As we broke over the weekend, Robert Huffman (a/k/a King Booker) quit world Wrestling entertainment after being informed he was going to be suspended 60 days, because he is also believed to have had a test failure to go along with being in the prosecutor's records as receiving packages of steroids. WWE hopes Booker will reconsider, but as we stated this weekend, they are moving forward under the impression that his is finished with the company.
Huffman already had a chip on his shoulder after John Laurinaitis made the call to do the Florida developmental territory, while turning down his PWA promotion in Houston. WWE had also banned their talent from participating in PWA events in Pasadena, Texas, thus causing Huffman to use TNA talent. This raised many people's eyebrows in WWE, but nothing was said.
There was also a contact issue between Huffman and WWE. For years he swore that he would never wrestle a day past 40 (he is now 42). Recently, Huffman was about to sign a new contract, but it's not clear whether it was actually signed. Huffman is said to be in strong economic shape as he's earned a lot of money from his Hip Hop clothing store in Houston, as well as a wrestling school in the city, and a wrestling school he's affiliated with in South Africa.
TNA In SERIOUS Talks With Booker/Bischoff/Hogan [Trying To Take Down WWE] *Spoilers*
If you snort it, spray it, shoot it, inject it, I did it, buddy. Or I was around it. That was my life. Alcohol? I abused it all, buddy. I took a lot of pills. I was a pill popper."
-- Lex Luger, aka "The Total Package"
KENNESAW, Ga. -- Just before high noon, sun scorching down so intensely that it softens the asphalt, a sweet, white and black '66 Caddy Sedan de Ville rolls up to within a few yards of the Golden Corral, a buffet joint. Out steps an old egotistical, narcissistic heel clad in khaki pants, a plaid cotton shirt and sandals.
In a matter of moments, Lex Luger abruptly breaks into wrestling character, a cocksure grin on his tanned face. He tilts his head and rolls his eyes up to the blue heavens. He pushes up his right sleeve to flex his ripped, ham-bone-sized bicep.
Then, just as suddenly, the shtick ends. With metal cane in hand, Luger hobbles off to lunch.
Russell Turiak/Getty Images
In the ring, Lex Luger was a one-man admiration society for . . . well, Lex Luger.
For the next couple hours, between trips to the chow line and chats with the folks who wander by his table, the 49-year-old Luger spins his horror stories about Lex as a younger man. That Lex dabbled in so many prescription narcotics, recreational drugs, cocktails and steroids, Luger says, that it's a wonder he hasn't joined the growing list of dead-before-their-time pro wrestlers, which unofficially numbers more than 100 over the past decade.
In a quiet moment he recalls sitting helpless in the wee hours as his girlfriend, wrestling personality Miss Elizabeth, died four years ago in the townhouse they shared. The cause, according to the coroner's report, was "acute toxicity" brought on by a smorgasbord of prescription painkillers and vodka.
"I take a lot of responsibility for that -- my influence in her life," he says. "Her little heart and body couldn't take what I was doing."
Later on the day Miss Elizabeth died, police found more than 1,000 illegal pills during a search of their suburban Atlanta townhouse. Eventually, Luger was charged with 13 counts of felony drug possession, for which he received probation as a first offender. He later went to jail for a parole violation in 2006, which is when he came across prison chaplain Steve Baskin, whom he credits with helping turn his life around.
The new Lex, a born-again Christian, eagerly shares what he calls "confessions of a drug abuser." He is down-to-earth and contrite, even as he occasionally reverts to the larger-than-life character who won multiple championship belts and was one of professional wrestling's headliners in his heyday. He rails now against the dangers of drug abuse -- the pill-popping, the steroids, the recreational substances.
<TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000">Wrestling the Pills</TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=200>
Lex Luger was a patient of Dr. Phil Astin in suburban Atlanta, but says Astin didn't over-prescribe the painkillers Luger was using for a hip ailment that might require surgery later this year. Other former professional wrestlers tell a different story, though, about Astin, who was indicted in July on seven counts of over-prescribing medication to two unnamed patients.
Pill bottles for prescriptions from Astin were found in the homes of two wrestlers who died unexpectedly, including Chris Benoit, in the last 18 months. Read ESPN.com investigative reporter Mike Fish's exploration of the relationship between Astin and the wrestlers he treated.
Fish: Chris Benoit's doctor prescribed for other wrestlers
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Mostly, he does it by urging the abusers to come clean and to get clean. And where better to start than by making an example of himself and his hellish skid from fame and fortune, which saw him go from a $1 million-a-year wrestling gig to temporary residence in a spare bedroom of his minister's apartment.
"Wow, I believe I was so close to dying so many times from overdoses," says Luger, who claims his lone physical ailment at the moment is a broken-down hip due for surgery sometime this fall. 'One heart beat away,' I tell people in my faith-based speaking. That, I believe, is why God put me in a role to shed light on the situation in our culture and in our sports. Our sports are affecting our culture.
"It's the ends justifies the means in sports. We are taught that since we were little. The old, 'Do whatever you got to do to win, to be the best. Step over, step on and step through.' So that is how all this performance-enhancing drugs got into our culture. And that leads to guys wanting to take shortcuts. And then, cheat until you get caught, and then lie."
Luger can trace his own introduction to steroids to a long-ago football career. He played in college as an offensive guard at Penn State and, later, at the University of Miami. In the early 1980s, he had stints in three different pro leagues -- the Canadian Football League, National Football League and the now-defunct United States Football League.
In 1979, Luger played for Miami, which featured future All-Pro quarterback Jim Kelly and current University of Georgia coach Mark Richt, until he was booted off the team for an incident that wasn't drug-related. When he left the Hurricanes, he moved less than an hour up Florida's Sun Coast to Fort Lauderdale, where he worked as a bouncer at a popular night spot until the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL called with a tryout offer.
"I wanted to look good on the beach, so I had slimmed down to about 235,'' says Luger, who was born Larry Pfohl in Buffalo, N.Y. "Now here it's February and camp starts in May. And I was an offensive guard. Back then, they were quick, pulling guards -- not 300-pound monsters. But I needed to be at least like 255.
Mike Fish for ESPN.com
Lex Luger is still all muscle . . . when he wants to be.
"So I had to gain weight quick -- the unethical, cheating shortcut. Guy in the gym said, 'Buddy, these little blue pills are called Dianabol.' And I took four a day, five milligrams apiece. You get on these steroids and you train better, eat more. And you retain water from them. So I gained 15 pounds in about two months. I jumped on it and it worked.
"And it is the same old thing: Once you do something one time, it leads to another. And then I started in the offseason, where I would do one cycle for 12 weeks. A friend of mine was an exercise physiologist. She monitored my blood [levels]. I never took it in-season. I'd just take it in the offseason to build as much strength as I could."
Dianabol is a powerful anabolic steroid.
In 1985, after the demise of the USFL, Luger retired his football pads and took his then-chiseled 6-foot-4, 270-pound physique to the pro wrestling scene, which was evolving into something of a beauty pageant for guys in spandex tights. He learned the ropes kicking around a regional circuit in Florida. Later in his two-decade career, Luger became a marquee character, and shared headliner status with the likes of Sting ("One of the few that stuck by me when my life was a wreck"), Ric Flair and "Macho Man" Randy Savage (Miss Elizabeth's ex-husband).
He often played the role of the self-centered bad guy, posing in front of full-length mirrors before his matches. His chemically enhanced physique was part of his costume.
"I was on display year round with my shirt off," he says. "So what happens in wrestling is a lot of the guys stay on [steroids]. I never stayed on them year-round. I would go on them for 12 weeks, off them for 12.
"I did testosterone and Deca [Durabolin]. It wasn't classified. It wasn't against the law."
