Buff Bagwell had the physique to be a starin WCW. Unfortunately, this period of his life led to a drug habit that would follow him into a brief run with WWE and the rest of his career. However, today Bagwell claims he’s a different person, and in an interview on “INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet,” he said that drugs and alcohol took something from him.
“I believe I was always a pretty good guy. Matter of fact, Marcus Alexander Bagwell: 1991 was a great guy; everyone in the locker room loved Marcus Alexander Bagwell, and I think through drinking and pills – drinking and drugging – I think I lost that Marcus,” he admitted.
Much like with other pro wrestlers who fell into terrible substance abuse habits, Buff Bagwell’s own struggles with alcohol and drugs came into play after an injury.
“The time I feel in my head that it really started was when I got my own prescription bottles, and that would have been 1998 when I broke my neck,” he recalled, maintaining that it was initially due to legitimate pain and his attempt to deal with his neck.
“It stayed pain pills and ‘our concoction’…it was 99% of every wrestler’s concoction, and it was a pain pill mixed with a muscle relaxer. It was the two together that was magic to us,” Bagwell said. He and Lex Luger shared the “concoction,” and did their best to hide their addiction.
“We felt like we deserved what we were doing, but then that went away, where we couldn’t control that anymore,” he said, going on to detail his Herculean drug intake. “It was a case of beer a day, twenty Lortabs, fifteen – without exaggeration – fifteen to twenty Lortabs, and thirty to thirty-five somas every day of my life.”
Bagwell further claimed that being a bodybuilder made it easy to be a drug addict, while admitting that he was in denial about being a drug addict in hindsight.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit the “INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
