mean, fought for the title a couple of times. It was one of the best middleweights in the history of the UFC. He was an animal and just couldn't move his neck. That's crazy. Yeah. You're fighting. You can't even turn your head. Yeah. The crazy thing is he could take a hell of a shot. And I've always wondered if one of the reasons why he takes a hell of a shot is that his neck doesn't move. It doesn't snap. Like, it doesn't whip when he gets hit. You know, we've talked about this on the podcast so many times, just the physical abuse that wrestlers take, both amateur wrestlers and then maybe even more so in the pro wrestling game. It's crazy. You know what? I've been injured a lot in amateur wrestling a lot, but nothing compares to pro wrestling. I've been so beaten up there. I barely was ever 100% healthy. I would tear a hamstring or a groin or whatever. That'd be something small. And, you know, it would rehabilitate me a little bit, but I was still able to work around it. You learn as a pro wrestler how to work around injuries. I actually wrestled Brock Lesnar in WrestleMania 19, the main event, with my neck broken. I had to have surgery the following day. Wow. Yeah, so it's crazy. The pro wrestling is just ridiculous. You wrestle, you're on plywood. There's a cloth above it, but it's literally hard like plywood. There's no spring under the ring or it's not a box spring or a bed. It's plywood. That's what you bump on. That's so crazy. Why do they do it that way? I don't know because it makes the sound. Yeah, it makes the noise. That's why they don't care about the health of people. They just care about the sound it makes. When you're at one live, it doesn't really translate to TV as cool as it is live. You hear that pop, and they probably, I think they have microphones underneath and stuff. Oh, they have microphones underneath. That accelerate it through the speakers and like, boom, boom. It's very, very exciting. It's one of those things that's 1,000 times better live. Isn't there a way they can put a layer of wood and a layer of wood and then the foam so the wood slams into the wood, but you feel the foam? Well, if you do that, then they see your little feet pushing into the foam. Oh, yeah. How are you going to run on it? Yeah, I guess. They're like, that's a bed. I mean, not a foam like a bed. I mean, a foam like a wrestling mat, like something. Yeah, that might work. It's not a bad idea. Better for the athletes. Definitely. Like a tumble track or something, like something that has some give to it. Well, hopefully, WWE's listening. You have seen the WWE together now. Yes, they are. Which is very interesting. Very interesting. That's a gigantic corporation. You think they're going to cross promote? I don't know. I think they're definitely going to cross promote. What I'm interested to see is like, obviously Brock was the most successful pro wrestler to ever compete in MMA. And CM Punk tried it. I'm going to be interested to see how many other guys. Bobby Lashley did it. How many other guys are going to try it? When I look at that partnership, I see a lot of fighters crossing over to wrestling. But I don't see many wrestlers crossing over to fighting. I mean, that's a completely different beast. I don't think there are many wrestlers that could go in there and mix it up with those guys. Well, that's what's so sensational about Brock. It is. You know what? He's adapted to everything in his life. The kid is unbelievable. For his size, he's 310 pounds. He's the best athlete I've ever been in a ring with. I mean, he's explosive. He's quick. He's fast. He's strong as hell. I did wrestle him one time for real. And the thing was, what happened was, when he came up from training from OVW, someone went up to him and asked him how he'd do against Kurt Angle. He said, I'd kick his ass. So, OK, they're starting the pie. You know, they're getting shit rolling. So the guy comes to me and says, hey, Brock said he could be in a wrestle match. So I went up to Brock, and I said, hey, let's get in the ring right now. And he said, no, no, I have sandals on. I said, let's take our shoes off. I said, we'll go barefoot. He said, no. So I let it go for the week. The following week, he was in the ring with Big Show. And they were wrestling for real. And Big Show was about 530 pounds at the time. Brock was double legging him, picking him up and slamming him. Holy shit, Mike. I don't know if I could beat this guy, right? So Big Show was facing me. He was on the other side of Brock. And Brock's back was to me. And I said, Big Show, get out. He gets out, and I sneak up behind Brock, and I tap him on his shoulder. I go, it's time to go. So we went. And we went for about 15 minutes. And the wrestlers tell you that I kicked his ass, that I dominated him. That's not true. I beat him, but I didn't beat him. I took him down twice. He didn't take me down at all. I mean, it wasn't like a dominating performance. I did beat him, but he's the real deal. Oh, he's