Ahead of the release of his memoir, Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation — How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison, on December 19th, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino is getting candid about his battle with drug and alcohol addiction.
Sorrentino is one of the signature stars of Jersey Shore (2009-2012) and its sequel series, Jersey Shore: Family Vacation (2018-present), where drinking and partying to excess is a core trait of the iconic reality franchise. For Sorrentino, the lifestyle of starring on Jersey Shore, along with the fame and fortune that came with it, encouraged a severe dependency on multiple substances.
“I was a young and wild, careless kid, and once you gave kids millions of dollars and Ferraris and Lambos and girls screaming my name and yes-men everywhere, it was hard to turn that off,” Sorrentino told Entertainment Tonight. “That was my problem for many years — how do you turn off the excess?”
Sorrentino admitted he was “into everything”, and kept a stash of drugs on him at all times, which included hundreds of pills including Roxicet, Percocet, Xanax, and Valium, as well as cannabis and cocaine. The 41-year-old admitted he would sneak his stash onto the Jersey Shore house during filming.
“It was extremely hard,” he told ET. “It consumed all my time, to try to get by MTV and production on how I was going to smuggle in drugs on a season.” Sorrentino estimates he spent at least $500,000 on drugs during the course of his addiction struggle.
Sorrentino said he realized the extent of his substance abuse issues after he appeared as a contestant on Dancing with The Stars in late 2010, early into his tenure as a reality star. After suffering a neck injury on the show, he was prescribed painkillers, which he continued to take long after the series. It was when he attempted to withdraw from the painkillers that he realized the extent of his drug dependency.
This was most apparent in early 2011, when the cast of Jersey Shore filmed its fourth season in Florence, Italy. While successful in smuggling some painkillers abroad, Sorrentino began to suffer major withdrawal symptoms, including violent mood swings. This led to one of Jersey Shore’s most infamous moments, when an argument with co-star Ronnie Oritz-Magro led to Sorrentino headbutting the wall out of anger, landing the star in hospital with a concussion.
“I was definitely not at my best. I was going through actual [drug] withdrawal and I had no idea how to control my emotions,” Sorrentino said on the Friend of Jerry podcast earlier this year. He also admitted that, perhaps in part due to his drug-induced haze, he didn’t realize the walls in Italy were made of concrete when he decided to slam his head into a wall. When the cast resumed filming for the fifth season of Jersey Shore a week after the fourth, resuming partying as usual, Sorrentino’s drug habit only strengthened.
Sorrentino entered rehab in 2012, maintaining sobriety for a little over a year before eventually relapsing. He later explained that he started off his post-rehab sobriety journey on the wrong foot. “I didn’t get a sponsor. I didn’t have a recovery network. I didn’t go to meetings. I didn’t take the suggestions,” Sorrentino admitted. “I was going to try to do it my way. And obviously I was wrong.”
After his relapse, Sorrentino’s addiction worsened in severity. “I ended up trying a drug that I never thought I would try. A drug that kills most people,” Sorrentino wrote in his new memoir. “A drug that most people don’t come back from. A drug that I told myself that I would never do, that I thought was dirty. It was heroin.”
Shortly after he began using heroin in 2015, he checked into rehab once more, and has recently celebrated eight years of sobriety. During this time, Sorrentino was charged with tax fraud, owing almost $9 million in taxes, which were hidden in various bank accounts. In 2018, Sorrentino was found guilty of tax evasion, and served time in prison from January to September 2019, as shown in Jersey Shore’s new follow-up series Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.
While this was certainly testing to his new re-attempt at sobriety, Sorrentino said prison actually helped him keep on track. “I think I was fortunate to use the fact that I knew the world was watching, and I used that to force accountability on myself,” he told Fox News.
Shortly before his sentence began, Sorrentino married his college sweetheart, Lauren Pesce. The couple have two children together, and have recently announced they are expecting a third. Sorrentino credits the support of his wife and the love of his family for helping him grow beyond his addiction struggle and stay sober to this day.
Published: Nov 29, 2023 03:48 pm