Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino is looking back at his lowest lows and how he overcame his struggle with addiction.
“I had an obsessive personality and everything I did was zero or a hundred,” the Jersey Shore star, 41, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, November 29, while promoting his upcoming book, Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison. “And once you get into that life of excess, whether it’s drugs, women, money, success, a lot of people don’t make it out.”
Sorrentino, who recently celebrated eight years of sobriety, recalled the extreme measures he took to fuel his addiction while filming the reality show, telling Us that he treated “every season like Mission Impossible” as he would “smuggle in drugs” to various states and countries. He confessed that he had a Louis Vuitton duffle bag stuffed with various prescriptions and drugs including Percocet, Roxicet, Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, weed and cocaine. What’s more surprising to Sorrentino was that he was able to get his contraband past law enforcement.
“I was jumping out of moving cars, smuggling drugs into different countries within my shoes, taking apart fat burners and reconstituting it with drugs to smuggle it into seasons in Miami,” he explained before admitting that the Jersey Shore producers eventually took notice. “There [were] many talks with executive producers and the owners of the show, and they desperately tried to help me, and the whole time I was in denial.”
Sorretino’s wild times on the MTV series didn’t just involve drugs but also women. In the book, Sorrentino describes having an “orgy” with his costars Vinny Guadagnino and Paul “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio.
“There was an MVP orgy where it was just Mike, Vinny and Pauly and a bunch of naked girls in the room, and we’d just have at it,” he told Us, noting he doesn’t think his friends will be upset with his description of the “wild” and “uncomfortable situations” that he included in his book.
Sorrentino reached rock bottom when he did heroin.
“I had the drugs in my hands. I did the first key bump and I was like, ‘I kind of don’t like it.’ But then a little devil on my shoulder was like, ‘Why don’t you try a little bit more? Maybe you’ll like it then,’” he told Us while noting that he “never thought” he would try the drug. “And as I was about to try it for a second time, I could have OD’d right then and there, my phone rang and it was my mom.”
Sorrentino took the time to answer the phone and talk to his mother, who was “concerned” and called to check on him. After speaking to his mom, his door knocked and she appeared alongside his now-wife, Lauren Sorrentino, whom he wed in 2018. Mike then threw the drugs down the toilet and went to rehab the following day.
After sharing his story in his memoir, which will hit stands on December 19, Mike told Us that when Lauren read the book she “cried” at “almost every chapter.” While she and their loved ones had an emotional reaction, they were all “proud” of Mike for creating such a “beautiful masterpiece.” For Mike, he hopes his honesty helps others with similar struggles to seek the help they need.
“I am very proud to say that I think this book is going to not only entertain people,” he told Us. “I think people are going to be shocked at the content and eventually also be inspired because inside you see how I was able to overcome so many obstacles, including addiction, the prison system, miscarriage [of] a baby in a NICU, and I believe that people are going to say, if Mike can do it, I can too.”
Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison will be available December 19