the real deal. He really is, yeah. You know what? I'm surprised he didn't train for the Olympics. I really am. I wonder how he would have done. I think he would have met him. That would have been amazing. The athlete he is. Yeah. Oh, he's an insane athlete. I'm sure he's seen his combine scores. Oh, yeah, yeah. Crazy. You know what? He was the final cut for the Minnesota Vikings. And they wanted him to go to NFL Europe for a year, because they had it back then. And Brock said, I don't want to travel. And he said, I'll just do UFC. He's switching sport after sport. Doesn't matter to him. He knows he's going to be good at anything he does. That's incredible. You know, the video we've talked about this so many times, video of him doing that front flip and landing on his head. Oh, god. That was with me. Yeah, WrestleMania 19. That's right. That's right. That was with you. That video, that would have probably killed most people on Earth. I thought he broke his neck. My neck was broken. Yeah. My neck was broken. And Brock was supposed to win the title for me. When he did this, I was like, oh, shit. I'm going to have to pin him. I mean, that is insane. Right on his head. On plywood. So I go and cover him. And I'm like, please kick out. Don't let me hold this title for another month. And he kicks out. And then I'm going to start talking to him here. And I'm going to say, Brock, are you OK? And he's like, I don't know. And I was like, Brock, are you OK? And he said, I think so. And so I said, I'm going to pick you up. I want you to give me the F5. Can you do it? He said, I think so. Right here. Wow. And you grabbed his neck. That's what's so crazy. I know. You're grabbing his neck. And he just landed on it. You know what? He didn't hurt his neck at all. He got a concussion. What? He got a concussion. He didn't hurt his neck. No. No. He doesn't have a neck. That's so crazy. It's so crazy that he came back from that. Yeah. So crazy that he came back from that. I was relieved. I got to drop the title and get my surgery the next day. Wow. I was supposed to win. That wasn't supposed to happen. They wanted me to have a nice long title reign. But I broke my neck. Brock broke my neck the month before in a wrestling match. And so I went to the doctor. He said, you have to have surgery. So I told Vince, I'm not going to wrestle WrestleMania. And I wasn't going to do it. And I was going to have surgery right away. And I went to my next door neighbors. And this kid, he has Down Syndrome. Really nice kid. His name's Johnny. And he said, Kurt, I heard you're not wrestling at WrestleMania. And he gives me this magazine. It's direct TV. And I'm on the cover with Brock. He said, I really wish you would be able to wrestle. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to wrestle to lose a title to Brock on SmackDown. That's what Vince wanted me to do. He wanted Brock just to kick me in the gut, give me an F5, and beat me. I said, I might as well just go to WrestleMania and tough it out. Go ahead and do it with the broken neck. And is it going to make it worse? If it does, it does. But back then, there were no liabilities. Now you can't do that stuff. There's no way the WWE is going to clear you to go out there with a broken neck and perform. How did Brock break your neck the month before that? I was on his back. I had him in a choke hold. I had him in a choke hold. And I was on his back. And he was on the other side of the ring. He's really strong. And he could run really fast. So I'm on his back. And he starts running to the other side of the ring. And he goes to turn. So I hit the turnbuckle. Well, we only turned sideways. And my head whiplash really fast. And it snapped. I heard it snap. And I couldn't feel my arm. I couldn't raise my arm. You could tell on the match when you watch it. My arm's down. I couldn't raise it. My neck was in pain. I knew something was wrong. And so the next day, I went to the doctor and got the MRI. And I broke my neck again. So I decided that I was going to have the surgery. And then I actually put it off till after WrestleMania. But what's crazy is I broke my neck again. Brock broke my neck again six months later. He hit me over the head with a chair like this. Straight over top. You're supposed to bring it sideways so you don't have the pressure of your neck, you know, your head going down your neck. So he hit me straight over and broke my neck again. I had five vertebrae I cracked. And so I was out again for about, I had surgery again. I was out for about three months. I came back for WrestleMania and I broke my neck again. Oh my god. OK, so I was rushing back before my neck was completely healed. That's what happened. I broke my neck four times in two and a half years in WWE. And what kind of surgery did they do? A quick fix surgery. It's called a lapindectomy. They go in. They let the vertebrae heal. That's why you wait a couple months, let it heal. But they go in and they cut the disc. Whatever was blocking