Mike Tyson Opens Up: He Turned to Fentanyl to Survive the Ring.
Mike Tyson shared a raw truth from his glory days that most fans haven’t heard before. He disclosed on the Katie Miller Podcast—out September 9—that he relied on fentanyl more than a few times to fight through the pain of training and injuries.
Tyson is now 59 but took listeners back to the late ’90s, describing the moment he first discovered the drug. “It landed here as a painkiller, and I used it to patch up my toe,” he explained.
The memory was balanced but blunt. According to New York Post, “It was like heroin,” Tyson said, “Once it wears off, the Band-Aid comes off, and you start withdrawing. You’re throwing up just like you do with a heroin crash.”
Tyson noticed he was getting information from a friend, who pointed out that a new drug he was prescribed counted as a narcotic. “If this shows up in my bloodstream, I could get in trouble,” the friend warned. Tyson processed the info in real-time, “This thing popped up out of nowhere. I asked, ‘Am I allowed to use this?’ Nobody at the gym had ever talked about it.”
The straight-talking Mike Tyson, who recently let it slip that he’s lining up a Mayweather pay-per-view event, was asked whether he ever considered that his path through the glory of boxing, the random public fights, and those drug-test headlines ever made him a ‘lifetime achievement’ role model.
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“I can’t be something I’m not,” he said. “If I’m drunk and I slap a friend, am I telling the kids to drink? I’d hate that. I use cannabis since, to me, grabbing shots and lines is ball stupid. I’d choose the plant over vodka, over cocaine, over fentanyl, and you can get that.”
Speaking of fentanyl, the DEA pointed out it’s basically a hospital-grade pain reliever that could also sneak its way into a back alley. Just think of it this way: that little pill is 100 times the punch of the morphine on the IV drip and 50 times the knock out power that the dope dealer’s a-frame on the block once promised with heroin.
Along with his upcoming spring match against Mayweather, Iron Mike Tyson has confirmed he’s reviving his hit one-man show, first staged back in 2013 as “The Undisputed Truth.” Now, he’s back with a fresh title: “Return of the Mike.”
The show is billed as a “no filter” experience, letting the former champ look back on the scandals, the love dramas, and the wild chapters of his ring and non-ring life. “I’ve punched the clock on this tour for years, then it took a break. The few years I cooled, rematch, I had fresh freetime and decided I wanted to smash it again. I that hate that empty block on my calendar,” Tyson told laughing.
What’s on the itinerary? He mentions touching on “all that weird stuff” that’s piled up since the last curtain, hinting at “lots of lawsuits” to dissect and “lot of ridiculousness” that has become, in his words, something to “wrestle with” in the spotlight. A whole truth is coming back to the stage.
