“I tried to have champagne, and it would be like pouring acid, you know, on an open wound.My indigestion issues got gigantic and constant. And then I started thinking, I’m getting skinny. I dropped about 20 pounds in the blink of an eye. And then when you see it in the mirror, when all of a sudden, you pull your eyes down and the bottom of your eyes go yellow and jaundice sets in — then you know something’s wrong.”

He added:

“I started doing a little research and started realizing this is not pretty. This is not a good thing.I think everybody thought I was out of my mind, you know, thinking I’m gonna pull off a TV show.What winning is to me is not giving up, is no matter what’s thrown at me, I can take it. And I can keep going.”