the nerves or whatever's sticking to your spinal cord, they cut out part of the disc. And they leave the rest in there. So right now, I have like a little bit of disc in like three different levels of my neck. And they're fusioned together right now because I don't have enough disc. And that's why I need to get this rubber disc docket. Yeah. I really do. Well, I'll connect you to Aljamaine. Please do, man. As quick as I can as soon as we're done here. I wish I'd known about it before. It's such a dangerous area of your body to be injured. It is. It is. It controls everything. It controls your legs, too. Yeah. Do they think that so right now, is it pushing against something right now? Is that why you're getting the atrophy? I have nerves that are being pinched. And they're not being able to flow down my arms. So my fingers are freezing cold. They're always cold. I don't have any circulation. My arms, I've lost. Look, this shows you how much weight, how much muscle I lost. Boss room has a similar thing. This is all extra skin because of where the size of my arms used to be. And I'm just barely making it right now. I literally, my arms are 15 inches now. They used to be 18, 19 inches. So I'm struggling right now. It is the sheer volume that you guys have to do in terms of the amount of shows, it's just such an insane workload on your body. The punishment that you guys take, the fact that you do it, like how many nights, I mean, how many nights a year were you wrestling? Well, we were probably going 260, 270. I mean, there was a time in WLE where they were going 320. It was ridiculous. They were going seven days a week and doing nine shows. So they'd do five Monday through Friday. And then they would do four in a week and they'd do a double shot on the weekends. That's how it was back in the 80s and 90s. But then around 2000s when they changed it, they started having five shows a week. So you had two days off. Usually one day was a travel day. So you really had one day off where you were at home. And on top of all that at your level, those are longer matches. You know, it's not even a normal thing. No, being the main event level, yeah. You're gonna have a lot longer matches, yeah. Like those are 35 minutes or an hour, 50 minutes or 40 minutes of putting on the biggest show. Instead of eight, 10, 12, yeah. I know there was a time where people were talking to you about competing in MMA. Yes. You know what? I've got this story up wrong so many times. Dana and I have been on the opposite ends of the spectrum with this thing. But now I think I got it right. Like there were things I would leave out. But Dana treated me really well. I'm not gonna lie to you. He offered me a couple of deals. The thing is, the first time I won't even talk about it. The second time he wanted me to go on the show Ultimate Fighter with Kimbo Slice. And I said, Dana, those guys don't get paid. They're on that show for free. I said, I need to get paid. He said, well, I'll give you a substantial amount of money. So he was gonna pay me to be on the show. But he said, if you win, you're gonna get a six fight deal. And if you lose, I'll probably still give you a six fight deal because I think you're gonna be really good. And he said, but I need you to take a physical. I said, okay, let's take the physical. Well, I took the physical and I didn't pass it. So I'm glad I didn't because my neck and all this stuff, I broke my neck five times up until this point when I went to see Dana. And I couldn't do five pushups. And here I am, I wanna fight with these world class fighters and my neck is like so messed up. My arms, I can't do pushups. I can't do anything. I would have got my butt handed to me. I mean, I might have ended up getting paralyzed to be honest with you. I was in no shape or condition to be able to compete with those guys. And I was fooling myself and I'm glad I failed the physical. God. Because I probably would have went through with it. Shit. That's a different mentality. That is a different mentality. I mean, you wanna talk about toughness? The toughness of pro wrestlers, the mentality that you have to have to be able to do 260 plus nights a year, that's insane. Yeah, you know what? I wouldn't say you're a bad ass. I think you're a glutton for punishment. You're abusing yourself. That's what it is. You're not beating up people. You're beating yourself up. That's what it is. But you can do it over and over. Just the fact that you knew you had a broken neck going into that match with Brock, that's, who the fuck does that? I don't know. When you look back on it now, is there anything you would have changed? Well, throughout my career, was there anything that I would change? Yeah. Well, we'll get into this topic, I guess. After I broke my neck the second time, the first time in WWE, I was introduced to painkillers. And when I started taking them, I really liked it. I mean, it masked the pain. I couldn't feel the pain. It kind of gave me an energetic feel. It