Hulk Hogan close to suicide, new book reveals

In a telling display of the dark side of celebrity, Hulk Hogan is about to release a new book in which he recounts a night where a lethal blend of an imploding marriage, endless attention and way too much booze almost ended in death.

Born, Terry Gene Bollea on August 11, 1953, the former WWF wrestling champion describes in his book how he once came ‘damn close’ to suicide after a night at a club. Ingesting a cocktail of Xanax and rum, he picked up a gun and even fingered the trigger, but an opportune call from his ‘Gladiators’ co-star Laila Ali brought him back from the edge.

The wrestler now admits that near-fatal night in December of 2007 was the start of a long-overdue wake-up call. The combined effect of “going to a club, drinking, getting all that attention from girls,” then coming back to a dark, empty home filled with only the ghosts of his now defunct marriage nearly depressed him to death.

Hogan believes that Linda, who is now his ex-wife after 23 years was the source of his torment, “Linda’s spending time with a 19-year-old boy – In the house that I pay for,” he writes.

Hulk recalls how he once found his ex, an alleged alcoholic, threatening their 17-year old son, Nick with a bottle after he wrapped his dad’s new car round a tree. The legal aspects aside, the 6’4″, 285lb actor then reveals one big downside of fame – a civil suit filed against him by the passenger’s parents is “for more money than I’ve made in my whole career!”

And money is already an endangered species for Hulk; The Daily News reports that his divorce in July has landed the star with an alimony bill of $40,000 a month. Hulk knew the pair could resolve all their problems, but Linda was hard to persuade, “I practically begged her not to file. I said, ‘If we do this now, it’ll make us look like the Spears family. Don’t file for divorce.’”

But the boyfriend was hot, so she did.

And amid all this emotional wreckage, reality cameras caught their every move, “In public, we were having the time of our lives, but that only masked the problems behind the scenes,” Hogan writes. “There were plenty of times when Linda would lose it, but no one got to see that on TV.”

The book, ‘Outside the Ring’ is due out next week. Sounds like a must…if you like to read horror??