American Pickers star Mike Wolfe gets candid about Frank Fritzs opioid addiction and his show exit

Mike Wolfe is shedding light on the life of his late friend Frank Fritz.The two co-hosted “American Pickers” since 2010 and Wolfe, 60, took a moment to reflect on their decades-long friendship and Fritz’s private battle with opioid addiction.“Here’s the deal,” Wolfe told People on Monday.“I don’t have the right to tell his story — only he does.

But I do have, I feel, the right to tell the personal story of how myself and so many people struggled to navigate what was going on in his life.”The reality star noted how he and Fritz were both dealing with “relationships that were falling apart” during the pandemic.The late star also suffered a back injury while moving things around at home and underwent surgery.“With that time off and him having surgery, it was like the perfect storm,” recalled Wolfe.

“He became addicted to opioids, and that’s when everything changed.“He admitted that Fritz’s loved ones staged an intervention.A month after the intervention, Wolfe bumped into his friend.“I remember running into him… He said he was just going to handle everything on his own, and I asked him how he was doing,” continued the History Channel star.“He said, ‘I’m fine.

I’m fine.No, I’m really fine.'”But it was clear to Wolfe that Fritz was still struggling.

“Watching Frank doing some of the things that he was doing, it was really hard,” he confessed.Once filming for “American Pickers” started up again, Wolfe “fought really hard to get [Fritz] into rehab.” Despite the fact that Wolfe “never, ever gave up” on Fritz, when production asked for negative drug tests, his best friend wasn’t able to provide them.“The network just finally made the decision,” said Wolfe.“They’re just like, ‘Listen, we have to move on.

We have to keep going with this.’ I had mixed emotions about doing that… and we were just trying to figure out what we were going to do.”In a 2021 interview with The Sun, Fritz op...