But in the 1990s, the law and the climate about steroids both changed. Vince McMahon Jr., overseer of the World Wrestling Entertainment enterprise, faced federal steroid distribution charges, a rap he beat. McMahon and others also began drug-testing their in-the-ring performers, although Luger says the wrestlers had little trouble getting around the pee-in-the-bottle routine.
The irony is that the sport continued to sell massive, cartoon-like superheroes even during the public steroid fuss. That pitch hasn't changed much. Nor, presumably, has the doping regimens that help build at least some of those ripped, cut physiques.
University of Miami Athletics
Before he was Lex Luger, he was Larry Pfohl from Buffalo, playing football for the University of Miami in 1979.
"Vince [McMahon] sells bigger-than-life," Luger says. "And bigger-than-life, what does that mean? A lot of chemically enhanced heroes and villains -- guys my height and size or bigger. You can't see that on the street every day. You have to buy a ticket to see that. So he sells basically the freaks. The modern-era giants. The [Hulk] Hogans, too. I don't mean that disrespectfully. That is meant as a compliment in today's lingo. They are so out of the ordinary."
The not-so-veiled message, according to Luger: To pull down oodles of cash, get big. Get bigger. And stay big.
And finding drugs to fuel the growth machine never proved to be a problem, Luger says. For him, it was as simple as an online purchase, or hustling up a black-market source.
The new Lex Luger won't name names, but he talks about a place in Atlanta where he could pick up a three-month supply of human growth hormone and testosterone, his favorite muscle-builder. He says such sources dot the landscape from Albany to San Francisco. He talks about a man in California who is currently supplying the drugs to hundreds of wrestlers and other pro athletes.
When the cops searched Luger's condominium on the day Miss Elizabeth died back in 2003, they found a bag he'd never bothered unpacking. Luger claims his ex-wife had sent it over from his former house in a gated, country club community. According to the police report, it contained an assortment of prescription painkillers, plus a bountiful selection of performance-enhancing substances that ranged from six boxes of human growth hormone to 88 bottles of various anabolic steroids.
"I didn't know I had it, and I would never have kept that stuff in my house," Luger says. "I would have had a friend keep it for me. Athletes won't keep it in their house. They'll go over to their friends' house and get their shots and stuff."
<TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000">Reach Lex Luger</TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=200>
Lex Luger claims to have dramatically changed his me-first persona, and says he is now all about helping others. Luger is open to hearing from anyone struggling to turn his or her life around, or from people with fitness or nutrition questions.
He can be reached at www.christianlivingmag.com.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Along the way through their careers, he says, athletes sometimes latch on to a friendly doctor or two who is willing to help, someone they can rely on to write a prescription for a steroid or a painkiller.
From 2004 until this July, Luger says he was obtaining prescriptions for pain medicine, specifically the narcotic hydrocodone, from Dr. Phil Astin III, the 52-year-old Carrollton, Ga., doctor currently under federal indictment for overprescribing medications. Astin treated several pro wrestlers, including Chris Benoit, who committed suicide in June after killing his wife and young son.
Luger, however, staunchly defends Astin. He says a gym friend recommended Astin to him, and that the doctor was never a source of steroids.
"I was under pain-management therapy or hydrocodone, just legal amounts," Luger says. "I need to have hip surgery that I've been putting off. I do a little hydrocodone and some Advil and Aleve, buddy. That is all I take. That's why I was seeing him -- a little bit of pain management."
Painkillers such as hydrocodone, along with other anti-anxiety and mood-altering drugs, appear to be at least as significant a factor as steroids in wrestling's high mortality rate, though. The fruits of the performance-enhancing drugs are as obvious as the sports' neatly scripted matches. Unseen, at least by the public, are the ravages -- sometimes leading to death -- brought on by years of dependency on prescription medications, which are often combined with a steady diet of booze and steroids.
Many pro wrestlers, say Luger and others who've competed in the sport, initially turn to painkillers to cope with the nightly rigors and nagging injuries of the circuit. In some cases, a dependency on the narcotics develops.
Mike Fish for ESPN.com
These days, Luger needs a cane to get around because of a hip problem.
Luger lived that lifestyle while, by his count, he performed 300 days a year. He'd hustle out of an arena after a show, pumped on adrenaline, and then party into the wee hours and catch a 6:30 flight in the morning. Some nights, his head never hit the pillow. He'd roll into the next town, catch a meal, grab some caffeine or ephedrine to keep going, work out in a gym, do another show and start the cycle all over.
"With my generation, there was no accountability," he says. "We left the building at 11 o'clock, and you lived dual lives on the road. We were like a big dysfunctional family. We fed off each other. And then we go home and sober up. But unfortunately, drugs are drugs. And the guys let that spill over into their home lives. And if the families didn't get intervention and stuff, a lot of us died.
"I was a heartbeat away. I almost overdosed probably dozens of times. I had a really fast metabolism. Part of why Lex stayed so lean wasn't just drugs. God blessed me with a very fast metabolism. I metabolized drugs quickly. That is not good, but it saved my life a bunch of times. I went in deep a bunch of times with pills and alcohol. I was a pill-popper. And I abused alcohol toward the end, real bad. And I got caught with steroids in my house. I am a convicted felon. I deserved it. And I take accountability for that.
"I am trying to help others avoid what happened in my life, and my family and friends that I devastated. I dishonored my profession. I dishonored my community, all because I couldn't control myself and got this sick other lifestyle and drug abuse. I want to help our young kids stay away from that."
As he heads back to his car, the long lunch finished, Luger says the classic Caddy in which he arrived was a gift from his father last year. His dad tinkers with cars, and restored it a long time ago, painting it in the familiar colors of his son's wrestling garb: white boots with black tights and knee pads.
But today's Lex Luger says the younger Lex, the one who was lucky to survive those high-life years on the circuit, went almost 30 years between visits back to his father and the family home in western New York.
"I wrestled through there, but never went home," he says, shaking his head.
The doctor to professional wrestlers. The doctor charged by the federal government with overprescribing drugs.
The name clicked with Tyrone Police Det. Dean Johnson as he heard and read the news about the grisly deaths in June of professional wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and young son in neighboring Peachtree City, another suburb about 45 minutes south of Atlanta.
When it did, Johnson flashed back to a 911 call from 16 months earlier, one that rang in to the Tyrone Police Department late in the morning on Feb. 16, 2006.
Kevin Mazur/WireImage
In the ring, Chris Benoit earned in excess of $1 million a year. Here, he keeps Triple H in a headlock.
That call led Johnson to a house trailer in town, where he found Michael Durham, a former pro wrestler known in the ring as Johnny Grunge, lying on his side and clogging the narrow hallway. Durham, 349 pounds globbed onto a 6-foot frame, was partially clothed in dark velour pants with an elastic waistband and a white sock on his left foot. His arms and shoulders were covered with tattoos.
He was 40 years old, and he was dead.
The autopsy report attributed Durham's death to heart disease and obesity, and cited a significant condition of "acute toxicity of carisoprodol and hydrocodone" -- a potent mix of muscle relaxants and narcotic painkillers.
Inside the messy trailer, Johnson found two empty prescription bottles carrying Durham's name. One was for 120 tablets of carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant marketed under the brand Soma. The drug had been prescribed by an obscure country doctor, and Johnson passed the physician's name along to the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners in Georgia.
Phil Astin III.
"His name was on the bottle," Johnson says. "It all came back with Benoit."
Durham and Chris Benoit had been close friends. They were among a number of wrestlers who were patients of Astin, the 52-year-old Carrollton physician arrested July 2 by Federal Drug Enforcement agents on seven counts of overprescribing medications to at least two unidentified patients. Although none of the charges spells out a specific relationship to the Benoit deaths, investigators seized files from Astin's home and office in the days immediately after Benoit killed his wife and young son and then committed suicide.
