Mike Sorrentino Dropped $500k on Drug Addiction, Almost Released Sex Tape When Money Was Low

The reality star opens up about his struggles ahead of the release of his memoir Reality Check: Making the Best of the Situation -- How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison, scheduled to hit shelves on December 19.

If his candid interview with ET ahead of the book's release is any indication, Sorrentino's tell-all is going to be eye-opening and harrowing in its raw depiction of some of the struggles he's endured.

Now celebrating eight years sober, the husband and father of (soon-to-be) three recalled to the outlet the moment his attorneys told him he'd spent a cool half a million on cocaine and oxycodone amidst the height of his addiction. "I was like, 'Man, that sounds about right,'" he recalled, "because it was true."

Marinating over $500,000 lost to addiction, Sorrentino said, "That's a good college fund right there. I just gotta be accountable and be like, 'Yeah, that happened.'" I was wild. I was careless. I was reckless, and I fell prey to drug addiction."

He shared that his addiction to painkillers was so bad that he got to where he would smuggle them along with him for all of his television appearances, including the entire time he competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2010.

"I was into everything. I had everything on me at all times in my Louis Vuitton bag," Sorrentino said. "Everything -- from a couple hundred Roxicet, which are 30 milligram oxycodone, then I'd have probably 150 Percocets on me, which are 10 milligram oxycodone."

"Then I would have about 100 Xanax on me, 100 Valium, and if I wasn't traveling on a plane maybe I would have some weed and cocaine as well, 'cause I knew that if I traveled on a plane, not a good idea to try and go through security with cocaine and weed on you."

He recalled one incident when TSA was about to check a bag where he had "a couple hundred Roxys in a show," he sprung into action and quickly said he needed to put those shoes on. Doing so, "I took them out of the equation."

Through all of this -- while appearing on talk shows, Jersey Shore and DWTS and traveling with an incredible amount of drugs -- Sorrentino worked his hardest to hide his addiction from his handlers and show producers.

"It was extremely hard. It consumed all my time, to try to get by MTV and production on how I was going to smuggle in drugs on a season," he said. He explained that he "misjudged" his "appetite" and "dependency" on the drugs, calling it "insanity" the lengths he went to keep up with his habit while working.

He even recalled an "insurance policy" he had set up in case funds ever got too low, which is what he called a sex tape he kept on hand with his team just in case he needed to release it to bolster his bottom line.

Things were feeling so desperate at one point that he even told his mother and wife Lauren that he might have to dip into his "insurance policy." He said, "We went down that journey of selling it and we decided not to."

Hinting at just how close this came to happening, Sorrentino said that the reason the video was never actually released was because "the offers weren't good enough."

"They were a combo of revenue from the sales or streams," he explained. "It wasn't as big of an upfront payment as I wanted. It wasn't Jersey Shore money, so I wasn't going to put myself out there like that."

Even that wasn't his lowest moment, though, with Sorrentino saying that was the moment he checked into rehab for the second time in 2015, a turning point in his life that was triggered by him -- already addicted to oxycodone and regularly using cocaine -- trying yet another drug.

"My lowest was like a day or so before [entering rehab], when I did something I never thought I was gonna do," he told ET. "I ended up trying a drug that I never thought I would try. A drug that kills most people. A drug that most people don't come back from. A drug that I told myself that I would never do, that I thought was dirty. It was heroin."

As for why he jumped into a drug he had such disdain for, Sorrentino explained that he "was depressed" and struggling with "anxiety and self-doubt." He said, "I gave up on myself. I just wanted to get out of that space mentally."

In the aftermath, though, he finally stepped into rehab and began his journey toward sobriety. Along the way, Sorrentino married his college sweetheart Lauren in 2018 before spending eight months behind bars in 2019 for tax evasion.

With their third child on the way, the reality star is happy to finally have his life on track and his focus clear and where it should be. He said the best part of eight years of sobriety is "probably every day when my family, my wife and my kids, we have a group hug."

He also gets to enjoy the fruits of his fame with a sober mind, reuniting with his JS cast-mates as part of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, kicking off its Season 6 reunion Thursday at 8pm ET on MTV.