WWE legend Shawn Michaels opens up on his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction

By Nick Schwartz
Published

WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels will star in an upcoming movie set to release in January titled The Resurrection of Gavin Stone, a film that shares some parallels with his own life story. In a sit-down interview with WWE, Michaels recalls his own transformation - from being hard-partying addict in his first stint with WWE to becoming a born-again Christian. Michaels says that once his two-year old son could recognize his drug use, he needed to make a change in his life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US9gm-Dm3QE


“As I turned into a heel, and I began to go on this journey of who this character or this gimmick would be, it just continued to grow - and certainly unleashed in me this side where I could just go out there and do absolutely anything… but it came out through, honestly, through drugs and alcohol. It was the only way that I had the ability to show any type of personality other than the shy, quiet kid [I was].

We used to say things like, or certainly I said things like ‘hey man, I only party when I’m on the road.’ OK, we’re on the road 250-plus days a year.

…. I didn’t know where Shawn Hickenbottom ended and Shawn Michaels began, to be perfectly honest. As if the marriage [to Rebecca Curci] didn’t happen fast enough, six weeks after we’re married, we find out she’s pregnant. And now by this time, she’s realized that the little partying she saw me doing is not some little thing, like he does that every day.

In my mind, I’m thinking to myself “I’ve got nine months to clean up.” The baby is born, [and] on many levels I can grasp that it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, but I still don’t have the ability to turn into this man that I need to become.

.... It’s the weekend and I’m getting myself into a little bit of a haze, and my son’s crawling on me, and I can hear him faintly say “daddy’s tired.” And for the first time I realize, you know, he’s 2 and he can now see that there’s a difference in me. And it just hits me like a ton of bricks like ‘oh my goodness, he sees it now.”