In an affidavit filed in federal court in July, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent said Astin had prescribed a 10-month supply of anabolic steroids for Benoit, and that Astin had supplied controlled substances, including steroids, that were found in Benoit's home.
Courtesy of Penny Durham
Michael Durham, also known as Johnny Grunge, as he looked in 1995.
Federal prosecutors are expected to bring additional charges against Astin, who pleaded not guilty and is free on $125,000 bond. A pretrial conference is scheduled Tuesday in Atlanta. The U.S. magistrate judge in the case ordered him to surrender his medical license.
Manny Arora, who represents Astin, acknowledges that the doctor treated "several" wrestlers in a practice that typically saw 20 to 25 patients a day. Arora, though, says he is unsure whether Durham was among them.
But according to pharmacy records obtained by ESPN.com, Durham routinely filled prescriptions written by Astin, a graduate of St. George's University in Grenada. In the 13 months prior to Durham's death, Astin wrote prescriptions for Durham for the purchase of nearly 4,000 painkillers, muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety tablets.
"The doctor should have never given him anything," says Penny Durham, who was legally separated from her husband and in divorce proceedings at the time of his death. "He had asthma. He had an enlarged heart. He had sleep apnea. And he was overweight. He wasn't even wrestling. Why would he be giving this guy a muscle relaxer?
"I mean, he was giving it to him like candy."
Penny Durham has retained an attorney to pursue a possible wrongful death suit against Astin. An attorney representing the parents of Benoit's wife told ESPN.com he is weighing a similar action on behalf of the family, though they likely will wait until the criminal case against Astin is resolved.
Astin, through his attorney, declined comment for this story.
<TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000">Survival Story</TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=200>
Why have so many professional wrestlers died before their time? One retired wrestler says the answer isn't just the steroids that have been such a big part of the sport's culture. Lex Luger says it's also partly because the fast times, high life and physical stress of the circuit can easily lead to a dependence on painkillers and other narcotics. How does he know? He nearly became one of the fatalities. Now he shares what he calls "confessions of a drug abuser" with ESPN.com investigative reporter Mike Fish.
Fish: Lex Luger's drug-abuse survival story
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Here are a few highlights gleaned from the pharmacy records related to the investigation of Durham's death:
• There were at least 11 doctors who wrote prescriptions for Durham, but none prescribed pills in the copious quantities that Astin did. Almost all of the prescriptions filled under Astin's name -- 28 of 33 -- were for 120 tablets. The most filled under another doctor's name dating back to 2000 was 90; most were for 60 tablets or fewer.
• One of the early prescriptions filled under Astin's name, on Feb. 14, 2005, was for 120 tablets each of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, the painkiller hydrocodone and the muscle relaxant carisoprodol. On March 3, 2½ weeks later, Durham filled another prescription for 60 carisoprodol. Four days later, he filled a prescription for yet another 60. All at the same pharmacy.
• On Nov. 21, 2005, Durham filled a prescription for 120 tablets of the painkiller oxycodone, a drug so widely abused in central Appalachia about five years ago that it drew national attention and earned the nickname "hillbilly heroin." Six days later, Durham filled another for 120 tablets of the same narcotic painkiller; and yet another for 100 tabs on Dec. 15, 2005.
• On Feb. 15, 2006, the day before he died, Durham's last prescription -- No. 180093 -- for carisoprodol was filled at his favored pharmacy, the CVS on Lexington Circle in Peachtree City. It cost $67.59. That was one of the two empty bottles, with Astin's name printed on the labels, found by Johnson in the trailer and shipped to the state crime lab as evidence.
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Eric Zinck, who describes himself as Durham's "best friend," says he made the trek to the drugstore for Durham's last refill. Zinck, too, was one of Astin's patients.
Mike Fish for ESPN.com
Penny Durham is considering a wrongful death suit against Dr. Astin.
ESPN.com has learned that Zinck has been subpoenaed to appear Oct. 2 before a federal grand jury in Atlanta that is considering additional charges against Astin. The grand jury previously heard witness testimony Sept. 4.
The 37-year-old Zinck has been a fringe player on the wrestling scene. He dabbled as a referee, and at one time was manager of Public Enemy -- the tag team featuring Durham (Johnny Grunge) and the late Flyboy Rocco, who died of a heart attack in 2002. During the divorce proceedings from Penny, Durham stayed in Zinck's trailer. The trailer where Johnson, the detective, found Durham's body.
As Zinck recalls the hours leading up to Durham's death, Durham returned to the trailer late in the afternoon of Feb. 15, 2006, after a visit to his ill mother in Louisiana. He was sore and tired from the flight, Zinck says. Durham was having money troubles, and he was upset about his pending divorce and missed his two young boys.
"When he got to the house, he said, 'I got a prescription to pick up,'" Zinck says. "I think he had already had a few Somas [carisoprodol], anyway. There was no way I was gonna take him to the pharmacy [in that condition]. So I drove to the CVS in Peachtree City, walked in, walked up to the counter and said 'I need to pick up a prescription for Michael Durham of Somas.' I got them and walked out. Didn't ask for ID. Didn't ask who I was."
They had dinner and watched television, and then Zinck went to bed. The next morning, his then-girlfriend, leaving for her job at a children's daycare facility, stumbled over a passed-out Durham in the hallway. When Zinck checked on him, he found the wrestler had a weak pulse but thought he'd sleep it off, as he always had before.
"Somas, that was his drug of choice," Zinck says. "I mean, he took them to forget life and not to feel any pain. I'll be honest: I'd seen Michael take 120 Somas in a day -- that's in a day -- and survive. I just think the stress of everything -- his body, his personal life -- got to him."
Courtesy of Penny Durham
Chris and Nancy Benoit dressed as pirates for Michael Durham's birthday party in 1999.
Steroids and pro wrestling have been linked publicly in recent years, but prescription meds -- addictive stuff like Soma, Xanax and Percocet are the dirty little secret of the wrestling crowd, which by some accounts has seen more than 100 of its participants die before the age of 50 in the past decade. In the ring and on the TV screen, wrestlers earn their living with their pumped-up, cartoon-like bodies. But away from the raucous arenas, as they deal with real-life aches and pains and the grind of the road, they often rely on narcotic painkillers and mood-altering drugs.
Lex Luger, another of Astin's patients, says many wrestlers become addicted to a "toxic cocktail" -- a concoction that includes alcohol, muscle relaxants and painkillers. Astin prescribed the painkiller hydrocodone for Luger for a hip ailment likely to require surgery this fall, but those prescriptions didn't come in an inordinate amount, he says. Nor, Luger says, did Astin ever discuss steroids with him.
"He is a good old guy," says Luger, 49.
Back when he was active on the wrestling circuit, Luger says, he came close to overdosing on pills and alcohol "probably dozens of times." Back then, Luger's chaser was vodka and orange juice.
"Mine was Coors Light," Zinck says. "I would have three or four Coors Lights in the morning, my painkillers, my Somas and my Xanax. That was my thing. That is how you started the day to crawl out of bed.
"We all relied on the stuff on a daily basis. It got to a point to where it is like being in a car accident every night. You get in that ring and deal with that. Your body is sore. You're either on an airplane or traveling five or six hours in a car. Or you're staying in a hotel room. You rely on the painkillers because they are addictive; and even when you don't hurt, your body craves them. And we all had a doctor that was giving them to us with no questions."
Mike Fish for ESPN.com
Eric Zinck picked up Michael Durham's last prescription. Durham died in Zinck's trailer.
Zinck, who is cooperating with federal investigators in the case against Astin, estimates that more than 20 wrestlers had seen Astin in recent years, although he doesn't speak to the amount of prescriptions Astin provided others. He first saw Astin in 2003, but stopped after Durham died last year.