didn't make me feel nauseous like it does a lot of people. And I started taking, I was taking one every four to six hours, like I was told. But after a while, you build a tolerance and one doesn't work anymore. Then you have to take two, and two led to four, four led to eight. Was this Oxycontin? This was extra strength Vicodin. Oxycontin's are a lot more powerful than Vicodin. But I was taking 65 extra strength Vicodin a day. Whoa! That's how out of control I got. And I was hiding it from the company. And I mean, I was in serious trouble. And does that even make you high at that point? Does it just keep you from going in withdrawals? It kept me from going through withdrawals, but there were times where I passed out. I mean, the company knew, some of my friends knew. I'll give you an example. There was one point, this is how bad it got. There was one point in my career where my brother called me. I was at a house show, an untelivized show for WWE. It was the night before I was gonna have the biggest match in my career with Brock Lesnar the next day. It was an Iron Man match on SmackDown. And my brother calls me and says, hey, your sister just started with heroin overdose. And it crushed me. I mean, I was crying. I was in such pain thinking about my sister who was only 40 years old, dying from a heroin overdose. And the thing is, I wasn't able to talk to her because I told her eight months prior, if she doesn't get clean, I'm not gonna talk to you. So I didn't talk to her for eight months. And then this happens. So here I am, I'm in the hotel room. And I look at my pills, I said, fuck it. I took 20 of them, threw them in my mouth, chewed them up and swallowed them. Oh my God. I didn't wake up till five o'clock in the afternoon the next day. And I had the biggest match of my career. Oh my God. That night. So what time did you have to be to the arena and did you do it? Well, we had to be there at one, but I didn't get there till 5.30. Right. Yeah. But yeah, I ended up doing it. The WLB was trying to call me the whole time. They were like, they wanted to tell me that, hey, you can go home, plan a funeral for your sister. You don't have to do this match. But I kept thinking, I know my sister will want me to. And I knew that I wouldn't have to feel that pain of losing my sister, at least for that hour. So I went ahead and did it. And it was actually one of my best performances of my career, which is kind of crazy. But that was a really rough time. The painkillers are the one thing that I do regret I did in the company. I wish I was never introduced to them. But do you think you had to take them? I mean, it sounds like you were in such excruciating pain all the time. There were times I needed to take them and there were times I didn't. But I was so far deep into it that I had to. I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you. I would go to sleep at night. I would have 15 pills sitting on the desk next to me for when I wake up, because I knew I was gonna have withdrawal when I got up. I wake up sweating, shaking, and I grab those, throw them in my mouth, chew them up and swallow them. 15 at a time. 15 at a time. Wow. Most people, 15 at a time will kill you. Well, it didn't kill me. I took 20 at one time when my sister died. So I've been really lucky. I've been blessed. I honestly, I don't think I should be here today. How'd you get off of them? Okay, well, what happened was I left the WWE because they wanted me to go to rehab, but I don't wanna go. So I ended up going to another company called Impact Wrestling. And I got my painkiller problem under control there because I found a doctor that got me on MS Cotton. There are two morphine pills. They're very tiny, but they'll keep you from going through withdrawal. So I would take one in the morning, one at night, and no more painkillers. They were painkillers because they were morphine, but they were high dose. It was just two of them that I had to take. Well, I started having anxiety about breaking my neck over and over again, so they put me on Xanax. So now I'm taking Xanax. And then I switched to TNA, Impact Wrestling, and everybody drank there, so I started drinking alcohol. So I'm mixing, having these cocktails, and I'm so out of control that I'm driving, okay, from town to town, drinking a 12 pack of beer, and I got four DUIs in five years. I lost my reputation, everything I worked for. I was at the lowest point in my life. And I remember calling my wife from jail after my fourth DUI, and she said, listen, I can't do this anymore. You either go to rehab or I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving. So I went to rehab because I wanted to lose my wife and my kids. And I was scared in rehab. I literally thought, I was so nervous. First of all, the withdrawal was the worst experience I ever had. I'll never go through that again because I'm never gonna take another painkiller. That was the worst thing I've ever done, or drink another drop of alcohol. That