NEED TO KNOW
- Mike Tyson revealed he used fentanyl “quite a few times” during his boxing career to manage his pain
- The boxer said “no one ever heard of it” at the time he began using in the late 1990s
- Tyson explained he would use it to “patch up my toe” but said he knew it was “illegal if it [was] caught in my bloodstream”
Mike Tyson made a surprising admission about his past drug use.
Tyson, 59, revealed on the Tuesday, Sept. 9 episode of the Katie Miller Podcast that he used fentanyl “quite a few times” during his boxing career in order to manage pain. “I’ve done fentanyl before. In the late ’90s, when it first came here, it was a painkiller, and I used to use it to patch up my toe,” Tyson said.
“It was like heroin, once it wears off and you take the Band-Aid off, you start withdrawing, throwing up, just like if you were on heroin or something,” the boxing legend explained.
Tyson said he was informed by a friend at the time that the drug was classified as a narcotic and “illegal if it [was] caught in my bloodstream,” which was news to him. “It was brand new. I told my friend, ‘Could I use this?’ No one ever heard of it.’ ”
The podcast host asked Tyson, who announced last week that he plans to fight Floyd Mayweather in the coming months, if he thinks his success in boxing, combined with his controversies and history of drug use, makes him a role model.
“I am who I am,” he said. “If I was a role model and an alcoholic and drank liquor, would I want them to do that? No, I wouldn’t want them to do that. I just think from my perspective, using cannabis, that’s safer than using alcohol, cocaine or anything from that perspective, or fentanyl.”
Fentanyl is a “potent synthetic opioid drug” used as an pain relief and anesthetic, according to the DEA. It is roughly 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
In addition to his fight with Mayweather, happening sometime next spring, Tyson announced he’s bringing back his one-man-show, originally performed in 2013 as “The Undisputed Truth.”
This show, titled “Return of the Mike,” is a “no filter” stage show that will see the boxer addressing and reflecting on his past controversies, personal relationships and storied career.
“I’ve done this for years, and I stopped for a few years, then I decided to do it again, because I had some free time and I wanted to kill it,” Tyson told PEOPLE of the show, adding that he “hates having free time.”
Tyson said he’ll talk about “a lot of the things that happened during my hiatus from the stage, so to speak,” and noted that the show will address “a lot of lawsuits” and “a lot of ridiculousness” he’s experienced in the public eye.
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