To get to Astin's office, Zinck says he and Durham regularly drove 45 minutes from Peachtree City to Carrollton. The same was true of Benoit and his wife, Nancy, a former wrestling valet and manager. Luger says he and others trekked even further from a north Atlanta suburb for Astin's services.
When Chris and Nancy Benoit died, they both had traces of prescription painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs in their systems.
A toxicology report revealed that Benoit had high levels of testosterone in his system, and authorities found steroids in Benoit's home. Astin's attorney, however, insists that the doctor was not a source of illegal steroids for pro wrestlers. Arora suggests a legitimate explanation: The wrestler nicknamed "The Canadian Crippler'' had a hormone disorder that permitted the prescribed steroids.
Arora argues that Astin is miscast as a doctor to the stars, contending he didn't make an inordinate profit dealing with the wrestlers. Rather, Arora portrays his client as a friendly, accommodating second-generation physician who lives with and tends to his elderly mother. Astin's brother and late father, who at one point also had his license suspended by the state board for overprescribing painkillers, both headed the local county health department at different times. Another brother is also a doctor.
"If it is not for Benoit, Astin probably never gets you never hear that name," Arora says. "He is just a small-town doctor going about his practice, and nobody ever hears about him."
Courtesy of Penny Durham
Michael Durham, aka Johnny Grunge, poses with his then-infant son, Mike.
Nevertheless, Astin appears to have embraced the celebrity that occasionally filtered through his office about 40 miles west of Atlanta. Luger describes him as "a little star struck." According to Zinck, Astin and his staff enjoyed interacting with the wrestlers. They snapped pictures and appreciated autographs, and they occasionally called for tickets when shows came through Atlanta.
Most office visits with Astin lasted 15 or 20 minutes, Zinck says, and the doctor mixed personal banter in with his examinations. Zinck says he paid $75 a visit, in cash. Most prescriptions came with three refills, he recalls.
Asked whether the doctor warned him to be careful with the medications or to keep things hush-hush, Zinck says, "No, he just prescribed what he thought we needed. Or if we asked to go up in the medication, he didn't question it. He just went up in it."
Zinck believes the ease with which medications were prescribed played into his own addiction, saying "It's a big role, because if you can't get them, you're either gonna have to go to rehab or find another doctor or deal with it another way."
Astin, say both Zinck and Penny Durham, wasn't the first doctor to provide the wrestlers with their easy prescriptions.
Zinck says he went through rehab for substance abuse prior to becoming an Astin patient in 2003. Earlier, he says, his source for prescription meds was Dr. Robert Howard, who worked for a pain management clinic in Peachtree City until he, too, was busted by the feds for overprescribing. Penny Durham confirms that her late husband also was a patient of Howard. And Zinck says Nancy and Chris Benoit also saw Howard as patients, adding, "Most of the old WCW locker room were patients."
Courtesy of Penny Durham
Michael Durham, as Johnny Grunge, speaks to the crowd in 1995.
Howard died in prison within the last three years, according to Cathy O'Neil, a former assistant U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the case against Howard.
"He was overprescribing," O'Neil says. "There was some question whether these people ever needed to be on the drugs or not."
But O'Neil notes that authorities didn't track each of Howard's patients, and that they were unaware he had prescribed drugs to athletes.
<HR align=left width=150>
Penny Durham knew about her late husband's demons. She witnessed the dark side of his Soma addiction and his earlier steroid use, but she says she didn't have a clue about Astin's alleged role in his life. She didn't become aware of Astin, she says, until more than a year after her husband's death -- and after she attended the funeral for her friend, Nancy Benoit -- when investigators showed up at her door with the doctor's name.
"Unfortunately, it took three very good friends of mine to die in such a bizarre way in order for the guy to be revealed," she says.
Courtesy of Penny Durham
Nancy Benoit in the kitchen of the Durham house in 1998.
As a wrestler's wife, she had been friends with Nancy Benoit since 1994. The families spent a Thanksgiving together; and she carries snapshots of Nancy and Chris Benoit, clad in pirate garb in her kitchen at Michael Durham's 34th birthday party. The Benoit's son, Daniel, played with her two boys.
The friendship had cooled in recent years, as Chris Benoit's wrestling star rose to where he was earning more than $1 million a year. Penny Durham says she occasionally ran across Nancy Benoit at the local gym, but they'd stopped seeing each other socially. Penny Durham blames Chris Benoit for blunting the relationship; she describes him as a control freak who kept his wife away from her friends.
"Face it, it is a crazy lifestyle," she says about the wrestling scene. "And they had problems like most people do in marriages. Chris was just indifferent. You could never figure him out. He was on the strange side. The guys used to call him Houdini because you'd be talking to him, you'd look away and he would be gone.
"He was an introvert. He was very quiet. And I just think that Chris held a lot of stuff in. Then, when Mike [Durham] and Eddie Guerrero both passed, he lost two of his closest friends, people he'd been able to talk to."
Guerrero, who died of heart failure in November 2005, also was linked to steroids and painkillers.
In the case of Durham, his marriage began to crumble as Benoit's career expanded and his own wrestling star as Johnny Grunge faded. He struggled to find work. His health worsened and his girth expanded. Already burly, he'd put on nearly 100 extra pounds by the time he died. His waistline ballooned to 56 inches.
And he brought his drug addiction home.
Courtesy of Penny Durham
Daniel Benoit (middle) used to play with Michael and Penny Durham's kids.
Numbed by muscle relaxants, Durham would occasionally pass out, according to his wife and Zinck. In his prime with World Championship Wrestling, Durham earned $300,000 a year; but in the last few years of his life, he couldn't foot the bill for a rehab facility. He tried detoxing on his own, but it never worked.
"I mean, he would be with the little guys and then he'd be passed out,'' says Penny Durham, referring to her two sons. "I'd come back home from Wal-Mart and he'd be lying on the floor. It was just a crazy life. It was a life that nobody should live unless the wife is like that. And then you both are doing it, and you could care less about it."
Michael Durham's father in-law tried bringing him into his carpet installation business. Again, the addiction got in the way.
"I'll tell you one incident where he was driving [the van], weaving all over the road," recalls Art Bordeau, who now shares his suburban Atlanta ranch-style home with his grown daughter, Penny, and her two sons. "I took the wheel and pulled over. When he got out of the vehicle, he fell on the ground and couldn't get himself up. He weighed about 400 pounds. No way I could get him up. This was the middle of the day. I wouldn't let him drive after awhile."
And the other workers, Bordeau says, wouldn't even get in the van with Durham.
George Napolitano/Wireimage.com
Nancy Benoit, known as 'Woman' in her wrestling persona, in 1997.
By all accounts, the wrestler known as Johnny Grunge wasn't using steroids, at least not in his later years. But early on, according to his wife, he succumbed to the competitive pressure and went on a steroids cycle for almost two years.
She says he showed her the doping paraphernalia back then -- the steroid vials, as well as the needles and syringes he used to inject himself.
During that period, Penny Durham says, another dark side occasionally appeared, when Michael became far more aggressive than usual. Her nice, sweet husband would turn menacing and ugly.
"He'd be doing steroids and he'd drink a couple beers and then he'd want to beat the bar up," Penny Durham recalls. "I was just sitting there eating at the bar, having a couple beers; and then he just looked at me and said, 'If you ever go out on me, I'm gonna kill you like Nicole Simpson.' I'm like, 'What?' I just smacked him in the face. And then he came after me. And I did run. And he grabbed my leather [jacket] and ripped it in the parking lot. I guess the bartender had called the police and they showed up and gave me a ride home. I should have learned then, right?"
Says Bordeau, Michael Durham's father in-law: "He was such a nice guy, until he got hooked on drugs."
