Mike Tyson’s life is profound. The once-best heavyweight boxer in the world likes to spread the escapades and, above all, the excesses behind him: on talk shows, in biographies, basically wherever a good opportunity presents itself to him.
Tyson is a street kid, Brooklyn/New York, his mother was a prostitute, he grew up without a father. He used to be in gangs, he had guns, he was shot at, he shot people. That’s how he tells it, almost with relish. A childhood without money and hope, marked by violence, alcohol, drugs. He likes to illustrate that too.
A past that continued in his career, at least in part. At the age of 20 years and 144 days he was crowned with a knockout. against Trevor Berbick to become the youngest heavyweight world champion to date, but often took cocaine minutes before a fight, as he wrote in his autobiography “Undisputed Truth”. He also spent $40,000 a month on marijuana and ran a plantation in California, which is now legal there. In doping tests, he used a dummy penis and his wife’s urine. This is how he once illustrated it.
For him, such candidly disclosed chapters on women, whores, drugs, crashes, violence and absurdities are the pedestal on which to stand to make himself look big. But he was also often close to death, sometimes it seemed like a miracle that he had not crossed the threshold. Tyson is a man whose beatings shouldn’t be taken, but who has himself been struck down by his lack of self-esteem. Over and over again.
That didn’t do him any good, at least that’s what the 56-year-old thinks, as he said. He has a podcast he called Hotboxin’ With Mike Tyson and he was just chatting with his therapist Sean McFarland on it. Tyson revealed that he expects his death soon. “When I look in the mirror,” he said, “I see these little spots on my face and I’m like, ‘Wow, my expiration date could be coming up very, very soon. Very soon.'” He just lived intensely, too intensely.
Tyson once admitted that he had used Sonoran desert toad venom 53 times in his lifetime for psychedelic experiences, and that he “died” from the drug during his “first trip.” “I had low self-esteem, which is often the case with people with big egos. Our ego compensates for low self-esteem and the toad crushes your ego,” he said.
The poison reptiles help him to find a balance in life. That’s why he breeds the animals on a ranch in California. His life, Tyson reported, has improved since consuming the toad venom: “Before I took the toad, I was a wreck.” All the hundreds of millions of dollars he made, squandered and made back would not have him made happy. Not as hoped, not even remotely.
He says: “Money means nothing to me. People only think money makes you happy because they’ve never had any money. When you have a lot of money, you can’t expect anyone to love you. If you put money in the bank and get a check every week that you can live on for the rest of your life, is that security? Does that mean you can never get sick again, never get hit by a car again? Is it then no longer possible to jump off a bridge? I do not think so.”
