Billy Gunn Discusses His 1995 Neck Injury & His Battle With Addiction

During a recent edition of the Steve Austin Show (via wrestlinginc.com), Billy Gunn spoke about his 1995 neck injury, his battle with addiction, and more…

On His 1995 Neck Injury: “It was in the ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California.” Billy recalled, “we were working Tom Prichard and [Chris] Candido. We were doing that thing with Sunny. It was kind of weird getting in the groove, doing the thing with Sunny. We were doing this spot, she jumps up, I hit the ropes, and accidentally knock her off and go, ‘oh my God!’ I go down to the floor. I go check on her because it’s me and I was supposed to be in this infatuation spot with her, and Tom comes right off the top, and hits me in the back of the neck, and I hit the ground, and a lighting bolt shot from my ass clear across the building. Stuff like that normally doesn’t happen to me, stingers and stuff. I just get knocked out before that happens, so I never feel them. I felt that and went, ‘oh, whoa, it wasn’t supposed to feel that bad! Something’s not right.’ So I work two [or] three more days, and then my left side kept feeling worse and worse and worse. Yeah, the whole thing. Then I went home and saw a neurologist or whatever and they literally took me right then and went, ‘you’ve got to go, like, right now’ because he said it was so [badly] shattered that there was a piece pushing on my spinal cord. He said, ‘you could just step off the curb and it’d go.’ And I go, ‘oh, well, maybe we go and fix this then.'”

On Returning To Soon: “It was just about six months because I wasn’t allowed to stay gone that long. It was ’95 and the company hadn’t really gotten hot yet and didn’t do anything, so it was like, ‘if you want to keep your job, we get it – you’re neck’s hurt, but you might want to come back.’ I didn’t get any paychecks.”

On His Battle With Addiction: “I’m a recovering addict, so I’ve been clean for seven years, but when you hurt, you don’t think about it too much and there are easier ways to do it. If I just take this, I don’t have to worry about going and getting a massage or going to a chiropractor or going to a doctor. I just mask it with this. So then you mask it so long and then it catches up with you. But now, nowadays, that’s not an option.” Billy explained, “you doctor hunt, you have scripts all over the place, you buy them from people you don’t even know and hope to God that they work because it was really bad. I had left the company. It was just everything was going awry. Like, it was one thing and all going downhill. All addicts do, in my case because that’s all I talk about, is I’m just trying to cover things up. I don’t want to think about them, but when I come out of that, they’re still there, so you just keep covering and they never go away and then it’s worse and worse and worse till your consumption goes more and more and more. I couldn’t keep pills around for [anything], like going through 100 somas in three days. That’s insane.”

On Drug Use: “I never did any drugs growing up, like, at all because I was always terrified my dad would find out and he’d beat the life out of me. For me, it was kind of the same thing. You get in the business and Halcions were a big thing and when you take them, and you’re out for days. I mean, the first time I tried that was at an overseas trip. I couldn’t wake up the entire two weeks I was there, so I was like, ‘that’s not going to happen.'”