Phil Astin III wasn't the only source of those drugs. But in the last year of Durham's life, when he was downing copious amounts of painkillers and muscle relaxants, records indicate his primary prescriber was the country doctor with the name a Tyrone detective recognized 16 months after Durham's death.
The telltale signs include an empty bottle found near the cold body of Johnny Grunge.
Huffman already had a chip on his shoulder after John Laurinaitis made the call to do the Florida developmental territory, while turning down his PWA promotion in Houston. WWE had also banned their talent from participating in PWA events in Pasadena, Texas, thus causing Huffman to use TNA talent. This raised many people's eyebrows in WWE, but nothing was said.
There was also a contact issue between Huffman and WWE. For years he swore that he would never wrestle a day past 40 (he is now 42). Recently, Huffman was about to sign a new contract, but it's not clear whether it was actually signed. Huffman is said to be in strong economic shape as he's earned a lot of money from his Hip Hop clothing store in Houston, as well as a wrestling school in the city, and a wrestling school he's affiliated with in South Africa.
TNA In SERIOUS Talks With Booker/Bischoff/Hogan [Trying To Take Down WWE] *Spoilers*
If you snort it, spray it, shoot it, inject it, I did it, buddy. Or I was around it. That was my life. Alcohol? I abused it all, buddy. I took a lot of pills. I was a pill popper."
-- Lex Luger, aka "The Total Package"
KENNESAW, Ga. -- Just before high noon, sun scorching down so intensely that it softens the asphalt, a sweet, white and black '66 Caddy Sedan de Ville rolls up to within a few yards of the Golden Corral, a buffet joint. Out steps an old egotistical, narcissistic heel clad in khaki pants, a plaid cotton shirt and sandals.
In a matter of moments, Lex Luger abruptly breaks into wrestling character, a cocksure grin on his tanned face. He tilts his head and rolls his eyes up to the blue heavens. He pushes up his right sleeve to flex his ripped, ham-bone-sized bicep.
Then, just as suddenly, the shtick ends. With metal cane in hand, Luger hobbles off to lunch.
In the ring, Lex Luger was a one-man admiration society for . . . well, Lex Luger.
For the next couple hours, between trips to the chow line and chats with the folks who wander by his table, the 49-year-old Luger spins his horror stories about Lex as a younger man. That Lex dabbled in so many prescription narcotics, recreational drugs, cocktails and steroids, Luger says, that it's a wonder he hasn't joined the growing list of dead-before-their-time pro wrestlers, which unofficially numbers more than 100 over the past decade.
In a quiet moment he recalls sitting helpless in the wee hours as his girlfriend, wrestling personality Miss Elizabeth, died four years ago in the townhouse they shared. The cause, according to the coroner's report, was "acute toxicity" brought on by a smorgasbord of prescription painkillers and vodka.
"I take a lot of responsibility for that -- my influence in her life," he says. "Her little heart and body couldn't take what I was doing."
Later on the day Miss Elizabeth died, police found more than 1,000 illegal pills during a search of their suburban Atlanta townhouse. Eventually, Luger was charged with 13 counts of felony drug possession, for which he received probation as a first offender. He later went to jail for a parole violation in 2006, which is when he came across prison chaplain Steve Baskin, whom he credits with helping turn his life around.
The new Lex, a born-again Christian, eagerly shares what he calls "confessions of a drug abuser." He is down-to-earth and contrite, even as he occasionally reverts to the larger-than-life character who won multiple championship belts and was one of professional wrestling's headliners in his heyday. He rails now against the dangers of drug abuse -- the pill-popping, the steroids, the recreational substances.
<TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000">Wrestling the Pills</TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=200>
Lex Luger was a patient of Dr. Phil Astin in suburban Atlanta, but says Astin didn't over-prescribe the painkillers Luger was using for a hip ailment that might require surgery later this year. Other former professional wrestlers tell a different story, though, about Astin, who was indicted in July on seven counts of over-prescribing medication to two unnamed patients.
Pill bottles for prescriptions from Astin were found in the homes of two wrestlers who died unexpectedly, including Chris Benoit, in the last 18 months. Read ESPN.com investigative reporter Mike Fish's exploration of the relationship between Astin and the wrestlers he treated.
Fish: Chris Benoit's doctor prescribed for other wrestlers
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Mostly, he does it by urging the abusers to come clean and to get clean. And where better to start than by making an example of himself and his hellish skid from fame and fortune, which saw him go from a $1 million-a-year wrestling gig to temporary residence in a spare bedroom of his minister's apartment.
"Wow, I believe I was so close to dying so many times from overdoses," says Luger, who claims his lone physical ailment at the moment is a broken-down hip due for surgery sometime this fall. 'One heart beat away,' I tell people in my faith-based speaking. That, I believe, is why God put me in a role to shed light on the situation in our culture and in our sports. Our sports are affecting our culture.
"It's the ends justifies the means in sports. We are taught that since we were little. The old, 'Do whatever you got to do to win, to be the best. Step over, step on and step through.' So that is how all this performance-enhancing drugs got into our culture. And that leads to guys wanting to take shortcuts. And then, cheat until you get caught, and then lie."
Luger can trace his own introduction to steroids to a long-ago football career. He played in college as an offensive guard at Penn State and, later, at the University of Miami. In the early 1980s, he had stints in three different pro leagues -- the Canadian Football League, National Football League and the now-defunct United States Football League.
In 1979, Luger played for Miami, which featured future All-Pro quarterback Jim Kelly and current University of Georgia coach Mark Richt, until he was booted off the team for an incident that wasn't drug-related. When he left the Hurricanes, he moved less than an hour up Florida's Sun Coast to Fort Lauderdale, where he worked as a bouncer at a popular night spot until the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL called with a tryout offer.
"I wanted to look good on the beach, so I had slimmed down to about 235,'' says Luger, who was born Larry Pfohl in Buffalo, N.Y. "Now here it's February and camp starts in May. And I was an offensive guard. Back then, they were quick, pulling guards -- not 300-pound monsters. But I needed to be at least like 255.
Lex Luger is still all muscle . . . when he wants to be.
"So I had to gain weight quick -- the unethical, cheating shortcut. Guy in the gym said, 'Buddy, these little blue pills are called Dianabol.' And I took four a day, five milligrams apiece. You get on these steroids and you train better, eat more. And you retain water from them. So I gained 15 pounds in about two months. I jumped on it and it worked.
"And it is the same old thing: Once you do something one time, it leads to another. And then I started in the offseason, where I would do one cycle for 12 weeks. A friend of mine was an exercise physiologist. She monitored my blood [levels]. I never took it in-season. I'd just take it in the offseason to build as much strength as I could."
Dianabol is a powerful anabolic steroid.
In 1985, after the demise of the USFL, Luger retired his football pads and took his then-chiseled 6-foot-4, 270-pound physique to the pro wrestling scene, which was evolving into something of a beauty pageant for guys in spandex tights. He learned the ropes kicking around a regional circuit in Florida. Later in his two-decade career, Luger became a marquee character, and shared headliner status with the likes of Sting ("One of the few that stuck by me when my life was a wreck"), Ric Flair and "Macho Man" Randy Savage (Miss Elizabeth's ex-husband).
He often played the role of the self-centered bad guy, posing in front of full-length mirrors before his matches. His chemically enhanced physique was part of his costume.
"I was on display year round with my shirt off," he says. "So what happens in wrestling is a lot of the guys stay on [steroids]. I never stayed on them year-round. I would go on them for 12 weeks, off them for 12.
"I did testosterone and Deca [Durabolin]. It wasn't classified. It wasn't against the law."
