The Messenger has an interview with AEW’s Jon Moxley, who talks about getting help recovering from alcohol addiction and how he’s seeing the world “with so much clarity.”
Jon Moxley knows every day is a bonus because, as he tells it, “by all accounts I should be dead.” The AEW star has been sober since completing a program for alcohol addiction at Desert Hope Treatment Center in Las Vegas in late 2021.
Moxley returned to the ring in early 2022, but nearly two years later, he admitted things are still difficult, albeit in a new way.
“It’s f—ing hard,” Moxley exclusively told The Messenger. “It’s not the same hell as before, but it’s a completely different challenge every single day where you don’t know what direction it might go in.”
Moxley, unsurprisingly — at least to anyone who has followed his wrestling career — isn’t interested in sugarcoating things.
“I would love to give you like a positive, self-help book-type answer or something about f—ing sunshine and rainbows and fairies and sh–, but that’s really not reality,” Moxley said of his sobriety. “It’s been good on the whole, it’s been good. I’m the luckiest guy in the world. But, you know, you will pay for it on the other side, your choices you make in your life.”
After getting sober — an ESPN feature last year said Moxley, at his worst, was drinking almost every day, often to excess — he explained how it took a while for things to return to any sense of normalcy.
“You f— up your brain chemistry,” he said. “It takes a lot of time for your body and the physical damage you’ve done to yourself to regulate itself.”
Moxley added that recovery is an ongoing process and he’s aware about how it can affect the people in his life.
“I’m not always the easiest person to be around,” he continued. “I have crazy mood swings and sh– like that.”
The Blackpool Combat Club member, who returned to action last week after suffering a concussion in a match on AEW Dynamite last month, said he “used to envy people who were living normal lives and not going through the same sh– that I was going through.”
“Now I still kind of envy people who aren’t going through the same sh– I’m going through,” he admitted. “It’s just different sh–.”
Moxley said he can “see the world with so much more clarity,” which has resulted in his patience meter hitting empty.
“Pro wrestling specifically is full of bullsh– and bullsh–ters,” he said. “I’ve always had a very low tolerance for bullsh–. But now it’s f—ing non-existent, my level of patience for bullsh–.”
Of course, on a journey like his, it’s imperative to have support.
Moxley found that in the form of his wife and AEW reporter Renee Paquette and their two-year-old daughter Nora.
Moxley said his daughter gives him “a motivation because you have a standard to live up to.”
“Whatever I do, whatever choices I make, she’s going to see that,” he continued. “Or see that eventually as she gets older.”
When it comes to his wife, whom Moxley married in 2017, Moxley isn’t sure he’d still be here without her.
“Without Renee, I couldn’t even tell you what my life would have ended up like,” he said. “It’s probably the most fortunate thing to ever happen. God knows. I could be f—ing buried in the desert in Vegas right now.”
As he approaches the two-year anniversary of getting sober, Moxley is still reckoning with his past, while eternally grateful for the future that, at one time, felt desperately uncertain.
“I plan on being here for a long f—ing time and accomplishing a lot more,” he declared. “I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface on what I’m capable of.”
AEW Dynamite airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on TBS, AEW Rampage airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on TNT and AEW Collision airs Saturdays at 8 p.m. on TNT.
