I definitely ascribe to the theory of gateway drugs—seen people go from smoking weed to firing dope in a single night.

I’m not sitting around taking opioids three times a day like the pain management doctors wanted me to do.

I’ve known too many people addicted to opiates to do that. It’s all a big money scheme, I know that. But my whole life I depended on myself. I ain’t depending on fucking drugs.

It was probably 10-15years ago they started loosening up regulations on prescribing opioids and that has just opened up the flood gates of addiction. I drink beer and go about my way. They are talking about another operation and I’ll do what they say. I’m not going to milk this and I know with the kind of work I do they aren’t going to throw me back out there without physical therapy.

The pain management people wanted to give me Oxycodone and I told them I didn’t want that shit and they looked at me like I had three heads. They had this big thing [test] where you have to take the urine test to make sure the drug is in your system. I fell and hurt myself and I don’t need to take a drug test like I’m on probation. They’re pushing the one you are going to get addicted to over a period of tim.

I got in trouble one time and took the piss test and came up clean and they gave me a hard time and I said, “Here’s your fucking pills, count them. I didn’t take none of them, take them back.”

In the meanwhile you’ve got the social service line with all the mammas crying their hard luck stories. They all have their sob stories about how they need their dosage upped. It’s like being in a welfare office, people lined the walls, waiting for their pills. I thought you failed a piss test when you came up dirty, not clean! I’m not spending a period of my life sitting here waiting for pills like these idiots. I‘d rather go out Route Forty and sit with those winos rather than wait with these knuckleheads.

The whole pill mill treadmill they’ve got going on is fueling this opioid epidemic.

Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival