Lodi on His Past Issues With Painkiller Addiction, Dealing With Injuries In His Career

WCW alumnus Lodi recently discussed his history of injuries and his issues with painkillers and addiction in a recent interview. Lodi spoke with Wrestling Inc, and you can check out some highlights below:

On dealing with neck injuries throughout his career: “I had my first anterior cervical diskectomy in [1994], and my doctor told me I would never lift weights again, that I was done. I did the Mist Trail in North Carolina in 1995. So, I’ve kind of wanted to disprove doctors a lot. In 2002 when I had my next neck surgery, I had another diskectomy and a bone plug put in, [and] I was fused. I was in a brace for six months, and that was really frustrating. I thought at that time my wrestling career may be finished. I came back in late 2003. My third diskectomy I had in 2017, and I actually only took nine months out of the ring before I came back. It’s one of those mindsets, I want to walk away from wrestling on my own terms. I know nobody beats father time, unless your name is Mike Jackson. So, I really want to walk away with a healthy body.

“[With] all my wrestling injuries, nobody told me to be a professional wrestler. That was all my choice. So, for me to sit around and complain my neck hurts everyday, my legs are tight and I have this shooting pain, and I have this nerve damage on my left side, and I can’t do this, I can’t do that. Who wants to hear that? I chose to do it! It’s not like I’m a victim. I chose this life, and I’m the one who chose to go back to it every time after the surgeries.”

On his past issues with painkillers and addiction: “It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life and my drug addiction, and my pill use, was absolutely obscenely out of control. You know, you’ve heard all the numbers of all the guys. Before I got into the wrestling business, I’d heard some of these guys taking this many pills, that many pills, doing this much of this, and this much of that. It was almost one of those things where it’s like, that guy has to be embellishing that can’t be true. Then you get caught up in it and realize you’re taking 40 pain pills a day. Like, how did it get to that point? Breaking that addiction was hard. I was just talking with a client this morning, just talking about the hell it was to go through that for a two week period, where when I got clean from the pain killers and stopped cold turkey. I remember I was home trying to get sober, and there was a two-week period where I was hot, I was cold, I was sick, I was throwing up, I was hot, I was cold, there was this gambit of emotions. It’s not something I would wish on anybody.”

On not using painkillers anymore: “Because of my past history and because of my addictive nature, it has forced me to, with my injuries since then, I refuse to take any pain pills. I don’t take any medications. After my neck surgery in 2017, the morning of my surgery I got into an argument with a nurse. She was giving me my prescriptions for when I left and she was like, ‘You’ve got to take your oxycodone, you have to take your whatever.’ And I told her, ‘Mam, I can’t take that. I have an addiction issue and I just have to get through it.’ People are like, you can take it for pain, but I can’t separate the two. Too many people it has been one pill and then next thing you know they go back down that path. I don’t want to ever go down that path again. People are like, ‘I feel so sorry for you because you can’t take anything for your pain.’ And I’m like, again, self-inflicted. I have myself to blame, not anyone else. And I bear that.”