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Jersey Shore’s Mike Sorrentino Says Withdrawals Caused Him to Headbutt Wall in Italy: ‘I Snapped’
Fans watched Jersey Shore star Mike Sorrentino experience an amazing comeback over the years, and now the soon-to-be dad of three is reflecting on his battles with addiction and what went on behind the scenes at the height of his substance abuse. In his memoir, Reality Check: Making the Best of the Situation, Mike said that the famous clip of him headbutting a cement wall was the result of withdrawals.
“All the angst I was enduring boiled up, and for some reason, I decided to launch myself at the wall headfirst,” Mike, 41, wrote. “That’s right – to show Ronnie [Ortiz-Magro] how ready I was to throw down, I headbutted a wall.”
When the cast traveled to Italy in season 4, Mike said that he was “sick and depressed” after he ran out of pills on the trip. Costar Ronnie, 38, decided to address his problems with Mike.
“I snapped,” Mike wrote. “I hit a wall, literally and figuratively.”
Mike added that he expected the wall to be made of sheetrock, but “unbeknownst to [him,] this was some ten-thousand-year-old cement wall from the f—ing Romans or some s–t.”
Mike also said that he used the code word “girls” in place of “pills” as a way to covertly figure out how he could acquire the drugs he was looking for.
“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,” Mike explained in the book. “‘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.”
Mike also admitted that he had a drug dealer mail him Roxicet hidden in pens during his stint on Dancing With the Stars season 11 in 2010. He said that each pen could hold 25 pills and Mike had his dealer send him 10 at a time.
“I needed those pills for DWTS,” Mike confessed. “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 completed a 60-day stint in rehab in 2012, but he relapsed nearly a year later. He returned for another stay in 2015, and December 2023 marks eight years of him being sober.
“I’ll be honest with you. I’m happy to make it this far,” Mike said in an interview with People on August 3. “I was so wild in my twenties and thirties that being the family man that I am today — being eight years sober in December, a dad of two, married five years in a happy, healthy marriage — I’m killing the game.”
Mike announced his book in July and could barely contain his excitement about the project.
“I’ve been writing my autobiography for over a year now, and it’s finally done and ready to share with the world,” the founder of The Stitch Store wrote on Instagram. “Reality Check is my story of Hope, Loss, Love and Redemption. About hitting rock bottom but never giving up. It’s the first time I’ve been able to truly share my full story, and I didn’t leave anything out.”
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