By PWTorch Staff

Former WWE star Aurelian Smith (Jake "the Snake" Roberts) talked openly and candidly about how his life turned around during an exclusive interview on Friday's PWTorch Livecast.

Roberts detailed his sobriety journey as part of Diamond Dallas Page's "Accountability Crib" in his opening remarks to PWTorch editor Wade Keller at the start of the interview: "It's a lot more than that (DDP's Crib). How about bringing me back to life? Because I was in such bad shape by some of my own demise and making bad choices over the years. My health was failing me and bottom line, man, each day when I woke up I was angry; I was angry that I was still alive. If one of the other guys had died overnight, I would wake up pissed off that it wasn't me. I had no hope.

"Ya know, when you walk out to the ring and done something for 37 years, that is your life. Having to let it go because I could no longer go out there and feel decent about myself - I could have probably gone out and done some of the things that other guys do and hold on and hold, but I was embarrassing myself, I was angry at the way I had become, I was way overweight, and I had no hope. I wasn't the bottom of the barrel, I was under the damn barrel."

"A buddy of mine knows enough about me that he pushed the magic button that he got the spark boiling again. Because I had given up. I had given up a long time ago. The last two years have really, really been hard; burying my father was rough and just realizing that life as I knew it wasn't going to be anything like I had it before.

"I'm not ashamed of what I did in the past. I made some very bad choices with drugs and alcohol, no doubt about that. I've always been up-front and open about that. I wasn't doing it to glorify it, but to let the kids out there know that it's the absolute worst thing that you can do because you wind up losing your dreams and your life and sacrificing relationships."

Roberts continued: "The people said, 'Why did you do drugs and alcohol?' Well, I'll tell you. Because I liked that stuff for a long time. I liked it because I enjoyed it and had a great time doing it. But, then one day I woke up and it was no longer a choice to do that drug or to do that drink; it was now a necessity. And when you've got to have a drink or a drug just to get up and get moving, you don't have a life anymore; you're just an existence. I was ashamed that I got into that position."

In the next installment of our exclusive interview, Roberts talks about why multiple, multiple rehab did not work for him and why it did not work for Scott Hall, who has joined Roberts at the Accountability Crib.

[ LISTEN: Roberts's entire 60-minute interview can be heard exclusively at PWTorchLivecast.com at this link - http://bit.ly/XkydKD .]

[Torch photo credit Wade Keller (c) PWTorch.com]

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