Scott Hall: "I should have been dead 100 times"

(CBS) - ESPN's "E:60" episode on the life of 90's professional wrestler Scott Hall starts by describing him as a real life version of Mickey Rourke's character in "The Wrestler." It's easy to see why: Hall was a star 15 years ago, but now at the age of 52, he lives with a pacemaker and takes dozens of pills every day. Years of drug and alcohol abuse have turned his once-formidable physique into a wreck. As Hall himself says in the documentary, "I should have been dead 100 times."

For the uninitiated, Scott Hall was one of the biggest stars in the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE) back in the 90's. His character, Razor Ramone, was one of the biggest and most popular heels of the decade. Later in his career, Hall moved on to World Championship Wrestling, where he was one of the founding members of the WCW's "New World Order" alongside heavyweights Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash.

As the ESPN show reveals, when Hall fell out of the spotlight in 2002, he fell hard. Hall has been arrested several times since his retirement.

"I tell my kids this, 'I can't tell you not to drink and do drugs, they are fun. It's fun. They work,'" Hall told ESPN. "But what sucks is when you want to quit and you can't, and pretty soon you alienate or you hurt everyone around you. It's a family disease and then you can't keep a promise to anybody. What sucks the most is when you can't even keep a promise to yourself."

Check out the rest of Hall's story over at ESPN.

Scott Hall is the second athlete to reveal details of drug abuse recently. Earlier this week, former New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden admitted that he missed his team's 1986 World Series ticker-tape parade because he was high in a drug dealer's apartment.