wrestling / News

Jake Roberts On His Drug Problems in The 1990s, DDP Helping Him Get Back on Track

May 10, 2022 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Jake Roberts Image Credit: AEW

Jake Roberts recently talked about his relapse in the mid-1990s when he came back to WWE and how DDP ultimately helped him finally get clean. The WWE Hall of Famer weighed in on the topic on last week’s DDP Snake Pit podcast that talked about addiction, and you can see some highlights below (per Wrestling Inc):

On his WWE return in the mid-1990s : “I wasn’t struggling in the beginning, but I didn’t want to work. I just wanted to write. But as Vince does, he gets what he wants, and this guy would get hurt and this guy would miss a show and I would have to go replace him. That was okay. But then he said ‘we need you to on this European trip. We need you back on the road.’ And games were being played at the office with the writers. There was a lot of jealousy involved. Some didn’t want me there, some did. And it wasn’t long before I was out of that. That’s a shame because I enjoyed writing. But when I went back on the road full time, I knew I was in trouble.”

On his personal struggles coming back at that time: “I can’t go seven days a week. Yet you are throwing me out here. And there were a few guys in the locker room that played some pretty nasty games. You know, putting stuff in my bags. The utensils you might use to do cocaine would be found in my bag. I didn’t put it in there. But it wasn’t long before I started using again and as soon as I did, my wife said, ‘we can’t do this again.’ And she divorced me. Once she filed on me, that was it. I left the WWF and I went straight to my cocaine because that was the only thing that took the pain away from me. That was the only thing that made it alright. When I did the coke, I could forget about my wife and my four kids. If I was high enough, I could forget about them. The only problem is when you wake up, you’ve got the same f-cking problems.”

On DDP helping him get back on track: “I did a lot of things wrong. I was high. I was totally out of control. I’m ashamed of what I did. I was so full of hate at the time that I wanted everybody else to suffer. And there were certainly a lot of shows that suffered through my hi-jinx, my bullish-t, and the horrible thing that I did. But I was a maniac that was just f**king out of his mind. I was out of my mind because I had lost my family, I was out of my mind because I lost my dream, I was out of my mind because I had thrown a career out the window, and I was out of my mind because I couldn’t quit. It’s a well-known fact and I’ll just say it again, I would not be sitting here today without Diamond Dallas Page.”