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The following is an excerpt of the Sept. 8, 2006 seven hour "Torch Talk" with Scott Hall, published in its entirety at the PWTorch VIP site - still available for members. In this segment, he talks about his struggles with drugs and when he was happiest in his career...

Wade Keller: Were you clean during your time in TNA or not? You made it sound like you entered WWE pretty motivated, but then that you just said f--- it.

Hall: For me, every day is like a struggle, bro, to be honest with you. Addiction sucks. I don't know. If there's one kid out there who reads this, some kid I can help or something, my advice would be, don't drink and don't do drugs.

Keller: Don't start?

Hall: I would say don't start at all. For me, what's so funny, I've noticed the periods I've had - I don't call it sobriety, I call it dry time because I've never really - to be sober is to be different than being dry. To me, I've been getting wasted for over twentysome years. So to me, when I'm straight, it's almost like a buzz. It's almost like, wow. I feel so good. I almost get a buzz off of being straight. So my advice to any little kid out there who ever saw Razor Ramon or ever watched the NWO or any of that stuff would be alcohol and drugs are not the answer.

Keller: What if that same person hears you say earlier that you wouldn't change a thing and you have no regrets? How do those two things reconcile?

Hall: Well, like I said before, I hurt a lot of people's feelings. I'm talking about my life. My life has been a roller coaster ride. Some people like ferris wheels and some people like roller coasters. It's been a roller coaster ride, and I'm gonna hold on tight. I'm not one of them guys who likes roller coasters. I just as soon ride the ferris wheel. Real predictable, you know? It just goes around and around. But to clarify, to me, I mean, it's been an adventure. Had I not taken handfuls of pills, had I not drank f---in gallons and gallons of alcohol, would I be the same person? Probably not. I mean, like I said, it sounds so mature, but a lot of times, it wasn't like I was sitting around talking to broads. We used to sit around and talk about matches, like what can we do to make the match better? How about this? How about next time, let's do the sleeper spot, sleeper, flip over, all kinds of crazy different sh--. I mean, I would not recommend anybody following my pathway of what I did, but like I said, I wouldn't change what I did other than I hurt some people's feelings. But do I recommend that people follow my path? Yeah, if you want to be a wrestler, work your ass off, love what you do, be passionate about it, but do I recommend that you drink and take drugs? No, I don't.

Keller: I think probably from where you're coming from, it's pretty tough to dwell on regrets. You're better off saying you made it out of it alive, even though you're going to have regrets. But when you say don't do it, maybe...

Hall: It sounds so hypocritical. Some kid's going to think, "F--- you, man. You partied your whole f---in life, what the f---, man?"

Keller: Maybe your response is, you almost have no right to be alive right now given what you've done.

Hall: I should have been dead easily a hundred times.

Keller: So in a sense, you're saying you're one of the lucky ones who's here to tell you don't be one of the 99 who didn't make it. I'm the one who did make it, but you probably won't going through what I did and come out of it alive. That's why you shouldn't do it.

Hall: It almost makes me feel like, like I told you before, I don't know if you believed me, but I don't do interviews. If you check, you'll see I've never done interviews.

Keller: The promotions made you do two or three of them that were five or ten minutes.

Hall: Right, I've never done a lengthy interview with anybody, but Kid (Sean Waltman) and Kev (Nash) put you over real strong, so I said I'll do it. I know it sounds really hypocritical, but to me, if anything I could have learned from my roller coaster of a life would be, like... Sure, it's fun. It's f---in' fun to be buzzed. I ain't gonna lie. It feels good to get your hands full of xanies and a pint of Jack Daniels. I mean, it feels great. I ain't gonna lie and say it doesn't. But I think there are other things out there. It's such a base, low-class way to go about it. I think there's a higher plane out there. There's more, I don't want to get into some kind of spiritual rap, I'll let Sting do that, but I just think - I mean, everybody's told me I must be alive for some reason because I should have been dead a lot of times and I'm not. So maybe it's so I could do this interview with you. I don't know. If I could say anything besides all my bullsh-- drama about wrestling and burying guys and f---in' dishing and doing all these f---in' things, my advice would be, like, alcohol and drugs, I don't know. Look at how many people are dead. It's a one-way street. You either end up in jail or dead. Anybody who abuses alcohol or drugs ends up in jail or dead. I just think if there's anything I can pass along to any wrestling fan out there who ever gave a crap about Razor or Scott Hall, I would want them to know that.

Keller: Your lifestyle has been Russian roulette with one empty chamber.

Hall: Exactly. The thing is, too, I didn't care. Like, I was one of them guys that didn't care. I used to punish myself on purpose because I didn't like myself. So I would drink to excess and take drugs to excess knowing it was bad for me because I wanted to hurt myself. And that's so immature, it's so insecure, that's so many different things. I've tried to grow a little bit since then and gain a little bit of wisdom and self-awareness and things like that. It really comes down to choices. You gotta make a choice. When the bartender says what do you want, you have to go Diet Coke. You can't go Jack and Coke. And when people offer you pills, you have go, "Nah, I'm cool, man. No thanks."

Keller: What was the happiest time of your career?

Hall: Shoot. The first happiest time, although I was way underpaid in my opinion, was the Razor break. When I got the Razor shove, that was a great feeling. But I got to admit, one of the happiest times was having that guaranteed dough. Like I told you, that Bash at the Beach when Hogan turned heel, back then it didn't matter if it worked or not - with Vince, if the sh--- didn't work, you didn't get paid. With WCW, it didn't matter, there could be five people in the audience or there could be fifty thousand, and you got your money. Being in the ring with Hulk for the very first time, just like I talked about (Ric) Flair and Buddy Rogers and some of these other legends, Harley Race, Ricky Steamboat, that was one of the happiest times. Because it worked. We weren't sure. We didn't know if it was going to work. It just worked. Not only did it work, the people rioted. There was an actual riot. People were throwing sh--, they were storming the ring. Like I told you, one mark even came in the ring. Then we went, oh my gosh, we got something going here. I have two happy experiences.

The success of Razor made me feel really good because when I was in WCW, I was a jobroni. They never gave me a chance because in WCW, you were locked in. If you were making 75 grand a year, you didn't get pushed. The guys making 500 grand a year got pushed. With Vince, the one thing I always admired about Vince, he pointed the camera at everybody. Barry Horowitz, Virgil, everybody. He pointed a camera at you, and you'd do what you want. Either you get over or you don't because the camera doesn't lie. That's why I really felt I flourished working for Vince and I learned so much, I got such an education working there about TV presence and slowin' down and how to talk on camera and all the different things. It's all been a dream come true.

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