Mob Wives star Renee Graziano discussed her battle with drug abuse after her near-fatal fentanyl overdose nearly one year ago.
The reality TV personality, 56, opened up about ‘self-medicating’ for years, which she said ‘kept her alive’ while she was struggling with grief of losing her father as well as the end of her marriage.
This comes almost half a year after she opened up about her near-fatal overdose back in September 2023 and revealed she had to learn how to walk again during her recovery.
After that harrowing incident, the Celebrity Big Brother star — who is also known as the daughter of Anthony Graziano, a former consigliere of the Bonanno crime family — said she decided to check into rehab, get clean and recently celebrated nine months of sobriety.
‘Addiction is a dark world,’ she told Page Six’s Virtual Reali-Tea in an article published on Friday.
Mob Wives star Renee Graziano discussed her battle with drug abuse after her near-fatal fentanyl overdose nearly one year ago; seen in 2017
And after self-reflecting, she admitted that she ‘was never addicted to drugs’ but rather used them to cope with the chaos in her life and the grief she was experiencing.
‘I was addicted to power, I was addicted to men, I was addicted to my world, my lifestyle. Drugs were my comfort. That was what kept me [going],’ she explained.
She recalled feeling like drugs were the ‘solution’ to the grief 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 think sometimes that self-medicating kept me alive,’ she admitted.
‘Because I think if I would have really had to live through it without medicating, 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 for the chat and chimed in about how she and the rest of their family watched her struggle with drug abuse for many years.
‘It’s been that way our whole lives,’ she said. ‘I was almost immune to it at that point and numb to it.’
Renee then emphasized that her addiction was wholly 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 self-reflecting, she admitted that she ‘was never addicted to drugs’ but rather used them to cope with the chaos in her life and the grief she was experiencing; seen in January 2022
‘I can’t blame anyone for my addiction. I can’t,’ she said.
‘I’d 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 is my responsibility to take or not to take something. I’m very clear on that part.’
In the later installments of Mob Wives, which ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2016, Renee was open about her battle 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 herself.
‘My loyalty was never to me first,’ Renee said. ‘So if it meant knowing my sister was going to advance in her career, that was more important to me than anything else.’
She added: ‘If I would have been more loyal to myself, I wouldn’t have done the things that I did, I wouldn’t have said the things that I did, I wouldn’t have gotten high the way I did, I wouldn’t have attacked the people I attacked verbally.’
She stressed that their show was completely unscripted as she tried to be herself and was very vulnerable — perhaps sometimes too vulnerable, she said — in front of the cameras.
She recalled feeling like drugs were the ‘solution’ to the grief 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 later installments of Mob Wives, which ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2016, Renee was open about her battle 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 herself; seen in March 2018
‘Whatever I did was really happening. I didn’t fake anything,’ she said.
‘I didn’t hide anything,’ she admitted. ‘I should have [hidden] a lot more.’;
The Mob Wives star opening up about her addiction comes almost exactly a year after her near-fatal fentanyl overdose.
Following the terrifying incident, which occurred after she took 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 teaser for 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 ultimately decided to go to rehab.
‘I OD’d,’ she recalled. ‘I just lost my whole life. I couldn’t come up for air.’
In a teaser for 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 ultimately decided to go to rehab
She noted that at the time her sister Jennifer Graziano ‘wasn’t talking 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 just started piling up and piling up and piling up and piling up. I gave up.’
‘I just, like, lost my s***, man,’ she admitted. ‘Someone gave me a bag of fentanyl.’
She previously told her manager Chris Giovanni that she suffered a drug overdose in reaction to a ‘bad batch’ she purchased from a drug dealer.
She said that the next thing she knew was that 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 how to walk again’.
‘That was it for me,’ she said about what motivated her to go to rehab. ‘They said I wasn’t going to make it.’
During that time, Graziano — who said she does not ‘remember anything as the ‘three days were wiped from my brain’ — said ‘no one in my family came to the hospital’.
She said that the next thing she knew was that 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 how to walk again’; seen in March 2017
During that time, Graziano — who said she does not ‘remember anything as the ‘three days were wiped from my brain’ — said ‘no one in my family came to the hospital’; seen in May 2018
She said they simply ‘didn’t want to’ see her and ‘they just couldn’t do it’.
Despite that, however, she said she understood her loved ones’ reasoning and ‘doesn’t blame them’ as she put her family ‘through hell’ in the time leading up to her near-fatal overdose.
Afterwards, she entered a rehab facility before later transferring to Lamar Odom’s Southern California wellness center for trauma therapy.
Her publicist told TMZ in December that Odom had reached out to Graziano on Instagram when he learned that she had entered a facility in Texas and offered his assistance in any way possible amid her recovery.
