Mob Wives star Renee Graziano has opened up about her battle with drug abuse following her near-fatal fentanyl overdose nearly a year ago.
The 56-year-old reality TV personality opened up about “self-medicating” for years, 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 he opened up about his near-fatal overdose in September 2023 and revealed that he had to learn to walk again during his recovery.
Following that heartbreaking incident, the Celebrity Big Brother star, also known as the daughter of Anthony Graziano, a former consigliere to the Bonanno crime family, said she decided to enter rehab, detox and recently celebrated nine months of sobriety.
“Addiction is a dark world,” he said. Page six‘s Virtual Reali-Tea in an article published on Friday.
Mob Wives star Renee Graziano has opened up about her battle with drug abuse following her near-fatal fentanyl overdose nearly a year ago; seen in 2017
And after reflecting on herself, she admitted that she was “never addicted to drugs” but rather used them to deal with the chaos in her life and the pain she was experiencing.
“I was addicted to power, to men, to my world, to my lifestyle. Drugs were my solace. That was what kept me going,” she explained.
She recalled feeling like drugs were the “solution” to the pain she experienced after her father passed away in 2019 and her divorce from ex-husband Hector Pagan Jr., among many other unspecified devastating incidents in her life.
“In some strange way, I sometimes think self-medication kept me alive,” she admitted.
“Because I think if I really had to live without medication, I might not have made it,” she continued. “That’s the truth, and I don’t even like to talk that way.”
Renee’s sister, Jennifer Graziano, also joined the conversation and discussed how she and the rest of her family watched her struggle with drug abuse for many years.
“It’s been like that my whole life,” she said. “At the time I was almost immune to it and I wasn’t comfortable with it.”
Renee later stressed that her addiction was entirely her own “responsibility.”
The 55-year-old reality TV personality recalled the harrowing incident in September 2023 after consuming an unspecified drug laced with fentanyl.
After some self-reflection, she admitted that she was “never addicted to drugs” but instead used them to deal with the chaos in her life and the pain she was experiencing; seen in January 2022
“I can’t blame anyone for my addiction. I can’t,” he said.
“I would like to,” she continued. “I think my ex-husband has something to do with it, I think my lifestyle has something to do with it.”
She added: “But ultimately it is my responsibility to take or not take something. I am very clear about that.”
In the final episodes of Mob Wives, which ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2016, Renee spoke openly about her battle with drug addiction.
She spoke out about her decision to be transparent on the show, saying she did it for her sister, who created the reality show, and the success of Mob Wives, and not for herself.
“My loyalty was never to myself first and foremost,” Renee said. “So if it meant knowing that my sister was going to advance in her career, that was more important to me than anything else.”
She added: “If I had been more loyal to myself, I wouldn’t have done the things I did, I wouldn’t have said the things I said, I wouldn’t have taken drugs like I did, I wouldn’t have verbally attacked the people I attacked.”
She stressed that her show was unscripted and that she tried to be herself and was very vulnerable (maybe sometimes too vulnerable, she said) in front of the cameras.
She recalled feeling like drugs were the “solution” to the pain she experienced after her father passed away in 2019 and her divorce from ex-husband Hector Pagan Jr., among many other unspecified devastating incidents in her life.
In the final installments of Mob Wives, which aired for six seasons between 2011 and 2016, Renee spoke openly 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 show, and for the success of Mob Wives, and not for herself; seen in March 2018
“Everything I did really happened. I didn’t pretend anything,” he said.
“I have not hidden anything,” he admitted. “I should have hidden much more.”
The Mob Wives star is opening up about her addiction almost exactly a year after her near-fatal fentanyl overdose.
Following the terrifying incident, which occurred after taking an unspecified drug laced with fentanyl, she said she had to go through a very difficult and life-changing recovery process.
In a March 5 preview for an upcoming episode of Bunnie Xo Dumb blonde In a podcast, he explained that after the incident, he said he had to learn to walk again and eventually decided to go to rehab.
“I overdosed,” she recalls. “I lost my whole life. I couldn’t even breathe.”
In a sneak peek of an upcoming episode of Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast, she explained that after the incident, she said she had to learn how to walk again and eventually decided to go to rehab.
She said that at that time her sister Jennifer Graziano “hadn’t spoken to me for a year and a half” and her son AJ Pagan, 29, “didn’t want to talk” to her either.
“Everything in my life was falling apart,” she said. “Nobody wanted to talk to me. Everything started to build up and build up and build up and build up. I gave up.”
“I went crazy, man,” she admitted. “Someone gave me a bag of fentanyl.”
He previously told his manager Chris Giovanni that he suffered a drug overdose in reaction to a “bad batch” he purchased from a drug dealer.
She said the next thing she knew, “he died in a restaurant in Florida.”
“I was dead, intubated for three days,” she continued before adding that “I spent nine days there learning to walk again.”
“That was it for me,” she said of what motivated her to go to rehab. “They said I wasn’t going to make it.”
During that time, Graziano — who said he doesn’t “remember anything because the three days were erased from my brain” — said “no one from my family came to the hospital.”
She said the next thing she knew, she “died in a restaurant in Florida.” “I was dead, intubated for three days,” she continued before adding that she “spent nine days there learning to walk again”; seen in March 2017
During that time, Graziano, who said he doesn’t “remember anything because the three days were erased from my brain,” 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 “just couldn’t do it.”
Despite that, however, he said he understood his loved ones’ reasoning and “doesn’t blame them” for putting his family “through hell” in the time leading up to his near-fatal overdose.
She later entered a rehabilitation facility before being transferred to Lamar Odom’s wellness center in Southern California for trauma therapy.
Her publicist told TMZ in December that Odom had reached out to Graziano on Instagram when he learned she had entered a facility in Texas and offered to help her in any way possible during her recovery.