Mob Wives star Renee Graziano opened up about her struggle with drug abuse following her near-fatal fentanyl overdose almost a year ago.
The 56-year-old reality star opened up about her years of “self-medicating,” which she says “kept her alive” as she struggled with the grief of losing her father and the end of her marriage.
This comes nearly half a year after she spoke openly about her near-fatal overdose in September 2023 and revealed that she had to learn to walk again during her recovery.
After that terrifying incident, the Celebrity Big Brother star, who is also known as the daughter of former Bonanno crime family adviser Anthony Graziano, decided to check into rehab, get clean and recently celebrated nine months of sobriety.
“Addiction is a dark world,” she said Page Six‘s Virtual Reality Tea in an article published Friday.
Mob Wives star Renee Graziano discussed her struggle with drug abuse following her near-fatal fentanyl overdose nearly a year ago; seen in 2017
After thinking about it, she admitted that she had “never been addicted to drugs,” but that she used them to cope with the chaos in her life and the sadness she was experiencing.
‘I was addicted to power, I was addicted to men, I was addicted to my world, my lifestyle. Drugs were my solace. That was what held me [going]’, she explained.
She recalls feeling like drugs were the “solution” to the grief she experienced following the death of her father in 2019 and her divorce from her ex-husband Hector Pagan Jr., among many other unspecified devastating events in her life.
“In a strange way, I sometimes think self-medicating has kept me alive,” she admitted.
“Because I think if I really had to go through it without medication, I might not have made it,” she continued. “That’s the truth, and I don’t even like to talk about it.”
Jennifer Graziano, Renee’s sister, was also present at the conversation and shared how she and the rest of the family watched her struggle with drug abuse for years.
“It’s been that way our whole lives,” she said. “I was almost immune to it and numb to it back then.”
Renee then emphasized that her addiction was entirely her own “responsibility.”
The 55-year-old reality TV personality recalls the chilling incident in September 2023, after he consumed an unspecified drug laced with fentanyl
After self-reflection, she admitted that she was “never addicted to drugs,” but rather used them to cope with the chaos in her life and the sadness she experienced; seen in January 2022
“I can’t blame anyone for my addiction. I can’t,” she said.
“I would like to,” she continued. “I think my ex-husband has a hand in it, I think my lifestyle has a hand in it.”
She added: ‘But ultimately it’s my responsibility to take something or not to take something. I’m very clear about that.’
In later episodes of Mob Wives, which ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2016, Renee opened up about her struggle with drug addiction.
She discussed her decision to be transparent on the show, noting that she did so for her sister, who created the reality series, and for the success of Mob Wives, and not for herself.
“My loyalty was never my first priority,” Renee said. “So if it meant knowing my sister was going to have a career, that was more important to me than anything.”
She added: ‘If I had been more true to myself, I wouldn’t have done what I did, I wouldn’t have said what I did, I wouldn’t have gotten as high as I do now, and I wouldn’t have attacked the people I verbally attacked.’
She stressed that their show was completely unplanned, as she tried to be herself and be very vulnerable – sometimes perhaps too vulnerable, she said – in front of the cameras.
She recalls feeling like drugs were the “solution” to the grief she experienced following her father’s death in 2019 and her divorce from ex-husband Hector Pagan Jr., among many other unspecified, devastating events in her life.
In later episodes of Mob Wives, which ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2016, Renee opened up about her struggle with drug addiction. She discussed her decision to be transparent on the show — noting that she did so for her sister, who created the reality series, and the success of Mob Wives rather than for herself; seen in March 2018
“Whatever I did, it really happened. I didn’t fake anything,” she said.
“I didn’t hide anything,” she admitted. “I should have.” [hidden] much more.’;
The Mob Wives star opens up about her addiction almost exactly a year after her near-fatal fentanyl overdose.
She says she faced a difficult and life-changing recovery process after the terrifying incident, which occurred after she ingested an unspecified drug laced with fentanyl.
In a March 5 teaser for an upcoming episode of Bunnie Xo’s Dumb blonde podcast she explained that after the incident she had to learn to walk again and eventually decided to go to rehab.
“I overdosed,” she recalled. “I just lost my whole life. I couldn’t come up and breathe.”
In a teaser for an upcoming episode of Bunnie Xo’s podcast Dumb Blonde, she explained that after the incident, she said she had to learn to walk again and ultimately decided to go to rehab.
She said her sister Jennifer Graziano “didn’t speak to me for a year and a half” at the time and that her son AJ Pagan, 29, also “didn’t want to talk to her.”
“Everything in my life fell apart,” she said. “No one would talk to me. Everything started piling up and piling up and piling up and piling up. I gave up.”
“I just lost my shit, man,” she confessed. “Someone gave me a bag of fentanyl.”
She previously told her manager Chris Giovanni that she had overdosed on drugs in response to a “bad batch” she had bought from a drug dealer.
She said the next thing she knew she was “dying in a restaurant in Florida.”
“I was dead and on a ventilator for three days,” she continued, before adding that she “spent nine days there learning to walk again.”
“That was it for me,” she said of her motivation to go to rehab. “They said I wouldn’t make it.”
Graziano said that during that time she “can’t remember anything because those three days were erased from my memory.” According to her, “no one from my family came to the hospital.”
She said the next thing she knew she was “dying in a restaurant in Florida.” “I was dead, intubated for three days,” she continued, before adding that she “spent nine days there learning how to walk again”; seen in March 2017
Graziano, who said she “can’t remember anything” at the time, because the three days were erased from my memory, said “no one from my family came to the hospital”; seen in May 2018
She said they just “didn’t want to” see her and they “just couldn’t.”
Despite this, she said she understood her loved ones’ reasoning and “didn’t blame them” for putting her family “through hell” in the period leading up to her near-fatal overdose.
She was subsequently admitted to a rehabilitation center and later transferred to Lamar Odom Wellness Center in Southern California for trauma therapy.
Her publicist told TMZ in December that Odom had reached out to Graziano via Instagram when he learned she had been admitted to a Texas facility and offered to help him in any way he could with her recovery.
