“Reality Checkis my story of Hope, Loss, Love and Redemption. About hitting rock bottom but never giving up,” Sorrentino wrote onInstagram. “It’s the first time I’ve been able to truly share my full story, and I didn’t leave anything out. It was important of me to be completely honest about how deep my drug addiction ran and to tell all the crazy stories from those years, as well as how hard I worked to find a lasting sobriety.”
Keep reading for the biggest revelations from his new memoir, out now.
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino’s memoir ‘Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison’.Ballast Books
Ballast Books
He stopped stripping after giving his mom’s friend a lap dance
Sorrentino chose going onJersey Shoreover getting back together with his now-wife Lauren
The reality star met his wifeLaurenwhile taking classes at Kean College in Union, New Jersey. His pill consumption eventually drove them apart, but they continued to keep in touch as talks forJersey Shorebegan. “While I waited to see if the show would get picked up, our conversations turned to potentially getting back together,” he writes. “We were both ready to make this work.”
WhenJersey Shoregot the green light, Sorrentino claims Lauren, now 38, told him: “We can’t be together while you do the show. If we do, we won’t last.” He decided to go ahead withJersey Shoreand calls it “the best decision” he and Lauren “ever made.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and wife Lauren in N.Y.C. in August.Santiago Felipe/Getty
Santiago Felipe/Getty
He knew two of hisJersey Shorecastmates prior to filming
Sorrentino admits he metAngelina Pivarnickbefore filmingJersey Shoreand they’d “actually hooked up a couple of times back in the day when we both were in the same club scene.” Thefather of twoclaims he referred Pivarnick, 37, to the show, but he felt like she acted differently on camera. Sorrentino writes that he also knewSammi “Sweetheart” Giancola“a little bit” before the show, too, because they “used to hang out with the same crew.”
PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy
A tanning salon employee dealt Sorrentino pills onJersey Shoreseason 2
Sorrentino writes that he brought 500 Percocet pills to film season 2 in Miami, sneaking them in via empty fat burner pills, but ran out of his stash. He found a tanning salon owner to replenish his supply — and Sorrentino suspected the salon owner was dipping into the pills, too, due to his “pinned pupils.”
“Despite being mic’d up and filmed twenty-four hours a day, I was able to silently communicate my wishes to the tanning salon owner, and the next thing I knew, I had a regular supply of pain pills delivered to me at the tanning salon,” Sorrentino writes. “After I finished tanning, I would place his cash under the towel and go about my job with a fresh stash of pills hidden in my boxers.”Production eventually caught on to Sorrentino’s ruse and when they tried to get him to go to a new tanning salon, Sorrentino bolted for the original one, resulting in a chase with production.
Jenni “JWOWW” Farley knew about his pill usage and confronted him about it on camera
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and Jenni “JWOWW” Farley on ‘Jersey Shore’ in 2010.William D. Bird/Everett Collection
William D. Bird/Everett Collection
Sorrentino got creative when it came to sneaking pills onto the show
The New Jersey resident writes that he smuggled in and consumed 500 pills over the course of filmingJersey Shoreseason 3 thanks to “the old diet pill switcheroo.” For season 4 in Italy, he changed things up, putting 125 Roxicets — a narcotic made of oxycodone and acetaminophen — into an Altoids tin and bringing four tins. From there, Sorrentino removed the cushions of his shoes “and cut out enough room in the heel to place two Altoids tins in each shoe,” he writes. “I then replaced the insole and packed the kicks in a large suitcase with 20 other pairs.”
He was going through an involuntary withdrawal when he headbutted the wall in season 4
After consuming too much cocaine during an orgy, Sorrentino claims he ”always strategized my drug intake.” But he ran out of pills in Italy and “was in a horrible mental space whenRonnie [Ortiz-Magro]decided it was time to address his issues with me,” he writes, describing himself as “sick and depressed.” He and his costar physically fought and, “I snapped,” Sorrentino shares. “I hit a wall, literally and figuratively.” Sorrentino ended up headbutting a wall “to show Ronnie how ready I was to throw down” — and ended up in a neck brace.
“Girls” served as a code for “pills” onJersey Shore
“If you heard me on the phone asking someone how many girls were coming to the club, chances are I was talking with one of my boys from home in code,” Sorrentino writes. “‘Girls’ meant pills, and the numbers equated to increments of ten. So, for example, if [my friend] The Unit told me he was bringing five girls to the club that night, I knew I was getting a fifty pack.”
Sorrentino had Percocet pills mailed to him onDancing with the Stars
While competing on season 11 ofDWTS, Sorrentino enlisted a drug dealer from New Jersey to send him pills via an overnight FedEx package. The dealer would stuff Roxicet pills in pens: each pen could fit 25 Roxys, as Sorrentino calls them, and the dealer would send 10 pens at a time.“I needed those pills forDWTS,” Sorrentino writes. “That was one of the hardest shows I’ve ever done. I practiced eight hours a day, popping six Perc thirties every few hours.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and Karina Smirnoff on ‘Dancing with the Stars.'.ABC/ADAM LARKEY
ABC/ADAM LARKEY
Sorrentino made some famous friends in prison
Sorrentinoserved eight monthsbehind bars at the Otisville Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, New York, after being found guilty oftax evasionthanks to his brother’s advice to “catch up with the IRS next year” and not file a tax return in 2010. “That single decision would plague me for years,” Sorrentino writes.During his stint in prison, Sorrentino metFyre FestivalfounderBilly McFarland, who’d been sentenced tosix years in prisonfor pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of bank fraud and making false statements to federal law enforcement. “Billy actually DM’d me and asked if I wanted to work with him on his new venture,” Sorrentino writes, adding that he declined because he didn’t want to be involved with the next Fyre Festival.Sorrentino also claims he played Scrabble in prison with the one of the menresponsible for leaking nude photosofJennifer Lawrenceand gotMichael Cohento give him his position of chicken while the disgraced lawyer, 57, served his three-year prison sentence for telling authorities hehelped coordinate hush paymentsto women onDonald Trump’s behalf. According to Sorrentino, Cohen didn’t eat chicken because “he’d had one as a pet or something as kid.”
After beingreleased from prisonin September 2019, Sorrentino and his wife celebrated as two consenting adults do, and the act resulted in a pregnancy. Unfortunately, Lauren suffered a miscarriage and eventually received anendometriosis diagnosis. “No description can properly emote the devastation we now felt,” Sorrentino writes. “It was a sharp, indescribable pain for both of us, having this life taken before it ever had a chance. It was a gut punch I wasn’t expecting, and frankly, one I didn’t think we deserved.”
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Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prisonis out now wherever books are sold.
source: people.com
