Brock Lesnar speaks about alcohol, Vicodian struggles ahead of his comeback in UFC 200 in July

Brock Lesnar speaks about alcohol, Vicodian struggles ahead of his comeback in UFC 200 in July

This is not the first time that Lesnar has spoken about the dark times during his first stint with the WWE which was way back in 2000 when he was a fresh-out-of-college prospect. His early WWE career flamed out almost as quickly as it started before Lesnar tried out for the NFL and then transitioned to the UFC where he became heavyweight champion in 2008.

What he learned during his first stint at WWE was that his best friends were a bottle of vodka and a handful of pain pills that kept him going day after day on the road.

“That was the early years of me when I was a young performer in the wrestling ring. You go through things in life, such as you become rich and become famous and you’re naive and you’re young and to top it all off, you’re travelling 360 days a year. The wrestling is fake but the things that go on in the ring -- the ring is still a non-forgiving environment to be in,” Lesnar said is a recent interview to Highly Questionable.

“When you’re young, yeah it’s fresh and it’s cool, but is it really cool to be up all night not getting any sleep and then getting on an airplane, getting off an airplane, trying to find a place to eat, dealing with people at the rental car service, dealing with TSA, dealing with the hotel, dealing with the loss of your luggage, what’s cool about it?” Lesnar said.

He found an exit from his nightly cycle of drinking and drugs before he left the WWE in 2004. Post that he did some more pro wrestling in Japan before making his way to the UFC a few years later, Lesnar looks back on that time as a true learning lesson about what NOT TO DO with his career.

Now Lesnar is a family man with kids and a wife, who all live on a farm in the middle of Saskatchewan in Canada and  doesn’t miss those dark days from his early years with the WWE.

Lesnar is now working a very reduced schedule from his first stint with the WWE and prepares for his return to the UFC in July.

“I’m thankful that I’m able to work part time in that environment and step back into the Octagon,” Lesnar said. “I feel very fortunate.”