Mike Santana discusses addiction and recovery

[Chris]

TNA’s Mike Santana on battling addiction & the letter that changed everything

This week saw TNA Wrestling drop a new episode of their series “Immersed” which focused on the return of Mike Santana. However, it goes deeper than a talent simply returning to the promotion as…

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This week saw TNA Wrestling drop a new episode of their series “Immersed” which focused on the return of Mike Santana. However, it goes deeper than a talent simply returning to the promotion as Santana opened up about his battle with addiction. In the episode, Santana talked about his battle with addiction and how he’s getting his life back in order.

Following the release of his episode, Santana spoke with me about his journey to recovery which you can see in full at the bottom of this post.

Santana is no stranger to TNA, having made a name for himself as one half of LAX with former partner Ortiz who won the TNA Tag Team titles four times. The rising duo then signed with AEW in 2019, just as the company was getting its start. Santana and Ortiz were part of Chris Jericho’s Inner Circle stable and throughout their time with AEW, they took part in Stadium Stampedes, Blood & Guts matches, and more.

However, toward the latter period of Santana’s tenure, he got injured and was out from late-June 2022 until his return in August of 2023. But after that return, he only took part in three matches with his last coming on AEW Rampage against Ortiz. It’s been rumored that their real-life friendship came to an end and then after five years with AEW, Santana and AEW parted ways in March of this year.

A month later, Santana made his return to TNA at Rebellion, surprising the crowd as Steve Maclin’s mystery opponent. It was later revealed he had signed with TNA once again.

In our conversation, Santana revealed that the death of his father on January 1st, 2020, is what caused his addiction, explaining that he got the call while he was working with AEW in Daily’s Place and that having to shoot weekly TV from Daily’s Place during the pandemic was a constant reminder that led him to drinking. He said that to this day, he still “hates” the venue and the city because of the unfortunate memories.

“A lot of the things that I dealt with in my life, I kept inside, and I never dealt with (them). And when my dad passed away, it was like, finally the soda bottle that I was shaking exploded,” he said.

After his father’s passing, he took two weeks off and went back on the road. Following the beginning of the pandemic and the eventual move to Daily’s Place for the duration, he started to numb himself to get through the bad memories. He said that it began snowballing and he started numbing himself at home too.

“I couldn’t last more than a day or two without self-medicating because my body was already used to it. And that’s when (I went), ‘Alright, I have a problem.’ Dealing with shame and dealing with the guilt, I didn’t speak about it to anybody. I was able to hide it. And then finally, when I got hurt, I’m home now. And by that point, I was already an addict and there was no way of hiding it anymore. And being out for days on end, disappearing, that’s when I was like, ‘Alright, yeah. It’s an issue,'” he said.

Santana shared that the moment he knew he had hit rock bottom was when his daughter wrote a letter to Santa Claus wishing that her father would stop drinking. As noted in the Immersed episode, the letter his daughter wrote saved his life and what caused him to turn things around, ask for help, and go to rehab.

 

[Sky]

Always love to see someone getting better