Hulk Hogan revealed he contemplated suicide at his lowest point as his marriage was crumbling and his reality TV career was ending.
"Everything got dark, everything happened at once,"� Hogan said this week on "Oprah: Where are they now?". "I was drinking alcohol very heavily. It just all kept piling up, it all kept mounting and mounting I didn't know how to handle it. I always wondered how could someone possibly take their own life and so I got to that point where I said, 'You know what, maybe this would be easy. You know, maybe this would be an easy way to fix things.'"
The former wrestling star's reality show "Hogan Knows Best" was canceled in 2007, the same year his son Nick was in a DUI crash in Hogan's car that sent the teenager to jail for eight months.
Hogan says the moment that changed his life came in a chance encounter with fans on New Year's Eve.
"I was with my family and a bunch of my friends at a table,"� he said. "And there's a bunch of negativity about the food being bad, you know the champagne didn't work, even though it was all consumed. And when I walked outside, some kid ran up and hugged me and was like, 'Oh I grew up watching you. I didn't have a dad, you're like a dad to me.' And there was another person that said 'Hey Hulk, we love you.'"
"And I went, 'Oh my God', it was right then. I didn't understand what was going on, but it hit me that there's clean air and that there's dirty air. And once I walked back inside again, I realized I couldn't take it anymore. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I got sick and tired of the hating, the negativity, the verbal abuse, just everything that I was hearing."
He added: "I now realize I had to go through all this stuff to be who I am today."
Hogan divorced his wife Linda and married girlfriend Jennifer McDaniel a year later. Now 60, he's currently semi-retired.
"Everything got dark, everything happened at once,"� Hogan said this week on "Oprah: Where are they now?". "I was drinking alcohol very heavily. It just all kept piling up, it all kept mounting and mounting I didn't know how to handle it. I always wondered how could someone possibly take their own life and so I got to that point where I said, 'You know what, maybe this would be easy. You know, maybe this would be an easy way to fix things.'"
The former wrestling star's reality show "Hogan Knows Best" was canceled in 2007, the same year his son Nick was in a DUI crash in Hogan's car that sent the teenager to jail for eight months.
Hogan says the moment that changed his life came in a chance encounter with fans on New Year's Eve.
"I was with my family and a bunch of my friends at a table,"� he said. "And there's a bunch of negativity about the food being bad, you know the champagne didn't work, even though it was all consumed. And when I walked outside, some kid ran up and hugged me and was like, 'Oh I grew up watching you. I didn't have a dad, you're like a dad to me.' And there was another person that said 'Hey Hulk, we love you.'"
"And I went, 'Oh my God', it was right then. I didn't understand what was going on, but it hit me that there's clean air and that there's dirty air. And once I walked back inside again, I realized I couldn't take it anymore. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I got sick and tired of the hating, the negativity, the verbal abuse, just everything that I was hearing."
He added: "I now realize I had to go through all this stuff to be who I am today."
Hogan divorced his wife Linda and married girlfriend Jennifer McDaniel a year later. Now 60, he's currently semi-retired.