But in the 1990s, the law and the climate about steroids both changed. Vince McMahon Jr., overseer of the World Wrestling Entertainment enterprise, faced federal steroid distribution charges, a rap he beat. McMahon and others also began drug-testing their in-the-ring performers, although Luger says the wrestlers had little trouble getting around the pee-in-the-bottle routine.
The irony is that the sport continued to sell massive, cartoon-like superheroes even during the public steroid fuss. That pitch hasn't changed much. Nor, presumably, has the doping regimens that help build at least some of those ripped, cut physiques.
Before he was Lex Luger, he was Larry Pfohl from Buffalo, playing football for the University of Miami in 1979.
"Vince [McMahon] sells bigger-than-life," Luger says. "And bigger-than-life, what does that mean? A lot of chemically enhanced heroes and villains -- guys my height and size or bigger. You can't see that on the street every day. You have to buy a ticket to see that. So he sells basically the freaks. The modern-era giants. The [Hulk] Hogans, too. I don't mean that disrespectfully. That is meant as a compliment in today's lingo. They are so out of the ordinary."
The not-so-veiled message, according to Luger: To pull down oodles of cash, get big. Get bigger. And stay big.
And finding drugs to fuel the growth machine never proved to be a problem, Luger says. For him, it was as simple as an online purchase, or hustling up a black-market source.
The new Lex Luger won't name names, but he talks about a place in Atlanta where he could pick up a three-month supply of human growth hormone and testosterone, his favorite muscle-builder. He says such sources dot the landscape from Albany to San Francisco. He talks about a man in California who is currently supplying the drugs to hundreds of wrestlers and other pro athletes.
When the cops searched Luger's condominium on the day Miss Elizabeth died back in 2003, they found a bag he'd never bothered unpacking. Luger claims his ex-wife had sent it over from his former house in a gated, country club community. According to the police report, it contained an assortment of prescription painkillers, plus a bountiful selection of performance-enhancing substances that ranged from six boxes of human growth hormone to 88 bottles of various anabolic steroids.
"I didn't know I had it, and I would never have kept that stuff in my house," Luger says. "I would have had a friend keep it for me. Athletes won't keep it in their house. They'll go over to their friends' house and get their shots and stuff."
<TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000">Reach Lex Luger</TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=200>
Lex Luger claims to have dramatically changed his me-first persona, and says he is now all about helping others. Luger is open to hearing from anyone struggling to turn his or her life around, or from people with fitness or nutrition questions.
He can be reached at www.christianlivingmag.com.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Along the way through their careers, he says, athletes sometimes latch on to a friendly doctor or two who is willing to help, someone they can rely on to write a prescription for a steroid or a painkiller.
From 2004 until this July, Luger says he was obtaining prescriptions for pain medicine, specifically the narcotic hydrocodone, from Dr. Phil Astin III, the 52-year-old Carrollton, Ga., doctor currently under federal indictment for overprescribing medications. Astin treated several pro wrestlers, including Chris Benoit, who committed suicide in June after killing his wife and young son.
Luger, however, staunchly defends Astin. He says a gym friend recommended Astin to him, and that the doctor was never a source of steroids.
"I was under pain-management therapy or hydrocodone, just legal amounts," Luger says. "I need to have hip surgery that I've been putting off. I do a little hydrocodone and some Advil and Aleve, buddy. That is all I take. That's why I was seeing him -- a little bit of pain management."
Painkillers such as hydrocodone, along with other anti-anxiety and mood-altering drugs, appear to be at least as significant a factor as steroids in wrestling's high mortality rate, though. The fruits of the performance-enhancing drugs are as obvious as the sports' neatly scripted matches. Unseen, at least by the public, are the ravages -- sometimes leading to death -- brought on by years of dependency on prescription medications, which are often combined with a steady diet of booze and steroids.
Many pro wrestlers, say Luger and others who've competed in the sport, initially turn to painkillers to cope with the nightly rigors and nagging injuries of the circuit. In some cases, a dependency on the narcotics develops.
These days, Luger needs a cane to get around because of a hip problem.
Luger lived that lifestyle while, by his count, he performed 300 days a year. He'd hustle out of an arena after a show, pumped on adrenaline, and then party into the wee hours and catch a 6:30 flight in the morning. Some nights, his head never hit the pillow. He'd roll into the next town, catch a meal, grab some caffeine or ephedrine to keep going, work out in a gym, do another show and start the cycle all over.
"With my generation, there was no accountability," he says. "We left the building at 11 o'clock, and you lived dual lives on the road. We were like a big dysfunctional family. We fed off each other. And then we go home and sober up. But unfortunately, drugs are drugs. And the guys let that spill over into their home lives. And if the families didn't get intervention and stuff, a lot of us died.
"I was a heartbeat away. I almost overdosed probably dozens of times. I had a really fast metabolism. Part of why Lex stayed so lean wasn't just drugs. God blessed me with a very fast metabolism. I metabolized drugs quickly. That is not good, but it saved my life a bunch of times. I went in deep a bunch of times with pills and alcohol. I was a pill-popper. And I abused alcohol toward the end, real bad. And I got caught with steroids in my house. I am a convicted felon. I deserved it. And I take accountability for that.
"I am trying to help others avoid what happened in my life, and my family and friends that I devastated. I dishonored my profession. I dishonored my community, all because I couldn't control myself and got this sick other lifestyle and drug abuse. I want to help our young kids stay away from that."
As he heads back to his car, the long lunch finished, Luger says the classic Caddy in which he arrived was a gift from his father last year. His dad tinkers with cars, and restored it a long time ago, painting it in the familiar colors of his son's wrestling garb: white boots with black tights and knee pads.
But today's Lex Luger says the younger Lex, the one who was lucky to survive those high-life years on the circuit, went almost 30 years between visits back to his father and the family home in western New York.
"I wrestled through there, but never went home," he says, shaking his head.
The doctor to professional wrestlers. The doctor charged by the federal government with overprescribing drugs.
The name clicked with Tyrone Police Det. Dean Johnson as he heard and read the news about the grisly deaths in June of professional wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and young son in neighboring Peachtree City, another suburb about 45 minutes south of Atlanta.
When it did, Johnson flashed back to a 911 call from 16 months earlier, one that rang in to the Tyrone Police Department late in the morning on Feb. 16, 2006.
In the ring, Chris Benoit earned in excess of $1 million a year. Here, he keeps Triple H in a headlock.
That call led Johnson to a house trailer in town, where he found Michael Durham, a former pro wrestler known in the ring as Johnny Grunge, lying on his side and clogging the narrow hallway. Durham, 349 pounds globbed onto a 6-foot frame, was partially clothed in dark velour pants with an elastic waistband and a white sock on his left foot. His arms and shoulders were covered with tattoos.
He was 40 years old, and he was dead.
The autopsy report attributed Durham's death to heart disease and obesity, and cited a significant condition of "acute toxicity of carisoprodol and hydrocodone" -- a potent mix of muscle relaxants and narcotic painkillers.
Inside the messy trailer, Johnson found two empty prescription bottles carrying Durham's name. One was for 120 tablets of carisoprodol, a muscle relaxant marketed under the brand Soma. The drug had been prescribed by an obscure country doctor, and Johnson passed the physician's name along to the Composite State Board of Medical Examiners in Georgia.
Phil Astin III.
"His name was on the bottle," Johnson says. "It all came back with Benoit."
Durham and Chris Benoit had been close friends. They were among a number of wrestlers who were patients of Astin, the 52-year-old Carrollton physician arrested July 2 by Federal Drug Enforcement agents on seven counts of overprescribing medications to at least two unidentified patients. Although none of the charges spells out a specific relationship to the Benoit deaths, investigators seized files from Astin's home and office in the days immediately after Benoit killed his wife and young son and then committed suicide.
