It takes a lot to scare Ric Flair, the legendary former pro wrestler.
“I crashed in an airplane and broke my back, I’ve been hit by lightning,” Flair said in an interview with People.com, “but this is totally different. Anything I’ve been through before is nothing like this.”
“This” is the brush with death he experienced when stomach pains sent him to a hospital on Aug. 11. Doctors determined that his kidneys were beginning to fail and he was teetering on the edge of congestive heart failure — all from years of alcohol abuse. With family members told that he had about a 20 percent chance of survival, he was placed in medically induced coma as he underwent operations in which part of his bowel was removed and a pacemaker was implanted.
“It scared the s— out of me,” the 68-year-old Flair, who lives in Atlanta and is recovering in a convalescent center, said, admitting that “I’m not out of the woods yet.” Last week, he made his first public appearance, attending a ceremony at the military school that his fiancee’s son attends.
What put Nature Boy in this predicament? He says it wasn’t drugs. “I’ve never taken a pain pill in my life,” he said. “I’d just take a shower, flip my hair back and go to the best bar in town.”
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Flair, who said he went to rehab four years ago, vows that this scare has changed him.
“I’ll never drink again,” he said. “I never want to go through this again.”
Shortly before his hospitalization, he told SI.com that he had only one vice.
“I’m not going to point my finger at anybody else. My vice was drinking. I didn’t have any pain issues, addiction problems, marijuana, cocaine, nothing like that. It’s a fact that I kept myself up all night and always had a good time.”
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