Hulk Hogan was suicidal after reality show canceled

Nov. 21 (UPI) -- While appearing on this week's episode of Oprah Winfrey's Where are they now? Hulk Hogan revealed he contemplated suicide at a time when his marriage was falling apart and his reality TV show had gotten cancelled.

œEverything got dark, everything happened at once,"€ Hogan said. "€œI 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.'"

Hogan's show Hogan Knows Best was canceled in 2007, the same year in which his son Nick was sent to jail for eight months after a DUI crash.

But the former wrestler's perspective changed after he ran into a few fans on New Year's Eve.

"€œI 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.'"

"I didn't understand what was going on, but it hit me that there's clean air and that there's dirty air," Hulk said of the moment.

"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."

A year after divorcing his wife Linda, the 60-year-old married his girlfriend Jennifer McDaniel.

"I now realize I had to go through all this stuff to be who I am today," he said of his dark times.

[Fox Sports] [OWN]