The legendary Ric Flair was the latest guest on Sean Waltman’s new podcast, Pro-Wrestling 4 Life, where the Nature Boy explained why he’s avoided drugs for his entire life, and shares a story of choosing a 12-pack of beer over morphine following surgery. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
How he’s avoided drugs most of his life:
The one thing you know about me, I don’t take anything. My only good thing I’ve ever done is stayed away from drugs. Even marijuana. I did one [smoked a joint] in college. I’m not saying I haven’t tried. In college, I tried it. One, and it gave me so much anxiety. Never again. Some people like that feeling of being loose and kind of out of control, I’ve never liked that. I mean, I’ve had Jack Brisco hold me down at a party, wrestle me to the ground and try to get me to do something. I said to Jack, ‘I’m not doing it.
Says his dad being a doctor put the fear of God in him regarding drugs:
My dad put the fear of God in me about doing drugs and stuff like that. What happened was – I’m not going to mention names – when I first started in Minneapolis with all the guys there, and you can go back and look at the territory. Everybody from Nick Bockwinkel to Ray Stevens to Dusty [Rhodes] to [Dick] Murdoch, Billy Graham. Everybody. When they found out my dad was a doctor — I missed a training camp. I had five guys asking me to get scripts from my dad. Of course, I went to my dad. He went, ‘yeah, I don’t mind doing one, but then the second time around he said, ‘what are these guys doing? That was supposed to last. I can’t do that anymore.’ He thought, ‘okay, I’ll do this for my son. It’s going to help him be — but my dad was very ethical, man. When the second time around [shakes head], absolutely not. But I didn’t get it either, you know what I mean? It’s the same thing, ‘if you can take one Bennie [Benzedrine] and get a little bit of a buzz, well, take two, you’ll get double the buzz, or take three.’ It’s like Ephedrine. That’s why they can’t sell the stuff anymore.
How he asked a nurse to get him a 12-pack of beer after surgery because morphine wasn’t helping:
Every time I’ve had surgery I can’t even do Morphine because it gives me anxiety, really bad. As a matter of fact, when I had my Rotator Cuff done, the second one in Birmingham, they took me off the Morphine and they put me on Demerol, which wasn’t doing much at all. I said to the nurse, ‘I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you’ll get me a 12-pack of beer. The nurse went when they got off and got me a 12-pack of beer and brought it back. But I got up in the morning and I got off the Demerol, right, and I got up in the morning and you remember Kevin Wilk from down there? So I went down to rehab and they don’t let you leave there until you can raise your arm over your shoulder. So I didn’t have any painkillers. I thought this will be no big deal. I could feel it hurt, but before they put that crank, you know they lift it up slowly. Brother, I was sweating like — I mean I was so bad. So we got with Demerol and I’ve had Demerol.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)