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It’s no secret that far too many in America have been battling a painkiller epidemic. There are few whose lives haven’t been touched by it, whether directly or through someone we know. And now, we learned recently, it almost claimed General Hospital‘s Bryan Craig (ex-Morgan) — though luckily it sounds like it didn’t reach addiction levels.

He spoke about the experience with Maurice Benard (Sonny) on his State of Mind podcast the other week after a fan asked him about how running has been therapeutic for him.

Craig and Benard reconnected both on screen and off recently.

Credit: ABC screenshot

That particular type of exercise all started after, Craig shared, he “had a minor surgery on my head. And I won’t say who or how but it was a botched surgery, and they nicked my occipital nerve in the back of my head. So for three or four months I couldn’t move my head to the left, to the right, up or down. I couldn’t lay it on a pillow. So [for] someone who already has insomnia, I did not sleep. I did not sleep for four months and I finally started to understand how that can affect your mind and your body. I was hallucinating.”

To help him out while he recovered, doctors prescribed him painkillers. He recalled how he “was in so much excruciating pain from morning till night that I was taking these things, like, ‘Just please help me.’”

More: Bryan Craig’s real-life brush with danger

But there’s only so much painkillers can do. And that can lead us to pushing beyond what’s safe just to try to ease the pain. That’s what happened with Craig.

“I ended up ODing,” he shared, “and had to go to the ER because I took too much — what was it? Vicodin, or something. It was the worst three, four months of my life.”

But, after he recovered, he took up running, “because I was so grateful to have my health. You take things for granted until you’re completely incapacitated for three, four months and you can’t do anything. I was waking up at like four in the morning, like, ‘Yes, let’s go on a run! Still only running 1.5 miles, but I was so happy to be normal.”

Sometimes we want to be extraordinary, but other times, normal can be the best feeling in the world. We’re just glad that Craig didn’t just survive his overdosing and came back from the pain and the botched surgery stronger and more determined than ever. And fingers crossed, his most recent return to General Hospital, won’t be his, or Morgan’s, last.

Take a look at our photo gallery of the Corinthos family tree below.