In an affidavit filed in federal court in July, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent said Astin had prescribed a 10-month supply of anabolic steroids for Benoit, and that Astin had supplied controlled substances, including steroids, that were found in Benoit's home.
Michael Durham, also known as Johnny Grunge, as he looked in 1995.
Federal prosecutors are expected to bring additional charges against Astin, who pleaded not guilty and is free on $125,000 bond. A pretrial conference is scheduled Tuesday in Atlanta. The U.S. magistrate judge in the case ordered him to surrender his medical license.
Manny Arora, who represents Astin, acknowledges that the doctor treated "several" wrestlers in a practice that typically saw 20 to 25 patients a day. Arora, though, says he is unsure whether Durham was among them.
But according to pharmacy records obtained by ESPN.com, Durham routinely filled prescriptions written by Astin, a graduate of St. George's University in Grenada. In the 13 months prior to Durham's death, Astin wrote prescriptions for Durham for the purchase of nearly 4,000 painkillers, muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety tablets.
"The doctor should have never given him anything," says Penny Durham, who was legally separated from her husband and in divorce proceedings at the time of his death. "He had asthma. He had an enlarged heart. He had sleep apnea. And he was overweight. He wasn't even wrestling. Why would he be giving this guy a muscle relaxer?
"I mean, he was giving it to him like candy."
Penny Durham has retained an attorney to pursue a possible wrongful death suit against Astin. An attorney representing the parents of Benoit's wife told ESPN.com he is weighing a similar action on behalf of the family, though they likely will wait until the criminal case against Astin is resolved.
Astin, through his attorney, declined comment for this story.
<TABLE id=inlinetable cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=200 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TH style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000">Survival Story</TH><TR style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ececec" vAlign=top><TD width=200>
Why have so many professional wrestlers died before their time? One retired wrestler says the answer isn't just the steroids that have been such a big part of the sport's culture. Lex Luger says it's also partly because the fast times, high life and physical stress of the circuit can easily lead to a dependence on painkillers and other narcotics. How does he know? He nearly became one of the fatalities. Now he shares what he calls "confessions of a drug abuser" with ESPN.com investigative reporter Mike Fish.
Fish: Lex Luger's drug-abuse survival story
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Here are a few highlights gleaned from the pharmacy records related to the investigation of Durham's death:
• There were at least 11 doctors who wrote prescriptions for Durham, but none prescribed pills in the copious quantities that Astin did. Almost all of the prescriptions filled under Astin's name -- 28 of 33 -- were for 120 tablets. The most filled under another doctor's name dating back to 2000 was 90; most were for 60 tablets or fewer.
• One of the early prescriptions filled under Astin's name, on Feb. 14, 2005, was for 120 tablets each of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, the painkiller hydrocodone and the muscle relaxant carisoprodol. On March 3, 2½ weeks later, Durham filled another prescription for 60 carisoprodol. Four days later, he filled a prescription for yet another 60. All at the same pharmacy.
• On Nov. 21, 2005, Durham filled a prescription for 120 tablets of the painkiller oxycodone, a drug so widely abused in central Appalachia about five years ago that it drew national attention and earned the nickname "hillbilly heroin." Six days later, Durham filled another for 120 tablets of the same narcotic painkiller; and yet another for 100 tabs on Dec. 15, 2005.
• On Feb. 15, 2006, the day before he died, Durham's last prescription -- No. 180093 -- for carisoprodol was filled at his favored pharmacy, the CVS on Lexington Circle in Peachtree City. It cost $67.59. That was one of the two empty bottles, with Astin's name printed on the labels, found by Johnson in the trailer and shipped to the state crime lab as evidence.
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Eric Zinck, who describes himself as Durham's "best friend," says he made the trek to the drugstore for Durham's last refill. Zinck, too, was one of Astin's patients.
Penny Durham is considering a wrongful death suit against Dr. Astin.
ESPN.com has learned that Zinck has been subpoenaed to appear Oct. 2 before a federal grand jury in Atlanta that is considering additional charges against Astin. The grand jury previously heard witness testimony Sept. 4.
The 37-year-old Zinck has been a fringe player on the wrestling scene. He dabbled as a referee, and at one time was manager of Public Enemy -- the tag team featuring Durham (Johnny Grunge) and the late Flyboy Rocco, who died of a heart attack in 2002. During the divorce proceedings from Penny, Durham stayed in Zinck's trailer. The trailer where Johnson, the detective, found Durham's body.
As Zinck recalls the hours leading up to Durham's death, Durham returned to the trailer late in the afternoon of Feb. 15, 2006, after a visit to his ill mother in Louisiana. He was sore and tired from the flight, Zinck says. Durham was having money troubles, and he was upset about his pending divorce and missed his two young boys.
"When he got to the house, he said, 'I got a prescription to pick up,'" Zinck says. "I think he had already had a few Somas [carisoprodol], anyway. There was no way I was gonna take him to the pharmacy [in that condition]. So I drove to the CVS in Peachtree City, walked in, walked up to the counter and said 'I need to pick up a prescription for Michael Durham of Somas.' I got them and walked out. Didn't ask for ID. Didn't ask who I was."
They had dinner and watched television, and then Zinck went to bed. The next morning, his then-girlfriend, leaving for her job at a children's daycare facility, stumbled over a passed-out Durham in the hallway. When Zinck checked on him, he found the wrestler had a weak pulse but thought he'd sleep it off, as he always had before.
"Somas, that was his drug of choice," Zinck says. "I mean, he took them to forget life and not to feel any pain. I'll be honest: I'd seen Michael take 120 Somas in a day -- that's in a day -- and survive. I just think the stress of everything -- his body, his personal life -- got to him."
Chris and Nancy Benoit dressed as pirates for Michael Durham's birthday party in 1999.
Steroids and pro wrestling have been linked publicly in recent years, but prescription meds -- addictive stuff like Soma, Xanax and Percocet are the dirty little secret of the wrestling crowd, which by some accounts has seen more than 100 of its participants die before the age of 50 in the past decade. In the ring and on the TV screen, wrestlers earn their living with their pumped-up, cartoon-like bodies. But away from the raucous arenas, as they deal with real-life aches and pains and the grind of the road, they often rely on narcotic painkillers and mood-altering drugs.
Lex Luger, another of Astin's patients, says many wrestlers become addicted to a "toxic cocktail" -- a concoction that includes alcohol, muscle relaxants and painkillers. Astin prescribed the painkiller hydrocodone for Luger for a hip ailment likely to require surgery this fall, but those prescriptions didn't come in an inordinate amount, he says. Nor, Luger says, did Astin ever discuss steroids with him.
"He is a good old guy," says Luger, 49.
Back when he was active on the wrestling circuit, Luger says, he came close to overdosing on pills and alcohol "probably dozens of times." Back then, Luger's chaser was vodka and orange juice.
"Mine was Coors Light," Zinck says. "I would have three or four Coors Lights in the morning, my painkillers, my Somas and my Xanax. That was my thing. That is how you started the day to crawl out of bed.
"We all relied on the stuff on a daily basis. It got to a point to where it is like being in a car accident every night. You get in that ring and deal with that. Your body is sore. You're either on an airplane or traveling five or six hours in a car. Or you're staying in a hotel room. You rely on the painkillers because they are addictive; and even when you don't hurt, your body craves them. And we all had a doctor that was giving them to us with no questions."
Eric Zinck picked up Michael Durham's last prescription. Durham died in Zinck's trailer.
Zinck, who is cooperating with federal investigators in the case against Astin, estimates that more than 20 wrestlers had seen Astin in recent years, although he doesn't speak to the amount of prescriptions Astin provided others. He first saw Astin in 2003, but stopped after Durham died last year.
