Rock bottom. Jackass alum Steve-O got real about a personal low that saw him snorting cocaine mixed with the blood of an HIV-positive intravenous drug user.
The Dr. Steve-O star, 44, recalled the incident in an interview on In Depth With Graham Bensinger posted online on Wednesday, January 16.
“I had this drug dealer, he lived very close by … I would go over to [his] house if he didn’t answer my call … sometimes I would show up and the door would be unlocked but he would be, like, passed out, ‘cause he was very much a drug user as well as a dealer,” the reality TV star told sportscaster Graham Bensinger.
Steve-O, born Stephen Gilchrist Glover, explained that the drug dealer, who was HIV-positive and a cocaine user, had gotten blood on the walls and ceiling while injecting the drug.
“This one time when I showed up and uh, he was in his bedroom passed out … I couldn’t wake him up … over at the table, where he would weigh out all of his drugs, there was, uh, ya know, a very noticeable residue of cocaine.”
He continued: “I went over to this table to scrape up a pile of cocaine to snort it, but as I had sat down looking at it, there was, of course, blood had been squirted … you could see, like, the little tiny little blood splatter, ya know, on the residue.”
Sadly, the actor said the blood didn’t deter him from snorting the pile. “This is how desperate and pathetic my addiction was, that I sat there, like, knowingly scraping up this tainted, like, blood cocaine and uh, I sat there and snorted it, which is so f–ked up — I snorted the blood of an intravenous drug user.”
Steve-O said he did not contract HIV from the incident, noting that the virus doesn’t live long in dried blood. “Luckily, I just don’t have it.”
The Don’t Try This at Home star, who regularly put his nether regions at risk while filming his hit show and once stapled his scrotum to his leg, said that testicular cancer became a concern, however.
“I heard that getting kicked in the balls a lot, like a lot of trauma to your testicles, increases your chances for testicular cancer. So once I heard that, I decided to be like … ‘It’s gotta be, like, a really special occasion if I’m gonna take a nut shot.”
The MTV personality got sober in 2008 after years of substance abuse with the help of his pets. “It’s so good for a guy like me to have a priority that’s not myself and have a regimen and discipline and responsibility that’s all very healthy,” he told Us Weekly in November 2012.
He celebrated 10 years of clean living with a heartfelt post to Twitter on March 10, 2018, two months after getting engaged to girlfriend Lux Wright.
“Hard to believe it’s been an entire decade since I’ve had a drink or a drug,” he wrote at the time, thanking his Jackass costars, including Johnny Knoxville. “I just can’t put into words how grateful I am for @realjknoxville and the rest of the guys who locked me up in a psychiatric ward on March 9, 2008, where this journey began. Thank you, dudes, I love you.”
