Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino was “really high” during some of the biggest moments of his career, including his short-lived stint on Dancing With the Stars in 2010.
When competing on the show, Sorrentino, 41, found a drug dealer from his native New Jersey who would send FedEx packages of pills hidden in pens to Sorrentino in Los Angeles.
“I needed those pills for DWTS,” Sorrentino wrote in his memoir, Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation — How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison, which was released on Tuesday, December 19. “That was one of the hardest shows I’ve ever done. I practiced eight hours a day, popping six Perc [30-milligram pills] every few hours.”
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly last month, Sorrentino — who has been sober for eight years — further detailed his drug addiction.
“I functioned on six to eight 30-milligram Oxycodone, pretty much at all times,” he told Us while promoting the memoir, revealing that his tolerance got so high he was taking “almost 90 Percocets a day.”
Sorrentino went on to say that he was “pushing the envelope and the limits” in all facets of his life.
“I had an obsessive personality and everything I did was zero or a hundred,” he explained to Us. “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 also figured out how to “smuggle in drugs” while filming Jersey Shore, admitting he treated “every season like Mission Impossible.”
“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 recalled, adding that he wasn’t that subtle about it. “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.”
The Jersey Shore: Family Vacation star recalled his rock bottom moment — doing heroin — and how his mom saved him.
“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 shared, explaining that he “never thought” heroin was something he would try. “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.”
While he’s experienced ups and downs in his life, Sorrentino said he got “an amazing story” out of his past struggles.
“That was the test and the testimony,” Sorrentino told Us. “I’m happy and grateful [to be] here to tell it, and I really think that God saved my life in order for me to share this light.”