was the absolute worst thing I've ever been through. And I forget what I was gonna say, though, but. So with the rehab, how do they get you off of it? They don't do it cold turkey, right? How do they? Do they? Yeah, they do. I thought they were gonna wean me off. They put you in a room and let you sleep and they check on you every couple hours. How many days? About six days for me to go through the withdrawal symptoms. Oh my God. It seemed like forever. Seemed like six months. So six days, you just in a room by yourself. Just thinking. Yeah. And you know what? You wanna stay in there. And they start forcing you out. You gotta come move around. You gotta come out and talk to people. You gotta live your life. And you're so exhausted for the first two and a half weeks. I didn't wanna move. I just wanted to stay in my bed. But they were forcing me to get out of bed and being conversating with people and trying to go and eat and go to meetings and do all that stuff you do in rehab. So it was really tough. How long did it take before you felt normal? Well, I would say two weeks where I really felt normal. But the thing is, the last two weeks, because I spent a month on rehab, last two weeks I was so nervous that I was gonna fuck up again. Like, I literally didn't wanna leave rehab. I was scared that I was gonna go back to it right when I got out. So many guys do. That's why I hear all these stories. I'm like, oh, it's gonna happen to you too, man. And you know, but the one thing that I kept going across in my mind was going through withdrawal. I don't wanna do that again. And I know if I start taking them, I'm gonna have to experience that again. And I don't want to. It was that bad. It was that bad. What is it like? Like, what is withdrawal feeling? Okay, you're sweating, because you're hot and you're cold at the same time. You're shitting your pants. You're throwing up. You can't think straight. Your body's shaking. You're getting hot sweats, cold sweats. You feel like you don't have anything inside of you. No insides, no organs, nothing. You feel like you're hollow. It's just the craziest thing. It's the most painful thing I've ever gone through. And I'm sure people have been in a lot more pain than that with certain things they've had done to themselves. But for me, that was the worst. What's crazy is when you think about how mentally strong you are, how difficult it is for you to go through that. Now think of the average person. Have you seen that Painkiller show on Netflix? I watched some of it, yeah, yeah. Fucking what they did to this country is so crazy. Oh, I know. They're advertising it, hey, this is the best drug since whatever. And this will keep you moving every day and give you a healthy lifestyle. Meanwhile, they didn't tell you that they're opiates and they're addictive and that they could kill you. Yeah. The one to start and the one to stay with. What was the slogan that they used, Jamie? Do you remember, we talked to Peter Berg, who made that show. He obviously had to do a lot of research on the Sackler family and what they did and how they engineered this and how they knew. People weren't just taking painkillers back then. It wasn't a normal thing. We talked about this, when I was a kid, for someone to take heroin was crazy. When you found out someone was taking heroin, you're like, Jesus Christ, Mike's taking heroin. But when those pills came around, because it was prescribed by a doctor, everybody's like, it's fine, it's okay. I thought it was too. This is legal, my doctor's giving it to me, this is what I need. But I knew, after I started taking more than four and I was taking five, six, seven, eight, I knew I wasn't doing the right thing. I knew that I was going against what the doctors wanted. Because you know what I would do? I literally, I had 12 doctors that I was calling. Oh. And I had 12 different pharmacies because you can't go to the same pharmacy twice in one month. Oh my God. And I had a Mexican contact where I got them illegally. So I was getting about 2,700 pills a month. Oh my God. That is, and you know what, that's all you think about. That's all you think about, is how you're gonna get your drug the next time. So I have this calendar and every day it tells me which doctor to contact or contact your Mexican contact down in Mexico. So I have all these things set up so that I can get what I need. And it takes over your life. You no longer live in your life. Your marriage, you know, you're not worried about your marriage, your kids, your job, nothing. You're just worried about how you're gonna get the drugs. God. So crazy. And it's so crazy that this didn't exist. This didn't exist in America till what, a couple decades ago when it started? Yeah. Now who's the people that? The Sackler family. Are they affiliated with Purdue or? Yes, Purdue Pharma. Yeah. Yeah, the story from the documentary Sensational, the series on Netflix is sensational. And it just shows how fucking evil, evil those people