The Situation reveals the moment he hit rock bottom, why he decided to go to rehab
Five seasons into reality show "Jersey Shore," the party finally stopped for Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino. The 30-year-old checked into rehab at Utah's Cirque Lodge in March for a three-week stay to kick his addiction to painkillers. Now, The Sitch is opening up to In Touch about the moment he hit rock bottom, back when he was taking more than 15 doses of Oxycodone each day. "I was in a hotel room — probably in LA Vegas or Miami — and I was watching a Brittany Murphy movie," he says, of course referring to the actress who died at 32 from pneumonia, made worse by anemia and — yep — a cocktail of prescription drugs, according to the coroner. "I was probably high," he adds. Sadly, Sorrentino says, he was left asking himself, "Am I going to be that guy that was so awesome on the Jersey Shore and then ... that's it?"
Apparently not. The awesome guy from "Jersey Shore" was meant to live to see another day, although he had finally recognized he had a problem. At first, Sorrentino chose to battle his addiction himself, and was on and off the wagon for two years. “I really thought I could fix it, that I could turn it around by myself." Then came the withdrawal syptoms that left him so debilitated at times that he once turned down a $40,000 appearance in Australia just because he couldn't pull himself out of bed. "I didn't even care!" he explains to the magazine. "When you're dependent on a substance, it's the only thing that matters." Finally, The Situation was ready to go to rehab — as his family had long suggested. "On the plane home, they said, 'Mike, you've got to handle this now.' I knew that they were right, that if I didn't fix the problem there'd be no Situation."
As Sorrentino has explained before, he first began taking pills because he thought they'd help him keep up with his hectic schedule after "Jersey Shore" became a phenomenon. "My addiction was prescription painkillers. At first, I'm sure I thought that it might give me energy," he told MTV in May. "I thought it helped me, because it's a painkiller so you're not tired anymore. Then after a while you're like 'Oh maybe this is going to help my schedule out.' I for sure made a mistake by picking a substance over what I previously chose, which was fitness." And while he's often shown with a drink in his hand on the show, he insists that alcohol was never a problem. "I was the guy that was the ladies man," Sorrentino — that heartthrob! — said. "You know, you can't get girls if you can't speak to them. So drinking was definitely not an issue for me." How do you think The Situation will handle the upcoming sixth season of "Jersey Shore"?
The latest issue of In Touch is on newsstands now.
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