“I’ll take a beer — no one will know”: Emelianenko openly spoke about alcohol addiction and life in rehab

Alexan­der is now in Ingushetia, where he is once again try­ing to get rid of bad habits.

Russ­ian MMA fight­er Alexan­der Emelia­nenko has long been strug­gling with alco­hol addic­tion. On his Youtube chan­nel, he spoke can­did­ly about his med­ical his­to­ry.

Why did Emelianenko end up in rehab again?

41-year-old Emelia­nenko defeat­ed 24-year-old blog­ger Evge­ny Ershov at the end of May. The fight turned out to be scan­dalous: the judge saved Emelia­nenko from knock­out in the first round, and in the sec­ond the young oppo­nent eas­i­ly suc­cumbed to the trick.

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Many called the fight fixed and Emelianenko’s form ter­ri­fy­ing. It’s no secret that the fight­er drank and pre­pared poor­ly. He spent most of his career strug­gling with alco­hol addic­tion: he went to a monastery, trained in Chech­nya, and was in reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ters.

Emelianenko has been in terrible shape lately

Each time Emelia­nenko broke down, and his scan­dalous sprees amazed the coun­try. Now Alexan­der has gone to the Iman reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ter in Ingushetia. The fight­er admit­ted his addic­tion and told how he wast­ed his life:

“First I took three bot­tles of dry red wine. Then I switched to stronger alco­holic drinks — I was tired of going for wine every time. Switched to whiskey.

I liked this lifestyle and became addict­ed to drink­ing. I start­ed skip­ping work­outs and stopped com­mu­ni­cat­ing with peo­ple. I was sat­is­fied with my wrong lifestyle. My entourage found out about this, but did not know how to pull me out of this swamp.”

Why can’t Emelianenko quit alcohol?

Those around him tried to cure Emelia­nenko, but he broke down every time. The fight­er admits that he liked this lifestyle:

“I went to hos­pi­tals, they pro­vid­ed me with VIP rooms, they gave me drip­pings, they pre­scribed pro­ce­dures. Then I went out and thought: no one will find out, I’ll grab a beer. And again it all start­ed with the same thing.

I real­ized that by the will of the Lord I came here to look back, sort out my mis­takes, and then move on sober­ly, con­fi­dent­ly, with­out los­ing my way.”

Emelianenko before rehabilitation

Now Emelia­nenko is glad that his loved ones put him in rehab. He plans to recov­er and com­pete again, prob­a­bly in pop MMA. He advis­es alco­holics to look around and learn to enjoy a sober life.

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“Grate­ful to the peo­ple who got me into rehab. I have big plans, I plan to per­form for a long time. For those who have prob­lems with addic­tion, I would rec­om­mend remem­ber­ing a sober lifestyle and look­ing around.

Any per­son can and should receive plea­sure not from an altered state, but from a sober life,” the fight­er is con­fi­dent.