are. Well, I wonder if they actually knew the dangers that were involved when they first started. It seems like they knew. They did. It seems like they knew a lot. They absolutely knew it was addictive. That's why the FDA wouldn't approve it. And then they took this guy, there was one guy from the FDA that approved it. And this guy would not approve it. He was like, this is heroin. Like, I'm not gonna approve this. And then they took this guy and they took him to a fucking hotel and they had him in a hotel for two days. I don't know what they did. Like, no one knows what they did in this hotel for two days. But after the two days, he came out and instead of saying it's non-addictive, for the first time ever, they said, it is believed to not be addictive. Wow, they said the opposite. Somebody said it. Somebody believes it. Do you believe it? Yeah, I don't think it's addictive. Okay, it's believed to not be addictive. To use that sort of terminology, you just need one person for someone. Just approval for one person. One of the most dangerous drugs that this country's ever experienced. It is the most dangerous drug. You look at the amount of people that have died from it. I mean, somewhere, the opiate overdoses in America are somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 a year. Which is so crazy. So in 10 years, a million people died from this stuff. And who knows how many people committed suicide, how many people died from car accidents, how many lives and families who were wrecked. Yeah, the paycures being affiliated with that too. Yes, yeah, so many. And it's just insane. It's insane how much power money has. And that a pharmaceutical company could influence people in that way. And in this documentary they show, the docu-series, rather they show how they did it. And it's scary because a lot of those doctors, when they're younger or whatever, they're like, I wanna help people. I wanna make people feel better. I wanna help humans. And then they're in the business a little bit and they realize, well, if you want a vacation or if you want a yacht, if you wanted this, you gotta play the game. Also, you have liability insurance. You also have medical school bills. The cost of running your business. It becomes like the stock market. It becomes like anything else where you're just thinking about numbers. You're not thinking about people. It's not your responsibility. And the crazy thing is then they would shame the people when there was a strategy they had to say, oh, you're a drug addict. It's not the pills on a problem. You're a drug addict. You're an addict. And the people are like, oh, I'm a drug addict. No, they turned you into one. Everybody's a drug addict. You give them 20 fucking pills a day. They all become drugs. Every human being, every human being, if you give them OxyContin all day, they will become that. Everybody has the ability to be a dick. Yeah, everyone. I think everyone. I had a wisdom tooth taken out like a decade ago and this doctor was so nice. He was like a cool, smart guy. And he's like, I'm gonna send you home with these 12 Vicodin or whatever they were. And if you feel pain, take one or two of them. You'll be great. And I started to feel pain like four, six hours after. I remember it was the day that the WWE network came out because I got it. I'm like, this will be fun to watch, catch up on old stuff, which it was. It was amazing when that debuted. But anyway, so I have that on. Pain starts kicking in and I take a half of one, just a half. And 20 minutes later, I just start sweating and smiling like a super villain. I mean, I could not take the smile off of my face. I was just in glory. And immediately I'm like, this is bad. And even though I had never been happier, like my body was just, it was like just an overall orgasm for the entire mind body all the way down to your toes. You see your fingertips are sweating with excitement. And I went and I flushed those other whatever, nine and a half or 11 and a half pills down the toilet. I knew immediately I'm like, this is trouble. Good for you. I mean, even if I would have taken the whole one, I probably would have been, I could have changed my fucking entire life right then and there. Easy. Yeah. Well, they weren't around when I got my first knee surgery, but when I got my first knee surgery, when I was in the hospital, they had me on a morphine drip. And I remember lying in that hospital bed feeling so good. I was like, this is amazing. And I had a ACL reconstruction where they did the patella tendon graft, right? So, you know, they cut your knee open, they take a slice of your patella tendon, and then they screw it in where your ACL used to be. And then they have you on this constant motion machine while you're in the hospital bed. So this thing is extending your knee and closing out. And then you had a button and you hit the button and the morphine drips. And I'm just lying in bed. So, I'm just lying in bed. And then I'm just lying in bed...