Kurt Angle, a legendary freestyle wrestling and professional wrestling athlete who won the 1996 Olympic Games gold medal, recently shared a story of his battle with prescription painkillers.
This struggle, which plagued him during the late 1990s and early 2000s, saw him grappling with an addiction that cost him a staggering $7,000 per month.

The roots of Angle’s addiction can be traced back to 1996 – following a severe neck injury he sustained during the Olympics.
To cope with the intense pain, Angle was prescribed painkillers.

However, this soon spiraled into addiction, because he developed a tolerance and required increasingly higher doses to achieve the same level of pain relief.
Angle shared what that was like in a recent interview:

I was taking 65 extra strength Vicodin a day.

I had 12 different doctors that were giving me 12 different prescriptions.
And I had to set up a calendar because you couldn’t go to the same pharmacy.

So you had to have 12 different doctors go to 12 different pharmacies.

Angle also resorted to purchasing 500 pills illegally from Mexico each month…
Culminating in a consumption of approximately 2000 pills monthly.

The financial toll was immense, with his monthly expenditure on these pills reaching $7,000 at the height of his addiction.
Despite these challenges, Angle continued to compete in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), winning multiple world championships.

It wasn’t until 2006, after repeated interventions from friends and colleagues, that Angle embarked on the path to recovery.
He entered a rehabilitation program and has since maintained over a decade of sobriety.