The image ofMike “The Situation” Sorrentinowearing a neck brace and sunglasses in Italy might just be one of the original memes. But the story behind the injury doesn’t lend itself to laughter.
In his new memoirReality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison, the 41-year-oldJersey Shorestar revealed he hurt himself after depleting a supply of 125 Roxicet pills — a narcotic made of oxycodone and acetaminophen — that he had smuggled to Italy for filming season 4, forcing him into an involuntary detox.
Thefather of twodescribes himself as “sick and depressed” and “in a horrible mental space whenRonnie [Ortiz-Magro]decided it was time to address his issues with me.” The fight boiled up becauseSammi “Sweetheart” Giancolaclaimed Sorrentino once told her Ortiz-Magro, 38, had five other women lined up to fly out to Italy, which upset the Bronx, New York, native.
Sorrentino and Ortiz-Margro 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,” but he didn’t realize how dense the wall in their Florence apartment would be.
“A wall that, like in the States, I was expecting to be sheetrock. No, no, no, not in Italy. Unbeknownst to me, this was some ten-thousand-year-old cement wall from the f—ing Romans or some s—,” Sorrentino writes. “Like, Caeser may have headbutted this thing back in the day when he got in a fight with his roommate. As soon as The Situation’s forehead impacted that cement, I tumbled to the floor like a sack of potatoes.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino’s memoir ‘Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison’.Mike Sorrentino
Mike Sorrentino
His housemates called an ambulance, which brought Sorrentino to the hospital on a stretcher. Doctors told Sorrentino he had a concussion and a sprained neck, and he returned to the apartment in a neck brace.
“It was a surreal moment — lying in a hospital bed in Italy, eyes closed, neck in a brace, head ringing,” Sorrentino writes. “My skin was also crawling, stomach cramping, and I was breaking out in cold sweats from withdrawals. I was in rough shape.”
But the injury got Sorrentino the one thing he wanted: pain pills.
Sorrentino says his “emotions were in the basement” after the incident and admits that describing himself as “miserable would be a gross understatement.”
He contemplated leavingJersey Shoreand going back to rehab after shooting in Italy ended, but the show got picked up for another season, and Sorrentino had to fly straight to New Jersey to film. Back in Jersey, Sorrentino — who’s noweight years sober— saw replenishing his pill supply as his only option.
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Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation – How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prisonis out now everywhere books are sold.
source: people.com
