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20/11/09 - Parisyan "has an addiction to pain medicine"
Karo Parisyan has “some problems with an addiction to pain medicine” according to his friend and former training partner Neil Melanson, who studied under Parisyan at Gokor’s gym in Las Vegas before branching out on his own as a teacher.
“Then when he started having these anxiety problems, it didn’t seem like the anxiety pills were helping him. The only thing that was helping him was the pain medication that he had been taking for his injuries. That’s when he just started down that slope,” Melanson told Five Ounces of Pain.
“It’s just one of those situations where you have two guys that sit down to have a drink, and you have one guy that can go home and he’s fine, and the other guy has to go out and get wasted every single time because he’s an alcoholic. I think that maybe with the pills, that Karo is the second guy. Maybe he’s the guy that can’t take them here and there, or can’t use them effectively. It’s really hard on him.”
According to Melanson, who is now Randy Couture’s grappling coach, Parisyan and he met in Las Vegas recently. Melanson felt Parisyan looked better then he had for some time but still “had a little ways to go”. But his optimism was to be short-lived. Soon after meeting Parisyan, he discovered that the 27-year-old had not made it to Greg Jackson’s camp in New Mexico for training, and had been training only intermittently in Las Vegas.
Up to a month ago Parisyan was taking “about half the amount that he usually does” and was “pretty optimistic” about kicking his addiction, says Melanson. But yesterday he told the UFC he would not be able to fight on tomorrow night’s card, presenting what UFC president Dana White called a “laundry list” of excuses. Parisyan’s withdrawl from the event prompted Dana White to issue a Twitter message saying the Armenian welterweight is now cut from the UFC roster.
“With the UFC dropping him, he’s a mess. He’s a complete mess. Just imagine what it’s like to have an addiction problem, and to lose everything like this all in one day,” Melanson says. But at the end of the day he still did the right thing by coming clean… I know Dana is saying some things right now because he’s really upset about it, but Dana cares about him. I know he’s probably pretty upset, and I would be too… if you’re a promoter that would piss you off pretty bad.”
John Joe O’Regan
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