To get to Astin's office, Zinck says he and Durham regularly drove 45 minutes from Peachtree City to Carrollton. The same was true of Benoit and his wife, Nancy, a former wrestling valet and manager. Luger says he and others trekked even further from a north Atlanta suburb for Astin's services.
When Chris and Nancy Benoit died, they both had traces of prescription painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs in their systems.
A toxicology report revealed that Benoit had high levels of testosterone in his system, and authorities found steroids in Benoit's home. Astin's attorney, however, insists that the doctor was not a source of illegal steroids for pro wrestlers. Arora suggests a legitimate explanation: The wrestler nicknamed "The Canadian Crippler'' had a hormone disorder that permitted the prescribed steroids.
Arora argues that Astin is miscast as a doctor to the stars, contending he didn't make an inordinate profit dealing with the wrestlers. Rather, Arora portrays his client as a friendly, accommodating second-generation physician who lives with and tends to his elderly mother. Astin's brother and late father, who at one point also had his license suspended by the state board for overprescribing painkillers, both headed the local county health department at different times. Another brother is also a doctor.
"If it is not for Benoit, Astin probably never gets you never hear that name," Arora says. "He is just a small-town doctor going about his practice, and nobody ever hears about him."
Michael Durham, aka Johnny Grunge, poses with his then-infant son, Mike.
Nevertheless, Astin appears to have embraced the celebrity that occasionally filtered through his office about 40 miles west of Atlanta. Luger describes him as "a little star struck." According to Zinck, Astin and his staff enjoyed interacting with the wrestlers. They snapped pictures and appreciated autographs, and they occasionally called for tickets when shows came through Atlanta.
Most office visits with Astin lasted 15 or 20 minutes, Zinck says, and the doctor mixed personal banter in with his examinations. Zinck says he paid $75 a visit, in cash. Most prescriptions came with three refills, he recalls.
Asked whether the doctor warned him to be careful with the medications or to keep things hush-hush, Zinck says, "No, he just prescribed what he thought we needed. Or if we asked to go up in the medication, he didn't question it. He just went up in it."
Zinck believes the ease with which medications were prescribed played into his own addiction, saying "It's a big role, because if you can't get them, you're either gonna have to go to rehab or find another doctor or deal with it another way."
Astin, say both Zinck and Penny Durham, wasn't the first doctor to provide the wrestlers with their easy prescriptions.
Zinck says he went through rehab for substance abuse prior to becoming an Astin patient in 2003. Earlier, he says, his source for prescription meds was Dr. Robert Howard, who worked for a pain management clinic in Peachtree City until he, too, was busted by the feds for overprescribing. Penny Durham confirms that her late husband also was a patient of Howard. And Zinck says Nancy and Chris Benoit also saw Howard as patients, adding, "Most of the old WCW locker room were patients."
Michael Durham, as Johnny Grunge, speaks to the crowd in 1995.
Howard died in prison within the last three years, according to Cathy O'Neil, a former assistant U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the case against Howard.
"He was overprescribing," O'Neil says. "There was some question whether these people ever needed to be on the drugs or not."
But O'Neil notes that authorities didn't track each of Howard's patients, and that they were unaware he had prescribed drugs to athletes.
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Penny Durham knew about her late husband's demons. She witnessed the dark side of his Soma addiction and his earlier steroid use, but she says she didn't have a clue about Astin's alleged role in his life. She didn't become aware of Astin, she says, until more than a year after her husband's death -- and after she attended the funeral for her friend, Nancy Benoit -- when investigators showed up at her door with the doctor's name.
"Unfortunately, it took three very good friends of mine to die in such a bizarre way in order for the guy to be revealed," she says.
Nancy Benoit in the kitchen of the Durham house in 1998.
As a wrestler's wife, she had been friends with Nancy Benoit since 1994. The families spent a Thanksgiving together; and she carries snapshots of Nancy and Chris Benoit, clad in pirate garb in her kitchen at Michael Durham's 34th birthday party. The Benoit's son, Daniel, played with her two boys.
The friendship had cooled in recent years, as Chris Benoit's wrestling star rose to where he was earning more than $1 million a year. Penny Durham says she occasionally ran across Nancy Benoit at the local gym, but they'd stopped seeing each other socially. Penny Durham blames Chris Benoit for blunting the relationship; she describes him as a control freak who kept his wife away from her friends.
"Face it, it is a crazy lifestyle," she says about the wrestling scene. "And they had problems like most people do in marriages. Chris was just indifferent. You could never figure him out. He was on the strange side. The guys used to call him Houdini because you'd be talking to him, you'd look away and he would be gone.
"He was an introvert. He was very quiet. And I just think that Chris held a lot of stuff in. Then, when Mike [Durham] and Eddie Guerrero both passed, he lost two of his closest friends, people he'd been able to talk to."
Guerrero, who died of heart failure in November 2005, also was linked to steroids and painkillers.
In the case of Durham, his marriage began to crumble as Benoit's career expanded and his own wrestling star as Johnny Grunge faded. He struggled to find work. His health worsened and his girth expanded. Already burly, he'd put on nearly 100 extra pounds by the time he died. His waistline ballooned to 56 inches.
And he brought his drug addiction home.
Daniel Benoit (middle) used to play with Michael and Penny Durham's kids.
Numbed by muscle relaxants, Durham would occasionally pass out, according to his wife and Zinck. In his prime with World Championship Wrestling, Durham earned $300,000 a year; but in the last few years of his life, he couldn't foot the bill for a rehab facility. He tried detoxing on his own, but it never worked.
"I mean, he would be with the little guys and then he'd be passed out,'' says Penny Durham, referring to her two sons. "I'd come back home from Wal-Mart and he'd be lying on the floor. It was just a crazy life. It was a life that nobody should live unless the wife is like that. And then you both are doing it, and you could care less about it."
Michael Durham's father in-law tried bringing him into his carpet installation business. Again, the addiction got in the way.
"I'll tell you one incident where he was driving [the van], weaving all over the road," recalls Art Bordeau, who now shares his suburban Atlanta ranch-style home with his grown daughter, Penny, and her two sons. "I took the wheel and pulled over. When he got out of the vehicle, he fell on the ground and couldn't get himself up. He weighed about 400 pounds. No way I could get him up. This was the middle of the day. I wouldn't let him drive after awhile."
And the other workers, Bordeau says, wouldn't even get in the van with Durham.
Nancy Benoit, known as 'Woman' in her wrestling persona, in 1997.
By all accounts, the wrestler known as Johnny Grunge wasn't using steroids, at least not in his later years. But early on, according to his wife, he succumbed to the competitive pressure and went on a steroids cycle for almost two years.
She says he showed her the doping paraphernalia back then -- the steroid vials, as well as the needles and syringes he used to inject himself.
During that period, Penny Durham says, another dark side occasionally appeared, when Michael became far more aggressive than usual. Her nice, sweet husband would turn menacing and ugly.
"He'd be doing steroids and he'd drink a couple beers and then he'd want to beat the bar up," Penny Durham recalls. "I was just sitting there eating at the bar, having a couple beers; and then he just looked at me and said, 'If you ever go out on me, I'm gonna kill you like Nicole Simpson.' I'm like, 'What?' I just smacked him in the face. And then he came after me. And I did run. And he grabbed my leather [jacket] and ripped it in the parking lot. I guess the bartender had called the police and they showed up and gave me a ride home. I should have learned then, right?"
Says Bordeau, Michael Durham's father in-law: "He was such a nice guy, until he got hooked on drugs."
Phil Astin III wasn't the only source of those drugs. But in the last year of Durham's life, when he was downing copious amounts of painkillers and muscle relaxants, records indicate his primary prescriber was the country doctor with the name a Tyrone detective recognized 16 months after Durham's death.
The telltale signs include an empty bottle found near the cold body of Johnny Grunge.
