Jake Roberts Names Vince McMahon's Worst Edict Regarding Drugs

On the latest episode of the DDP Snake Pit podcast, AEW talent and wrestling legend Jake Roberts delved deep into his past struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. He began by talking about marijuana and whether not it's a gateway drug. A pro-marijuana advocate, Roberts believes alcohol is more of a gateway drug, stating that the times he got in trouble were related to alcohol use, not pot use.

"I don't think marijuana is a gateway drug. I think alcohol is," Roberts said. "I'll tell all the folks out there, I'm pro-pot, you know? I never got in a fight when I was smoking pot. I never got in trouble when I was smoking pot. I never wanted to do cocaine when I was smoking pot. But you give me a few Jack Daniels, brother, I want to fight and I want some sh-t to go down and I want some Godd-mn cocaine right now."

Jake Roberts then went through his initial routine of drug use during his career, before WWE owner Vince McMahon banned WWE talent from smoking marijuana. Roberts stated that the decision was a tough one, and credited as the reason many wrestlers turned to pills. That itself had its drawbacks, one of which Roberts described for Fabulous Freebirds member, the late Terry Gordy.

"My routine, in the beginning, was beer, a little pot, a little sleeping pill," Roberts revealed. "And then Vince came along and cut the pot out. Man, when he cut that pot out, that was tough, because we didn't have a go-to thing to relax us now. We had to double up on the beer. Then a lot of us started taking different pills and that leads to problems. When start mixing your drugs, you're going to kill yourself. That's gotten a lot of guys. They start mixing them. They take a pill, they have a few beers, they pass out, and they wake up and they think 'wait a minute, I didn't take my pills!' And they take more.

"That's your danger zone. That's when you're flying into the fire, you know? And you can't get away from that skillet, man. Once you get burnt, you're in trouble. I've seen a lot of good people go down hard. Terry Gordy was probably one of the hardest that went down. He died on an airplane. And they brought him back, but they didn't bring him back soon enough. Half his mind was gone. Terry was one of the greatest wrestlers ever, and there was a time he had to learn how to wrestle again, because he had forgotten everything, because of that incident."

Ultimately Jake Roberts concludes that the worst thing Vince McMahon did was take marijuana away from the wrestlers, as he feels pot helped wrestlers relax. Once he did though, wrestlers like Roberts couldn't continue to use it with testing, as marijuana stayed in their systems too long.

"For Vince, the worst thing he could've done was take marijuana away from us," Roberts said. "Because that was everybody's go-to thing, to relax. Of course, it was one of the worst things to get out of your system. Whereas cocaine would be out of your system in three days, marijuana would stay in your system for 30 days. So you're screwed."

Finally, Jake Roberts also told a story of him being approached by law enforcement over drug shipments that Roberts supposedly signed for. Roberts pointed out that he had never signed for these packages, and it was later revealed someone had forged his name to receive said shipments.

"There was a time that the drug people were coming after Vince and a lot of the talent because guys had had drugs shipped to them from this doctor, which now you've opened up a whole nother can of worms," Roberts said. "And they came to me and said 'oh, you had some packages.' I said 'no sir, I never did.' 'Oh, yeah, we've got you down for this town and this day.' I looked through my book. 'No sir, I wasn't there.' 'What?'

"Then they show me where somebody signed off on it. I said 'that's not my signature.' And it wasn't my signature. It was my name, but it was not my signature. So somebody had drugs sent to them and used my name. What kind of horseshit is that? And here I am fixed to be charged and these guys, they investigated and saw that I wasn't there. I was across the country. So then they were trying to find out who was using fake names. It was insane man."

To quote this article, please credit DDP Snake Pit and provide an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription