June 19, 2025 • 50 mins
If you think you know Renee Graziano, you don’t.
We look back at Bethenny's deep conversation with reality TV star and daughter to the former consigliere of the Bonanno crime family. Renee opens up to Bethenny in a way she never has before.
Find out about the intimate details of her near death experience, what she kept private in fear for her Ex husband’s life and the tailspin caused by the loss of her father. Plus, so much more you have to hear to believe!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Nice to meet you, Nice to meet me. I feel
like I know you?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
How many times have I been on your TV show?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's what I was thinking this morning. This is so crazy.
I was walking This is the honest truth. I was
walking downstairs and I'm like, why do I feel like
I know her? I feel like we've been together? And
then I said to myself, I had this thought. I said,
was she on my talk show? And then like, now
I'm going to say that today I had this like
foreshadowing about this happening. You are on the show. What
(00:39):
do we do for three times?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I literally my book mob wife and me and FIG's okay,
this is funny too, because they printed out papers for
you today, and I was like, there's a lot more
in my head I knew.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I was like, she created the show. And I said
to myself, why do I know that? I'm like, she's
different than the others. Not to be no, I am,
you know, disrespectful. I was like, because she created the show.
But I said to myself, why do I know that?
And it's really weird my memory lately, and that please
no disrespect because I would never lie and pretend that
like I remember I remember everything, but I don't like
remember remember does that make any sense?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Like, yeah, it's cold, we're getting a little bit more mature.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well no, yes, and the pots this thing that i've
had is autoimmune. Like they say that there's like this
like since the vaccine in the pandemic, there's a memory thing.
But like I literally knew all these things about you.
And I said, why do I know that? I thought
I saw it on another show. I swear to god,
I thought I heard it, but I don't watch him.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And yeah, my sister Jennifer created the show.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Oh okay, I thought you created the show.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Okay, the star And it's no disrespect, but I really
don't care about the other women anymore.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
No, but we had this conversation. But you're saying it
was on my talk show.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
We I was on, Yeah, I have pictures of us.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
It's actually on my Instagram of me and you holding
my book playing with fire, and then I was on
with Alicia and Natalie, and then me and Benny Guarino
made meat balls for my cookbook as well.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You have a you have a ridiculous memory because I
was going through the worst divorce and that was like
all a blur and I've had this, you know, not
the first time this has happened. I literally don't remember
a lot. So anyway, anyway, I know you, but like
I've never seen you socially outside of the show. Have
I ever seen you at a party? Because I feel
like I know you.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
We've been at like maybe one or two, like okay,
magazine parties like that, but it's always.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Quick stuff, you know, Okay, because I feel like I
don't know why I feel like I know you. It's
exactly And I wore something that I thought would be
mob wives appropriate. But yes, you are least well, the
least of you is mob wise and we've talked about
that before and and as you just mentioned, but I
know about that, and we talked about the show and
we could get into that. And but I called you
(02:57):
because of your story and the work you're doing and
being vocal about something that many people aren't vocal about
and that people have shame about. And I was reading
through the papers on you, and I was thinking of
Steve Madden telling me the addiction is your life, like
(03:18):
read my sobriety is my life. He said, like it's
before my kids, it's before my job, it's before my money,
before my company. Like that's a big statement. Nobody will
ever admit that something comes before their kids, you know.
And Steve Madden said that his sobriety comes before his kids.
And so when I just read a headline because I
didn't know this, I just like stopped my tracks, Like
(03:41):
what she was? She almost got she was dead of
a fence and all overdose. Like that's a massively like
jarring shocking headline to read.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
So with that being said, your recovery has to come
before everything.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
It's God.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And then so yeah, it actually and it isn't very embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
For me to tell it is or it's not.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
No, I how could somebody not be embarrassed of the
fact that they got a bag of fentanyl which was
supposed to be cocaine.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And I'm very honest about it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And then I have the text messages between the person
that was sent there and he said it in the message,
oh my god, because it wait.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
What does that mean? Well go back to that because
I know someone this happened to their kids. I'm gonna
tell you a story after But what are you saying now?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So when I was in Florida, I had text a
girlfriend of mine. I said, hey, handle this for me. Okay,
I vouch for the kid. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
The kids, you're saying. You said to her, get the stuff,
and she said, I know the guy. It's a good
which is so it doesn't matter because the guy has
a guy as a guy, right.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Right, But it normally does matter. So and okay, because
nobody usually makes a mistake like that.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So with that, but they're not in the ca kitchen.
How would they know if something coming from.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
That's what they do?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Oh, okay, they're living But okay, is.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
As I didn't speak to anybody for so it happened
when I was in a restaurant, and I don't I
don't have recollection of three days.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
But somebody was with me, so I know what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
They broke like in a bathroom, you're saying.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I guess so because I wasn't at the table for
that second.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I came back to the table, I made a phone call,
told my friend to send her friends. She sent her
friends when I had ohdeed in the restaurant, he had
text her and I have the messages because she sent
them to me afterwards.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So that's how I know what happened.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I gave her a bag of blank by accident.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I have the whole conversation.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Holy motherfuck, because I died right there in front.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Of them in the restaurant. Holy fuck table and my girlfriend,
who was a course from.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Me, Like, there's a bag of that that they mix
into other shit that they accidentally gave you. What the fuck?
But a whole bag would be You'd be dead instantly.
What I don't understand I was I'm touching it or
doing it.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I'm assuming I did it. Okay, okay, because I can't.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Tell you that nobody was in the bathroom with me,
but I know addiction and I know me.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So with that being said, I walked back.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
You had it, you went to go do it. The
fact that my brain I can't remember you and you're
remembering all of it is crazy. But okay, wow, okay.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Cable, and I keeled over and died, Oh my god,
that was it. And the girl in the restaurant broke
four ribs and fractured my sternum in two places, reviving me.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And and did they have narakan in the restaurant?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
No, she did it with her hands.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
That's insane.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I'm in ems gets there. They hit me with the
with the shot.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The conversation with the kid is, oh my god, Gina,
I sent this. I gave this to her by accident.
The cops are here, So the cops were there. Every
the kid gotten whatever trouble, not by me. I would
not press charges at all. I prefer to have his
hands broken. But that's me and my mob wife thinking
(07:30):
with that, they took me to the hospital and when
I was intribated, I went into cardiac arrest. So I
was already intribated and went into cardiac arrest. What mean
you're in a like a coma, So they put off
coma so they I don't actually know why they do that.
(07:52):
I'm assuming the OD was so severe. I wasn't there,
like I wasn't here, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Oh, meaning it's it's an induced they put you there.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Okay, yeah, so you're intubated.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And while I was interbated, I went into cardiac arrest
on top of it, which normally doesn't happen. From that,
I got pneumonia. And I had gotten that vaccine two
years ago, and I've had pneumonia twice since then.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And then they had to like give me a walker
and like I had to go up.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And down, like and how long ago was this?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
September eighteenth, six months ago?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Holy shit, how are you?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I'm amazing. I wasn't supposed to make it. They told
my family, she's not going to make it through the night.
And three days later I woke up and I was like,
get me.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Out of here.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And they were like, do you know what happened? And
I'm like, absolutely not what happened? And they broke it
down to me and I was like, no.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
That's impossible. I don't do those drugs.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
And the doctor was like, oh, no, you did. And
I go but I don't said no, one said you did.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
But it was mixed.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
And now I have a I know someone whose son
a person their son had a baby, right and the
wife babies a couple months old and for whatever, maybe
six months old, I think it was six months old.
And the two of them, my husband and the wife
were home with the baby and they guess they just
wanted to have a little fun and they ordered coke
to the to the house and they both dropped out
(09:26):
and the baby was alone crying for like twenty four hours.
They father they died. Oh I got the parents.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, Okay, so they oh deed with death? Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And I and I've had experience with this also with people,
and it's amazing that smart together people like you have
a different perspective on life. Like I don't have that
as much as you. But I had a severe anaphylactic
shock situation that I was unconscious and I was in
(10:02):
the I see, I see you for a couple of
days and it was brutal and like I could in
the background when I was coming to hear the doctors
freaking out about sixty over forty blood pressure and like,
why were there all these people? And frankly, I thought
it was because, like I don't know. I thought it
was because it was me, Like a lot of people
were like they got a couple of extra attention. I
didn't realize it was because I was dying in the hospital. So, like,
(10:25):
I know what that is, like not as much as
what you're talking about, but that's a that changes your
perspective on life. It changes you as a person, Like
it's it it escalates the I don't give a fuck,
but not in an angry way.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So let me say that I bo did before. This
isn't my first time when my father died in nineteen
I didn't, I couldn't. I didn't want to live. I
felt like my twin died. I felt this connection with
(11:00):
my father, way different than my sisters. He was like
my twin. We look alike, we act alike, we're giving alike.
We want to do everything for everybody else some and
we forget about ourselves. My father was a great man.
I don't care what anybody has to say. He was
a great man. He rescued a family out of a
burning building, He saved a girl drowning. In prospect part,
(11:24):
my father was really a good man. He paid for
my best friend's mother's funeral because she had no money.
So in spite of what he did for a living,
he was a good man. Which I'm very much like
my dad.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But he's saying two things can be true at the
same time. Absolutely, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So I mean, look at Steve Madden. Ye pay with
my father. He's a good man, right, he got sober,
you know, and he's a strong individual. So yeah, you
could be a bad dying a good guy. At the
same time. People make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
You know, you don't know who you are.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You start out at life, you know what I mean.
It takes years to get where you're going, and for me,
it took a lot more than the average person because
I had low self esteem from a child.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So I was born very ill, wasn't supposed to live.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
They drew spinal fluid at least five or six times
for the first six month of my birth. So what
we're learning now is that spinal fluid that was drained
for me probably screwed up my psyche. And you know
then it was I grew up in the mob with
a boss as a father. People were dying left and right.
(12:37):
Who's going to jail? I played it up like, oh,
we have another funeral. Oh I'm gonna wear this black
dress with that per pot. That's not normal, That's not
what I know.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I grew up at the racetrack with a lot of ties,
and I grew up going and sitting at the crabs
table at thirteen years old for weeks in Vegas and
growing to nightclubs at the Rafters in Saratoga and fourteen
like I get it, I really know it.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Campaign and cocaine. That's the way I grew up. I
grew up in the heyday good Fellain.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
No and No money than all the money, all the
cars in the driveway, then no money next week ever
you're in the Yeah. My stepfather, John Paracel used to
come in and tell me the bookies after him, and
I would and I broke open my piggy bank literally
to give him catch. Like. But we had Mercedes in
the driveway and a card table, literally no furniture, but
a Jaguar and a Mercedes in the driveway, and then
that got taken away. I get it. It's like ridiculous.
(13:30):
He was very connected. Joe Scandor, he was his uncle,
and Jimmy Kam was sleeping on his couch and they
were doing drug. Yeah, uncle James. Okay, so my stepfather
and Jimmy Kahn were like boys and doing blow together.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
How my father and my uncle because that was like the.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Click Ponti's yeah, John PEPs.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Well, my uncle owns Splash in California, which was the
first nightclub in Malibo. And oh, my other uncle owned Frankie's.
Does Frankie's on Melroads. My uncle was Frank Martin, the
horse trainer, Like so I know, I.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Know Frank Martin. Yeah, he had my aunt Crew, the
father and the son Frank Martin and then and Jose Martin.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Okay, but the other son, Frank Martin, who he just
disrepem he died.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Oh wow. Okay, so we know a lot of the
same people because a lot of people don't know this
part of my life. And it affects my relationships too,
because in relationships with normal people, it's hard. When you
grew up like you know, on a wild car chase,
it's very difficult. You're an action junkie. So you were
(14:42):
a junkie junkie. Without using a bad word, I'm just saying, like, so,
let's get into that, all right. So you grew up
and you were sick and your father died and like so,
so you had a proclivity to highs and lows.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
All right, let's pull that. I was a mob junkie.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Okay. I hate that word more than right in the world.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I say action junkie, but it's a bad word. It's
a junkie word. It's a junk word. I get it.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Well, I'm actually trying to change the perspective behind it,
because a doctor could be one, a lawyer could be one.
The lawyer that you're calling the bail you out could
be and do the No.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Of course, it's a stigma, and I agree with you.
I was saying action Junker, but I yeah, I agree.
I agree because there's a shame there that you want
to do stigmatize.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And you know, a shout out to Richard Tate from
the Carrera Treatment Center in Malibu. I just took a
job with him and now, yeah, he started Cliffside Malibu,
so I took a job with him yesterday.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
You know, I got crying.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Podcasts helping people, so I'm going to have to interview you, yes,
And it's just a way for me to give back.
And I didn't realize when I did my interview with
Bunny that it was going to blow up. But it's
been viral for the last five days. Every time she
drops a clip, it goes viralally. Cardi b video she
(16:07):
posted it viral. It's like all of a sudden, God said, Okay,
I got my hands on you this time, but you're
gonna be out there in the public, so do what
you need to do to save a life. Just know
people are gonna hate you, people are gonna love you,
but at the end of the day, my prerogative is
to save somebody because somebody saved me.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
You have purpose, You have purpose? How there's so much
to go through? So lamar Odom and Jason Waller from
(16:48):
the Hills, that's interesting too, using your reality television career
and fame and connections to these other people who have
gone through a similar horrendous experience.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
So Jason helped me out. And I had had plastic surgery,
so I had to go back on paying meds and
that was that was two years ago. That wasn't acceptable.
But Jason and Janah Woodbury did everything for me this
time around. It was November two and I was sitting
(17:22):
in a hotel. I had a friend who I was
fighting with my whole family.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
So she's like, after you got after you almost died,
you're talking about it a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, October, Tom, move here with me. Nobody in my
family wanted to be bothered with me. So whatever money
I had had went into a trust for my BRANDK
and so I had no access to money.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So who are you did that? You intervened in your
own life and did that.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
It handles everything.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
You've given power of finance that a way had.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Power of attorney.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I trust my sister with my whole life, so whatever,
and it wasn't much, Bethany, because all the those years
on television, I gave everything away.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Here take this, here, take I left nothing for myself.
I didn't even buy a house.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Why I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Maybe I felt like the money wasn't gonna run out.
They were also paying for all of my housing, so
you know, why am I going to spend more money?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
But I was paying who the show is paying for housing? Yes,
oh that was a good show.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Well, my sister is the executive producer. My father threw
me out.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
My father didn't talk to me for two years. I
had nowhere to go. What was I gonna do? And
here I am giving them a bigger story than anybody,
aside from Karen Gravano because her story was extremely huge.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I love Karen. You know, I talked to everybody, but
Drita put it that way. Everybody.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
But anyway, Drida did an interview and said, now that Renee,
well my wife was just coming back. Now that Renee's
father is dead, who is she gonna be? Don't play
with me and don't ever talk about my father in
any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So there is no respect for that girl whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
She's called me a junkie more times than necessary, no
respect none.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
More times than necessary is an interesting way to phrase
something like you're saying you gave grace to like your mistakes,
but there's more times thannecessary.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
All the stuff you would do in the cloud did so.
Now you want to air me out?
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Okay, so you want to you want me to hide
your truths, Well you tell me you hide your truths
while you speak. I'm sorry you want to speak my
truths and I hide your lives. Not acceptable anymore in
my life. Not acceptable. If you burn me, be prepared
not to be able to walk across that bridge because
(19:47):
you burnt it.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
But what it feels like, you're still you're not being
paid for the show. Now you're still living that story
in the show. Who cares about anybody that you like to?
Haven't you? I don't get paid for that, That's what
I'm saying. But I'm feeling like you're in the conflict.
Like the way that I feel about women on the
show that I used to be is like, go be happy,
be successful, Like everybody has a reason for why they
are the way they are, and who care? What do
(20:09):
you care? About what anyone else is doing.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So it keeps coming up. People just keep dragging me
and dragging me.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And but the more you talk, yeah, I get it,
but just like what.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It's not all the women.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Most of the women still call me and you know,
they send love. I just feel like, why are you mad?
My sister put us all in this position to earn
a tremendous.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Amount of money. Why are you mad? What did I do? Actually?
I hit it with your lives? So what did I
actually do? Oh? I told you the truth about yourself? Sorry,
do you.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Have any interet Where do you live? Where do you live?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I just moved to California, So back to Because in
all honesty, let me say this, there is a bitter
feeling there. But she's not supposed to hold weight in
my life. But it's very hurtful. So this isn't about her.
It's about the hurt it's about them.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's funny because my therapist says, and it's really interesting
you're dealing If you're dealing with something, you'll describe the
situation like you just describe the situation. But she'll say,
you know, but like, let's live in the feelings, like
really like and when you. I think if you live
in the feelings, you might not that you wanted to
reach out. Maybe she'll reach out and stop or say
I'm sorry, Like if you live in the feelings that
(21:23):
you feel vulnerable in hurt versus like the story of
what's going on, like.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
It is never ever allowed back in my life. She
never showed up from my father's funeral. You'll cut off.
That's the That's it for me. But any okay, I'm
moving on.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I wish I do, wish her help and wealth, but
I don't like her. Plain and simple.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So November two and I was sitting I had just
had a fight with my friend in Texas. She told
my son, please have all your mother's stuff picked up.
I called my son. I said, agam done. I can't
it anymore. I can't fight. I'm tired. I said, I'm
not going to kill myself. I'm Catholic. You know, that's
(22:05):
the biggest in in the world. So he's getting high though,
f y he and I said, in case I never
seen you again, I want you to know how much
I love you. He said, MA, sit right there. My
son got on the phone with my dear friend twenty nine.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Okay, twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
With four kids.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
He had twin girls the last and they turned one yesterday,
so he made the phone poll pulled me back. My
friend Bill O'Hara got me into recovery unplugged in Texas.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I went in the next day.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
My girlfriend got mad at me that I didn't help
her get her things all done and out and robbed
everything I owned everything back, every pair of shoes, every pocketbook.
I swear this on my four grandchildren's eyes, every single
thing I owned. Everything my father left me.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Because I was going to say, maybe this is some
sign of starting. Oh okay, Oh the.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Clothes got me sober.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I know that sounds crazy, but trust me, I couldn't
go out no more so. But she robbed my father's
tie collection, and that was very important to me. That
was like wow in him and I my hand blessed
rosaries from the Pope, my father met two different popes,
my bible from my grandmother, everything that meant something to me.
(23:29):
Oh child, yeah, very evil individual. My son was like,
all right, I'm gonna have it picked up on Friday.
She goes stop rising me. She has a crazy bitch
and played in English fucking crazy. She's my mouth crazy.
I walked into Detox with my Minx slippers, a sweatshirt
(23:50):
and sweatpants and that was all I had. Oh and
I just when she threw my pocketbook out the front door.
I went to grab it and it happened to be
my Gucci bag with my adult chain Gavana beg in it.
Don't ask me one, but she stole every pair of
eyeglasses I glass.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
What how did you afford rehab?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Did?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
So?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
I'm getting Lamarrow phone call and he said, hey, please
come to my treatment center.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I want to help you.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
So Gina Rodriguez, who's his pr is a dear friend
of mine. Lamar took care of everything. I walked into
Vanity Wellness in California, and four months later, I'm sober
a f I'm happy. I can't understand that thought yet.
That's a little scary happy scary to me. I thrive
(24:43):
in chaos. I come from chaos. So you know, when
they say drama queen, I'm like Max all the way up.
But that's it wasn't drama to me. It was my
everyday life. And that's where I get a little frustrated.
People like you're a drama queen.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I'm not. I'm just a queen who lived in a
life of drama. Big difference.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And you've been an addict your whole life, how much
of your life?
Speaker 3 (25:10):
So yeah, when I was younger, I partied, you know,
I partied. But when I was my ex husband shouted
my sacrum and he.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Put his elbow through it.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, he broke my pain pills phone, he broke.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
My rib like, but I would not tell on him
because I was worried that he would be murdered. And
for me, that was my sin then, so I never
and then pain meds started thirty six. Oh, I owed
deed for the first time on July feof in two
thousand and seven, and three out. My mother didn't want
(25:54):
to admit I was an addict, so she put me
in a seventy two hour holdover where I was sexual
assaulted by a predator. And that really is what changed
me forever. I spent my thirty seventh birthday in the
mental wood for three weeks because I lost my line
(26:14):
after I was attacked. And I have a police report
that blacks that up with a man admitted it.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So you've been like medicating to forget since then. And
then you got down a hole.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, so medicated Zanex God, friend, I didn't want cokain
and I wanted Xani.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Where were you getting it?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
All?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
The doctors made me It was the doctors.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
No, I know that, but how because I've seen all
the movies and I'm fascinated by topic because i have
experience with it personally, Uh not me, but one person apart?
And did you I did? Did you end up driving
to other states and go like no?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I was prescribed?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
True story two Oxy eighties, six rock scenes, eight milligrams
of xanax, diet pills, water pills, antidepressants, mood stabilizers. This
is by the doctor's hand.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
That is why is there any part of the addiction
and the pills and all of it. That's not just
only the chemical aspect, but like the process, like it's
like a friend, it's like something to do. It's an activity,
like let's get this, let's get that, let's organize it,
because no one talks about that, and I think that's
part of it too.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Right, So I was not an everyday user. Zan x
became my life for a year straight, That's true. I
kickation in twenty ten. Cocaine always played a part of
my life always, but not.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It's like when I was done, it was over. I
didn't get more. It wasn't like that. I party definitely.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Going out Saturday night. You're getting a bag with friends,
and it's fun. We're going out. It's like getting a
bunch of drinks.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
But the zon X took over my life really is
that I got arrested.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Nobody knows that I what ovid. I had to go
to jail for eight days. I was devastated.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
You were like, no one's gonna notice because everyone's in
their home.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
I had twenty three hour lock up. It was supposed
to be for a twenty twenty four hour thing. When
I was being released, I had made a phone call.
I wasn't allowed to pull this person. It was like
a restraining order because the person was antagonizing.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Me to a fall. I'm like, hey, I need my
lawyer's number.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Needless to say, that person was related to me, and
so I made the phone call. And when I was
being released, they were like, did you call so and So?
I go, yeah, I needed my lawyers now, But they go,
you just violated the temporary restraining order. I was like,
oh no, no, no, I did not that doesn't count,
and they were like, get it done. So eight day
(28:49):
they kept me bare. I was devastated.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
At a jail.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
It was dirty. It was cony.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It sounds like it's jail, so its dirty.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, it was mom at count Holy shit. I was like,
can I have a pillow? They were like no, I said,
my sheet has a hole? So what Can I donate
mattresses to the women's prison? Absolutely not, So I'm sleeping
with the matts.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
It's taking it. That's funny going you go into the mattresses.
You went to the mattresses.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
You went to the mattresses. That's a that's crazy. What
about your family not coming to the hospital because they
thought you were dead or because they wrote you off
and you were dead to them?
Speaker 3 (29:34):
They well, they both they weren't going to make it
in time because of the timing, and they said it
you know, by the time they got there, it wouldn't
have happened. But they did write me off. So my
sister Jennifer stopped talking to me for a year and
a half and that was my closest relationship. My mother
and I were constantly fighting. My oldest sister and I
have always bought. So there's a lot of there's a
(29:56):
lot of dysfunction in my family. My little and I
shared a bedroom. We were very close. I was my
father daddy. I'm fit, daddy's favorite kid. I'm the most entitled,
I'm all of that. And then life just got hotter.
I was bullied in grammar school, terribly bullied. I was
told how ugly I was on an everyday basis, so
(30:19):
I took that on that became me. I was ugly
no matter what you said to me. I was ugly.
I felt it in my heart and soul. And you know,
I wasn't allowed to wear contacts until freshman year or
a high school. My mother gave me the worst haircuts
in the world. You know all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
But I were a disaster.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I was physically developed, and I was never ugly FYI
never I know that now, But.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I was physically developed.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
So all the boys liked me, and the two girls
that bullied me, they would invite me to boy girl
parties and send me.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Home because the boys liked me. But there was.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Something wrong with me all of my life. My first boyfriend,
I was like turning fifteen. He was physically abusive and
That's how it started. He ended up my father. I
came home with a black guy and he said, Renne,
what happened.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
To your face?
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I said, oh, I walked into the door. My father goes,
sit down before you walk into the door again. And
I sat there and he goes, what happened? And I
told him. My father made a phone book two phone goals.
One was to the boyfriend's ex boyfriend's father and the
other one was to four guys.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
My father said, get in the car. I said, okay,
and don't talk. Swear to God.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
True story in the Lincoln Townclock. We get to our
family restaurant. My father goes, go in the restaurant and
don't go by the window.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
So what does that mean to you? What is it?
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I could go by the window, thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I watched him have his arm broken.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
And it was that day that I never ever would
tell on another person again because I felt that was
my fault.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
But it was so Now add.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
This all insecurity, abuse, dysfunction in the household.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Action, highs and lows.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Murder, my father's in jail, all this stuff. I meet
my ex husband when I'm very young. I was twenty,
got engaged a month and nineteen days after I met him,
my ex my father did not want me to marry him.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
He was not Italian. Somebody spoke on his behalf.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
That person too became a snitch, so we should have
never trusted him. And my ex husband started with the abuse,
knocking the shit out of me.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
My father was it'd be weird to go knock the
shit out of a mob boss's daughter.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
But he also knew I wasn't telling.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Still fucked up it is? And what is your relationship
with your family now? Besides your sister? Like, are you
mending my senses? Do they trust you?
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Everybody?
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Since I checked in on November three last year, I
have spoken to my son every single day, at least
two times a day, at least two times a day.
I just flew my grandkids out to California. We went
to Disney and Universal. My daughter in law and I
have had like the relationship.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
We're on the phone. Got the bing like, oh yay,
everyone in my family.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
That's you really meant you really did? You did the work?
Friend that every one of your friends that are my
real friends. Yeah, yeah, I know, Rene, We're proud of you.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
I can't believe. And what has happened in four months.
I can't even tell you, Like.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
The job that I just got, getting paid, the amount
of money I just got, It's like, oh wait a second,
I don't got to sell my soul anymore.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
You have like a real job, and it's not like
bullshit entertainment. We have to have the high schlegs. You're
like a legitimate, like grown up job.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
I you know, I spoke with Vivoca Fox, Justina Valentine
Havoc from Mob Deep. All these people are like I
asked them, you know, can I innovate view you? Jason
from the Dallas Jason Hatchet from the Dallas cab with
It's like an A list celebrity lineup, amazing Bunny roll.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Whatever, whatever you need, we got. You don't pay for anything.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
What's fascinating is because I hear this with other people.
You hit the bottom, but it wasn't really the bottom.
When you went, when you almost died, you went back
and used again like you didn't go. You didn't go
to rehab, like what the fuck? Like people would be like,
what the fuck about that?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I didn't go For a month, I didn't go, so
what was that much? I was really battling with the devil,
Like I kid you not. I feel like he, literally,
the grim reaper king.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Was holding you there with the battle.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Every day I get up and and that.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Next six weeks, I definitely use like I would say
maybe five or six times.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Absolutely absolutely, But.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I was interested that at no.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
I went back to the pill from the pharmacy. Let
me take that pill. I know where it's coming from.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
But because you're you're justifying in your mind, that doesn't
count because it came from a doctor. Like it's different
than yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I wanted to die. You know.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
I touched on this a little bit when my father
passed away in nineteen. I went to a hospital and
they said, okay, you know what, you're a candidate for
shock treatment. You have major depressive disorder. We're gonna do
six sessions. You're not going to be sad anymore. If
someone would have told me you're gonna get hit on
your head with a block of cement and you're not
(35:44):
going to be sad anymore, I would have said, drop five,
drop five. So I did six sessions and it destroyed me.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It's uh, the opposite direction.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Oh yeah, that's where my addiction then became. Like I
stopped sleeping completely. Everything was magnified, magnified. My body's in
physical pain all the time from like the surgeries I've
had over the years. So now I suffer like with
physical pain. But I put on a light a gain
(36:16):
patch five percent light gain.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I don't take any medication to that.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
I take prozac, which they're giving to every woman now
in menopause.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
And you don't drink, No, I never liked alcohol, So yeah,
you're in a world now where I know you didn't
like alcohol. But people, so many people are sober curious,
So many people are just walking around sober now, and
so I think it's an interesting time. I mean, I
have a mocktail brand literally because I wanted to speak
to this space. But it's very prevalent. And are you worried?
(36:52):
Do you crave? Do you think about it? Are you
worried about going out and being social and being normal
and not hanging out with other addicts going through what
you're going through? Hang out with people that are partying?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Okay, So my core group of friends, they drink, they
don't get high, never did, nobody does.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And you don't want to drink, so you don't care.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah, I lost someone who I considered a brother to
suicide in October, and that's where the change came. Like
I couldn't believe I lost this person in my life.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
That was like my brother.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
He was the savior and he committed suicide and it
devastated me.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And that was my choice to get right.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
And since then, when I tell you Beten, he it's
just I don't know what the feeling is. I can't
even explain it to you. It's this feeling of, oh
my god, I'm happy.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
What do I do with happy? That's what scares me.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
I get it. I get it.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Why does this guy want to take me out on
a date? Oh no, oh no, you know what I mean.
Like so there's like this siren that goes off, which
I have to attention to that siren because for me,
that's like danger. Danger, and danger to me means self medicaid.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
You know what a great therapist and life coach you have?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Great?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Because I have the great person out in La not
touchy feeling, not freud, but like okay, full on. He's amazing.
You should have him on you. He's amazing. He's like
intervene in your own life. He's very he's amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I'll give you his information. Yeah, I mean, I also
have an incredible I've been with the same. I have
an incredible therapist. But the life coach guy is in
lak and he's had the craziest life too, of like
money and addiction and wealthy parents and dated all these
famous models and like he changed his whole life years ago.
But he's a major. He's a major guy. You would
like him. He's not bullshit either.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I became a life coach and twenty myself, and I
can coach somebody else's life.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Just not no, but not yeah, I get it. Yeah,
when you're sometimes people feel uncomfortable. For me, it's not
being happy, it's it's normalcy. And peace feels weird, just
like level and normalcy and not the eyes and the
low sometimes feel weird. Just like you just feel like good.
You just feel okay. You wake up okay, you feel settled.
You don't feel mercurial, you don't feel erradic, you just
(39:09):
feel like a human being.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
I wake up every day and I'm like, okay, the
sun is shining, even when it's raining, the sun is shining.
It's the conversations between my son and I that are
really everything to me.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It's everything.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
My sister Jennifer just signed back on from management with
my other manager, Chris, Like it's just incredible that four
months and it turned around like it never happened. However,
it did happen, and I have to remind myself every
day that that did happen.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Right, you could be on the high of the sobriety
right now, Like that's a different high, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
I'm not on that pink cloud because I do cry still,
So I'm not on no.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I do miss my father.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
I did a ketymine treatment and I don't know if
you know who Zappi is.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Do you know that name?
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Okay, oh lamar Odom And this gentleman Zappie bought like
fifty acres in Malibo and they do these ketamine treatments
so ten years ago and you do it with a doctor,
you know you process. So for me, I had to
figure out how am I gonna let go of my father.
(40:23):
Stop saying I want to be with my father. I
have full grandkids. That's the most selfish statement in the world.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And I gotta live. I have to live.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Big Ann's died and She used to always say, We're
out here for a long time, for a good time,
And it's been playing over every day in my life.
Every day I hear that and I'm like, Okay, what
am I gonna do today? Today, I'm gonna go to
the beach, I'm gonna sit by the ways. And it's
changed me. I just I want to help somebody, like
I want people to understand you do have a purpose.
(40:55):
I spoke at and I had like ten minutes to
give this speech, and I was like, what am I
going to say? And I said, basically, Uh, if the
disease of addiction would have told me that I was
going to rob my son of thirteen years of his life,
I would have fought harder.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
If the disease of addiction would.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Have told me that I'd marry my abuser, I would
have thought harder. If the disease of addiction would have
told me that I was going to cause pain and
suffering to the ones that loved me and anyone who
entered my life, I would.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Have fought harder.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
It goes on for like three more and then at
the end, I said, matter of fact, the disease of
addiction did tell me, but I was too high to
hear it.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
M wow and wow. Do you have any attraction now
to entertainment and fame or you don't care.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I know this is going to sound a little off,
but I feel like I've always been in that limelight
because of my father.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
So uh huh, fame. Fame is infamacy, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Like, yeah, infamy, Yeah, of course I do.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Realizy TV. Again, I'm grave at it, but I mean
break bringing TV. But I you know, with the exception
of Mob Wives, I didn't use on television mob Wives,
I was still an addiction, but I don't use when
I work like that's a different I'm just naturally, you know,
good crazy.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I say what's on my mind, so do you. You say
what's on your heart period. You don't care. You say it,
and you skin what you say.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And that's why I have a disrespect for you, because
you do it, you say it, you do it, and
that's what I am.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Very welcome.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
I have to do what I say w well, and
don't care about the dream is of the world or they,
you know, and I.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
The men don't get Men don't think like that. Men
don't think like oh my god, I can't. I just
said that to her, and I feel bad now, and
what's everyone going to think? And I'm still even programmed
a little bit like that, even though it doesn't seem
like I am. But men don't second guess what they're
saying and thinking like little babies like we do, and
we have to. That's one thing that should even out.
You said it and back it up and it's okay.
(43:01):
And you try to please everybody, You please nobody, and
you don't have to be best friends with everybody.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Oh please.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Dating is off the table, and smack can smack people
with my words.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Dating is off the table. I'm done. It's been a April,
will be a year. I'm good.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Last night I was thinking about Drew Barrymore seeming like
she's got a you know, on her show, she's got
a career, she got a meaningful life, she has purpose.
She doesn't seem that interested in she talks about it,
doesn't seem that interested in it. And Kelly Clarkson was like,
I am not interested in it, but not in a
way where you're bitter Like they're like, I have a
relationship with my kids. I am of a successful show.
And even Hodah was saying she went on dates. And
(43:38):
it was funny because Jenna was saying, and you know,
and now there means there is hope. But you could
tell that Hoda was saying, no, I just went on
dates because it means I'm not with my kids and
I'm not working, but like, I don't need it. Just
seems like everybody's not being defiant when they say I
don't need a man, but they literally are saying I
don't need anyone to complete me. I'm good.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Anybody couplicate me, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Like, that's what I'm here aring a lot from women
fifty plus and no one's really it's getting louder like
it's really a thing women being like I don't need it.
I'm good and not in a not in an insecure way,
is what I'm saying. We've heard that before, right.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I think a lot of young girls are just giving
it away.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
And why buy the cow if you get the milk
for free, Like my mother would always say that to me.
So why am I going to add this guy into
my life who wants to day twenty five year old
girls because he's going through midlife prices?
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Take your midlife prices, and stick it up your ask.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, I think a lot of young girls also want
someone to save them, want someone who's rich going to
take care of them. And then they're going to realize
in ten years when they're sitting home smoking cigarettes, drinking
wine with their friends and bored and like want to
go on all these trips that they should have enjoyed
their lives on the front end, because you have your
whole life to be bored, to be old, to complain
(44:52):
about your back to the biggest exciting thing is like
had you sleep last night? So on the front they
shouldn't be rushing that process because the people that are
in their fifties are realizing that they've done the marriage
and it ain't all it's cracked up. To me.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
My ex husband's last name is Pagan. Wait ready, I
got married in a church called Our Lady of Pity
and a black crow sat on the perch like on
the thing above me, and the priest had a three
kara dainty ring going on the way down the aisle.
(45:26):
I go, dad, I don't want to marry this guy.
He got swear on everything holy. He goes like this,
get down the fucking aisle because I just spent two
hundred and fifty thousand and two, So two fifty and
nineteen ninety three was he h, we'll get to boss tomorrow.
You got five hundred people coming down the aisle and
I cried his derekly and people thought I was crying
(45:46):
because I was happy.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I was crying because I was marrying the devil.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
That's hilarious. That it's hilarious. Now it's not that, but
that's your son's father. Unfortunately, yes, he's the they have
a relationship. Did know he rated on my father?
Speaker 3 (46:03):
So I when I died on mob wives from plastic surgery,
really died. Flatlines mersed through my whole body in the
hospital for four months. Read my last rites twice. This
man comes back to me, Bethany and gives me this watch,
and it was the one Rolex I didn't have long
story should when he went into jail, he took money
(46:27):
from me, and he's telling everybody in these interviews he
left me everything. The only thing you left me was
embarrassed and crumbs. Because what you did to me was
you took my father, who just did twelve years, came
home three months and you took my father. My son
bought a beaten from these kids because his father was
a wrat. They gave my son fourteenth staples.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
So what did you leave me? You left me problems?
What did you leave me? My house robbed twice? Wow?
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Where's he now?
Speaker 2 (46:58):
He's the story.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
So he came two years ago, three years I was sober,
ten months sober. He sawed with, I'm gonna kill you.
I'm gonna kill you the threats.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
What are you killing me for? You read it?
Speaker 3 (47:12):
I didn't you with the murderer, not me. You didn't
want to do the time for the crime you committed.
Why are you threatening me? So it's an like it
still happens to this day. And it's terrible because I
won't get a restraining order, but I will tell you
that I might. I might, because you know what, I
kind of feel like it's a little scary with him
(47:34):
because I know.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
He really is a murderer. Okay, he went to jail
for it.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
He he Oh wait, the funny part about the watch.
So after he left and he left me in debt,
I find his watch collection.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I'm like, screw it. I'll hop him and I'll pay
the taxes.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
All the watches were fake and all the watches had wires.
True story swear swear, It's in the court documents. Yep,
he was taping my father and my I hear my
mother on the tape saying.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Junior, do you want breakfast? She wants bacon or sausage
and this, and how do you want your eggs? My mother?
You take my mother? You should go to hell.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
I wish you, well, that's a great. Wow. Oh my God,
like I wish.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Him one hundred angry renees every day of my life.
And trust me, when I'm angry, I'd rather die.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Well, I mean, I'm so glad that I got to
speak to you because in the times that I met you,
I'm sure it was four minutes, three minutes, six minutes,
And like that's why I will never forget having met
you and gotten to know you again, like never, And
I felt it's weird though, I felt like I know her,
but I don't know how, and I apologize for that
deep people, but like I will never forget again. Ever.
(48:59):
You're amazing. I'm really happy for you. I'm happy you're alive.
I'm happy you connected with the right people, and I'm
really proud that you're sober and if connected with your
family and raising awareness for this fentanyl thing. That's crazy
because I'm hearing stories of snap Chat and people finding
these dealers and teens going for adderall and it being
laced with fentanyl. And like, I've got a thirteen year
(49:22):
old daughter who's turning fourteen, and I tell her, don't
ever even put your drink down, doesn't matter if it's water.
Like you know, you're drilling.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
She lives in.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, you're drilling in fear to these kids because it's
a different world than when we grew up. And I
really don't care.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Well, tell us she has the fairy mob mob.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I will my fairy mob mother. Yes, what we got.
She loves California, we love Malibu, so we're we. I
love that you're doing this and let me know what
you need. But I really good for you. Stay the course,
you listen to Steve Madden. Your addiction is more important
than anything and the Sobriety's your best friend and your
family member.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Now, Yes, love you, Bethity Things, thank you
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Love you tonight, Thank you so much, congratulations, thank you,
Bye bye,
Nice to meet you, Nice to meet me. I feel
like I know you?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
How many times have I been on your TV show?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's what I was thinking this morning. This is so crazy.
I was walking This is the honest truth. I was
walking downstairs and I'm like, why do I feel like
I know her? I feel like we've been together? And
then I said to myself, I had this thought. I said,
was she on my talk show? And then like, now
I'm going to say that today I had this like
foreshadowing about this happening. You are on the show. What
(00:39):
do we do for three times?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I literally my book mob wife and me and FIG's okay,
this is funny too, because they printed out papers for
you today, and I was like, there's a lot more
in my head I knew.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I was like, she created the show. And I said
to myself, why do I know that? I'm like, she's
different than the others. Not to be no, I am,
you know, disrespectful. I was like, because she created the show.
But I said to myself, why do I know that?
And it's really weird my memory lately, and that please
no disrespect because I would never lie and pretend that
like I remember I remember everything, but I don't like
remember remember does that make any sense?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Like, yeah, it's cold, we're getting a little bit more mature.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well no, yes, and the pots this thing that i've
had is autoimmune. Like they say that there's like this
like since the vaccine in the pandemic, there's a memory thing.
But like I literally knew all these things about you.
And I said, why do I know that? I thought
I saw it on another show. I swear to god,
I thought I heard it, but I don't watch him.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
And yeah, my sister Jennifer created the show.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Oh okay, I thought you created the show.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Okay, the star And it's no disrespect, but I really
don't care about the other women anymore.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
No, but we had this conversation. But you're saying it
was on my talk show.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
We I was on, Yeah, I have pictures of us.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
It's actually on my Instagram of me and you holding
my book playing with fire, and then I was on
with Alicia and Natalie, and then me and Benny Guarino
made meat balls for my cookbook as well.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You have a you have a ridiculous memory because I
was going through the worst divorce and that was like
all a blur and I've had this, you know, not
the first time this has happened. I literally don't remember
a lot. So anyway, anyway, I know you, but like
I've never seen you socially outside of the show. Have
I ever seen you at a party? Because I feel
like I know you.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
We've been at like maybe one or two, like okay,
magazine parties like that, but it's always.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Quick stuff, you know, Okay, because I feel like I
don't know why I feel like I know you. It's
exactly And I wore something that I thought would be
mob wives appropriate. But yes, you are least well, the
least of you is mob wise and we've talked about
that before and and as you just mentioned, but I
know about that, and we talked about the show and
we could get into that. And but I called you
(02:57):
because of your story and the work you're doing and
being vocal about something that many people aren't vocal about
and that people have shame about. And I was reading
through the papers on you, and I was thinking of
Steve Madden telling me the addiction is your life, like
(03:18):
read my sobriety is my life. He said, like it's
before my kids, it's before my job, it's before my money,
before my company. Like that's a big statement. Nobody will
ever admit that something comes before their kids, you know.
And Steve Madden said that his sobriety comes before his kids.
And so when I just read a headline because I
didn't know this, I just like stopped my tracks, Like
(03:41):
what she was? She almost got she was dead of
a fence and all overdose. Like that's a massively like
jarring shocking headline to read.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
So with that being said, your recovery has to come
before everything.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
It's God.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
And then so yeah, it actually and it isn't very embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
For me to tell it is or it's not.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
No, I how could somebody not be embarrassed of the
fact that they got a bag of fentanyl which was
supposed to be cocaine.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And I'm very honest about it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And then I have the text messages between the person
that was sent there and he said it in the message,
oh my god, because it wait.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
What does that mean? Well go back to that because
I know someone this happened to their kids. I'm gonna
tell you a story after But what are you saying now?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
So when I was in Florida, I had text a
girlfriend of mine. I said, hey, handle this for me. Okay,
I vouch for the kid. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
The kids, you're saying. You said to her, get the stuff,
and she said, I know the guy. It's a good
which is so it doesn't matter because the guy has
a guy as a guy, right.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Right, But it normally does matter. So and okay, because
nobody usually makes a mistake like that.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So with that, but they're not in the ca kitchen.
How would they know if something coming from.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
That's what they do?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Oh, okay, they're living But okay, is.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
As I didn't speak to anybody for so it happened
when I was in a restaurant, and I don't I
don't have recollection of three days.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
But somebody was with me, so I know what happened.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
They broke like in a bathroom, you're saying.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I guess so because I wasn't at the table for
that second.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I came back to the table, I made a phone call,
told my friend to send her friends. She sent her
friends when I had ohdeed in the restaurant, he had
text her and I have the messages because she sent
them to me afterwards.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So that's how I know what happened.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I gave her a bag of blank by accident.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I have the whole conversation.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Holy motherfuck, because I died right there in front.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Of them in the restaurant. Holy fuck table and my girlfriend,
who was a course from.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Me, Like, there's a bag of that that they mix
into other shit that they accidentally gave you. What the fuck?
But a whole bag would be You'd be dead instantly.
What I don't understand I was I'm touching it or
doing it.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I'm assuming I did it. Okay, okay, because I can't.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Tell you that nobody was in the bathroom with me,
but I know addiction and I know me.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So with that being said, I walked back.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
You had it, you went to go do it. The
fact that my brain I can't remember you and you're
remembering all of it is crazy. But okay, wow, okay.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Cable, and I keeled over and died, Oh my god,
that was it. And the girl in the restaurant broke
four ribs and fractured my sternum in two places, reviving me.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And and did they have narakan in the restaurant?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
No, she did it with her hands.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
That's insane.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I'm in ems gets there. They hit me with the
with the shot.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The conversation with the kid is, oh my god, Gina,
I sent this. I gave this to her by accident.
The cops are here, So the cops were there. Every
the kid gotten whatever trouble, not by me. I would
not press charges at all. I prefer to have his
hands broken. But that's me and my mob wife thinking
(07:30):
with that, they took me to the hospital and when
I was intribated, I went into cardiac arrest. So I
was already intribated and went into cardiac arrest. What mean
you're in a like a coma, So they put off
coma so they I don't actually know why they do that.
(07:52):
I'm assuming the OD was so severe. I wasn't there,
like I wasn't here, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Oh, meaning it's it's an induced they put you there.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Okay, yeah, so you're intubated.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
And while I was interbated, I went into cardiac arrest
on top of it, which normally doesn't happen. From that,
I got pneumonia. And I had gotten that vaccine two
years ago, and I've had pneumonia twice since then.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And then they had to like give me a walker
and like I had to go up.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
And down, like and how long ago was this?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
September eighteenth, six months ago?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Holy shit, how are you?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
I'm amazing. I wasn't supposed to make it. They told
my family, she's not going to make it through the night.
And three days later I woke up and I was like,
get me.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Out of here.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And they were like, do you know what happened? And
I'm like, absolutely not what happened? And they broke it
down to me and I was like, no.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
That's impossible. I don't do those drugs.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
And the doctor was like, oh, no, you did. And
I go but I don't said no, one said you did.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
But it was mixed.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
And now I have a I know someone whose son
a person their son had a baby, right and the
wife babies a couple months old and for whatever, maybe
six months old, I think it was six months old.
And the two of them, my husband and the wife
were home with the baby and they guess they just
wanted to have a little fun and they ordered coke
to the to the house and they both dropped out
(09:26):
and the baby was alone crying for like twenty four hours.
They father they died. Oh I got the parents.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, Okay, so they oh deed with death? Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And I and I've had experience with this also with people,
and it's amazing that smart together people like you have
a different perspective on life. Like I don't have that
as much as you. But I had a severe anaphylactic
shock situation that I was unconscious and I was in
(10:02):
the I see, I see you for a couple of
days and it was brutal and like I could in
the background when I was coming to hear the doctors
freaking out about sixty over forty blood pressure and like,
why were there all these people? And frankly, I thought
it was because, like I don't know. I thought it
was because it was me, Like a lot of people
were like they got a couple of extra attention. I
didn't realize it was because I was dying in the hospital. So, like,
(10:25):
I know what that is, like not as much as
what you're talking about, but that's a that changes your
perspective on life. It changes you as a person, Like
it's it it escalates the I don't give a fuck,
but not in an angry way.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So let me say that I bo did before. This
isn't my first time when my father died in nineteen
I didn't, I couldn't. I didn't want to live. I
felt like my twin died. I felt this connection with
(11:00):
my father, way different than my sisters. He was like
my twin. We look alike, we act alike, we're giving alike.
We want to do everything for everybody else some and
we forget about ourselves. My father was a great man.
I don't care what anybody has to say. He was
a great man. He rescued a family out of a
burning building, He saved a girl drowning. In prospect part,
(11:24):
my father was really a good man. He paid for
my best friend's mother's funeral because she had no money.
So in spite of what he did for a living,
he was a good man. Which I'm very much like
my dad.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But he's saying two things can be true at the
same time. Absolutely, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So I mean, look at Steve Madden. Ye pay with
my father. He's a good man, right, he got sober,
you know, and he's a strong individual. So yeah, you
could be a bad dying a good guy. At the
same time. People make mistakes.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
You know, you don't know who you are.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
You start out at life, you know what I mean.
It takes years to get where you're going, and for me,
it took a lot more than the average person because
I had low self esteem from a child.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So I was born very ill, wasn't supposed to live.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
They drew spinal fluid at least five or six times
for the first six month of my birth. So what
we're learning now is that spinal fluid that was drained
for me probably screwed up my psyche. And you know
then it was I grew up in the mob with
a boss as a father. People were dying left and right.
(12:37):
Who's going to jail? I played it up like, oh,
we have another funeral. Oh I'm gonna wear this black
dress with that per pot. That's not normal, That's not
what I know.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I grew up at the racetrack with a lot of ties,
and I grew up going and sitting at the crabs
table at thirteen years old for weeks in Vegas and
growing to nightclubs at the Rafters in Saratoga and fourteen
like I get it, I really know it.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Campaign and cocaine. That's the way I grew up. I
grew up in the heyday good Fellain.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
No and No money than all the money, all the
cars in the driveway, then no money next week ever
you're in the Yeah. My stepfather, John Paracel used to
come in and tell me the bookies after him, and
I would and I broke open my piggy bank literally
to give him catch. Like. But we had Mercedes in
the driveway and a card table, literally no furniture, but
a Jaguar and a Mercedes in the driveway, and then
that got taken away. I get it. It's like ridiculous.
(13:30):
He was very connected. Joe Scandor, he was his uncle,
and Jimmy Kam was sleeping on his couch and they
were doing drug. Yeah, uncle James. Okay, so my stepfather
and Jimmy Kahn were like boys and doing blow together.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
How my father and my uncle because that was like the.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Click Ponti's yeah, John PEPs.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Well, my uncle owns Splash in California, which was the
first nightclub in Malibo. And oh, my other uncle owned Frankie's.
Does Frankie's on Melroads. My uncle was Frank Martin, the
horse trainer, Like so I know, I.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Know Frank Martin. Yeah, he had my aunt Crew, the
father and the son Frank Martin and then and Jose Martin.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Okay, but the other son, Frank Martin, who he just
disrepem he died.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Oh wow. Okay, so we know a lot of the
same people because a lot of people don't know this
part of my life. And it affects my relationships too,
because in relationships with normal people, it's hard. When you
grew up like you know, on a wild car chase,
it's very difficult. You're an action junkie. So you were
(14:42):
a junkie junkie. Without using a bad word, I'm just saying, like, so,
let's get into that, all right. So you grew up
and you were sick and your father died and like so,
so you had a proclivity to highs and lows.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
All right, let's pull that. I was a mob junkie.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Okay. I hate that word more than right in the world.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I say action junkie, but it's a bad word. It's
a junkie word. It's a junk word. I get it.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Well, I'm actually trying to change the perspective behind it,
because a doctor could be one, a lawyer could be one.
The lawyer that you're calling the bail you out could
be and do the No.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Of course, it's a stigma, and I agree with you.
I was saying action Junker, but I yeah, I agree.
I agree because there's a shame there that you want
to do stigmatize.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
And you know, a shout out to Richard Tate from
the Carrera Treatment Center in Malibu. I just took a
job with him and now, yeah, he started Cliffside Malibu,
so I took a job with him yesterday.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
You know, I got crying.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Podcasts helping people, so I'm going to have to interview you, yes,
And it's just a way for me to give back.
And I didn't realize when I did my interview with
Bunny that it was going to blow up. But it's
been viral for the last five days. Every time she
drops a clip, it goes viralally. Cardi b video she
(16:07):
posted it viral. It's like all of a sudden, God said, Okay,
I got my hands on you this time, but you're
gonna be out there in the public, so do what
you need to do to save a life. Just know
people are gonna hate you, people are gonna love you,
but at the end of the day, my prerogative is
to save somebody because somebody saved me.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
You have purpose, You have purpose? How there's so much
to go through? So lamar Odom and Jason Waller from
(16:48):
the Hills, that's interesting too, using your reality television career
and fame and connections to these other people who have
gone through a similar horrendous experience.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
So Jason helped me out. And I had had plastic surgery,
so I had to go back on paying meds and
that was that was two years ago. That wasn't acceptable.
But Jason and Janah Woodbury did everything for me this
time around. It was November two and I was sitting
(17:22):
in a hotel. I had a friend who I was
fighting with my whole family.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
So she's like, after you got after you almost died,
you're talking about it a couple of months ago.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Okay, October, Tom, move here with me. Nobody in my
family wanted to be bothered with me. So whatever money
I had had went into a trust for my BRANDK
and so I had no access to money.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
So who are you did that? You intervened in your
own life and did that.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
It handles everything.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
You've given power of finance that a way had.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Power of attorney.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
I trust my sister with my whole life, so whatever,
and it wasn't much, Bethany, because all the those years
on television, I gave everything away.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Here take this, here, take I left nothing for myself.
I didn't even buy a house.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Why I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Maybe I felt like the money wasn't gonna run out.
They were also paying for all of my housing, so
you know, why am I going to spend more money?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
But I was paying who the show is paying for housing? Yes,
oh that was a good show.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Well, my sister is the executive producer. My father threw
me out.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
My father didn't talk to me for two years. I
had nowhere to go. What was I gonna do? And
here I am giving them a bigger story than anybody,
aside from Karen Gravano because her story was extremely huge.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I love Karen. You know, I talked to everybody, but
Drita put it that way. Everybody.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
But anyway, Drida did an interview and said, now that Renee,
well my wife was just coming back. Now that Renee's
father is dead, who is she gonna be? Don't play
with me and don't ever talk about my father in
any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So there is no respect for that girl whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
She's called me a junkie more times than necessary, no
respect none.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
More times than necessary is an interesting way to phrase
something like you're saying you gave grace to like your mistakes,
but there's more times thannecessary.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
All the stuff you would do in the cloud did so.
Now you want to air me out?
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Okay, so you want to you want me to hide
your truths, Well you tell me you hide your truths
while you speak. I'm sorry you want to speak my
truths and I hide your lives. Not acceptable anymore in
my life. Not acceptable. If you burn me, be prepared
not to be able to walk across that bridge because
(19:47):
you burnt it.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
But what it feels like, you're still you're not being
paid for the show. Now you're still living that story
in the show. Who cares about anybody that you like to?
Haven't you? I don't get paid for that, That's what
I'm saying. But I'm feeling like you're in the conflict.
Like the way that I feel about women on the
show that I used to be is like, go be happy,
be successful, Like everybody has a reason for why they
are the way they are, and who care? What do
(20:09):
you care? About what anyone else is doing.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So it keeps coming up. People just keep dragging me
and dragging me.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And but the more you talk, yeah, I get it,
but just like what.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It's not all the women.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Most of the women still call me and you know,
they send love. I just feel like, why are you mad?
My sister put us all in this position to earn
a tremendous.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Amount of money. Why are you mad? What did I do? Actually?
I hit it with your lives? So what did I
actually do? Oh? I told you the truth about yourself? Sorry,
do you.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Have any interet Where do you live? Where do you live?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I just moved to California, So back to Because in
all honesty, let me say this, there is a bitter
feeling there. But she's not supposed to hold weight in
my life. But it's very hurtful. So this isn't about her.
It's about the hurt it's about them.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
It's funny because my therapist says, and it's really interesting
you're dealing If you're dealing with something, you'll describe the
situation like you just describe the situation. But she'll say,
you know, but like, let's live in the feelings, like
really like and when you. I think if you live
in the feelings, you might not that you wanted to
reach out. Maybe she'll reach out and stop or say
I'm sorry, Like if you live in the feelings that
(21:23):
you feel vulnerable in hurt versus like the story of
what's going on, like.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
It is never ever allowed back in my life. She
never showed up from my father's funeral. You'll cut off.
That's the That's it for me. But any okay, I'm
moving on.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I wish I do, wish her help and wealth, but
I don't like her. Plain and simple.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So November two and I was sitting I had just
had a fight with my friend in Texas. She told
my son, please have all your mother's stuff picked up.
I called my son. I said, agam done. I can't
it anymore. I can't fight. I'm tired. I said, I'm
not going to kill myself. I'm Catholic. You know, that's
(22:05):
the biggest in in the world. So he's getting high though,
f y he and I said, in case I never
seen you again, I want you to know how much
I love you. He said, MA, sit right there. My
son got on the phone with my dear friend twenty nine.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Okay, twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
With four kids.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
He had twin girls the last and they turned one yesterday,
so he made the phone poll pulled me back. My
friend Bill O'Hara got me into recovery unplugged in Texas.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I went in the next day.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
My girlfriend got mad at me that I didn't help
her get her things all done and out and robbed
everything I owned everything back, every pair of shoes, every pocketbook.
I swear this on my four grandchildren's eyes, every single
thing I owned. Everything my father left me.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Because I was going to say, maybe this is some
sign of starting. Oh okay, Oh the.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Clothes got me sober.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I know that sounds crazy, but trust me, I couldn't
go out no more so. But she robbed my father's
tie collection, and that was very important to me. That
was like wow in him and I my hand blessed
rosaries from the Pope, my father met two different popes,
my bible from my grandmother, everything that meant something to me.
(23:29):
Oh child, yeah, very evil individual. My son was like,
all right, I'm gonna have it picked up on Friday.
She goes stop rising me. She has a crazy bitch
and played in English fucking crazy. She's my mouth crazy.
I walked into Detox with my Minx slippers, a sweatshirt
(23:50):
and sweatpants and that was all I had. Oh and
I just when she threw my pocketbook out the front door.
I went to grab it and it happened to be
my Gucci bag with my adult chain Gavana beg in it.
Don't ask me one, but she stole every pair of
eyeglasses I glass.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
What how did you afford rehab?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Did?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
So?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
I'm getting Lamarrow phone call and he said, hey, please
come to my treatment center.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
I want to help you.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
So Gina Rodriguez, who's his pr is a dear friend
of mine. Lamar took care of everything. I walked into
Vanity Wellness in California, and four months later, I'm sober
a f I'm happy. I can't understand that thought yet.
That's a little scary happy scary to me. I thrive
(24:43):
in chaos. I come from chaos. So you know, when
they say drama queen, I'm like Max all the way up.
But that's it wasn't drama to me. It was my
everyday life. And that's where I get a little frustrated.
People like you're a drama queen.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I'm not. I'm just a queen who lived in a
life of drama. Big difference.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And you've been an addict your whole life, how much
of your life?
Speaker 3 (25:10):
So yeah, when I was younger, I partied, you know,
I partied. But when I was my ex husband shouted
my sacrum and he.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Put his elbow through it.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, he broke my pain pills phone, he broke.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
My rib like, but I would not tell on him
because I was worried that he would be murdered. And
for me, that was my sin then, so I never
and then pain meds started thirty six. Oh, I owed
deed for the first time on July feof in two
thousand and seven, and three out. My mother didn't want
(25:54):
to admit I was an addict, so she put me
in a seventy two hour holdover where I was sexual
assaulted by a predator. And that really is what changed
me forever. I spent my thirty seventh birthday in the
mental wood for three weeks because I lost my line
(26:14):
after I was attacked. And I have a police report
that blacks that up with a man admitted it.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So you've been like medicating to forget since then. And
then you got down a hole.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah, so medicated Zanex God, friend, I didn't want cokain
and I wanted Xani.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Where were you getting it?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
All?
Speaker 2 (26:32):
The doctors made me It was the doctors.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
No, I know that, but how because I've seen all
the movies and I'm fascinated by topic because i have
experience with it personally, Uh not me, but one person apart?
And did you I did? Did you end up driving
to other states and go like no?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I was prescribed?
Speaker 3 (26:51):
True story two Oxy eighties, six rock scenes, eight milligrams
of xanax, diet pills, water pills, antidepressants, mood stabilizers. This
is by the doctor's hand.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
That is why is there any part of the addiction
and the pills and all of it. That's not just
only the chemical aspect, but like the process, like it's
like a friend, it's like something to do. It's an activity,
like let's get this, let's get that, let's organize it,
because no one talks about that, and I think that's
part of it too.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Right, So I was not an everyday user. Zan x
became my life for a year straight, That's true. I
kickation in twenty ten. Cocaine always played a part of
my life always, but not.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It's like when I was done, it was over. I
didn't get more. It wasn't like that. I party definitely.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Going out Saturday night. You're getting a bag with friends,
and it's fun. We're going out. It's like getting a
bunch of drinks.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
But the zon X took over my life really is
that I got arrested.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Nobody knows that I what ovid. I had to go
to jail for eight days. I was devastated.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
You were like, no one's gonna notice because everyone's in
their home.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
I had twenty three hour lock up. It was supposed
to be for a twenty twenty four hour thing. When
I was being released, I had made a phone call.
I wasn't allowed to pull this person. It was like
a restraining order because the person was antagonizing.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Me to a fall. I'm like, hey, I need my
lawyer's number.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Needless to say, that person was related to me, and
so I made the phone call. And when I was
being released, they were like, did you call so and So?
I go, yeah, I needed my lawyers now, But they go,
you just violated the temporary restraining order. I was like,
oh no, no, no, I did not that doesn't count,
and they were like, get it done. So eight day
(28:49):
they kept me bare. I was devastated.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
At a jail.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
It was dirty. It was cony.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It sounds like it's jail, so its dirty.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Yeah, it was mom at count Holy shit. I was like,
can I have a pillow? They were like no, I said,
my sheet has a hole? So what Can I donate
mattresses to the women's prison? Absolutely not, So I'm sleeping
with the matts.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
It's taking it. That's funny going you go into the mattresses.
You went to the mattresses.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
You went to the mattresses. That's a that's crazy. What
about your family not coming to the hospital because they
thought you were dead or because they wrote you off
and you were dead to them?
Speaker 3 (29:34):
They well, they both they weren't going to make it
in time because of the timing, and they said it
you know, by the time they got there, it wouldn't
have happened. But they did write me off. So my
sister Jennifer stopped talking to me for a year and
a half and that was my closest relationship. My mother
and I were constantly fighting. My oldest sister and I
have always bought. So there's a lot of there's a
(29:56):
lot of dysfunction in my family. My little and I
shared a bedroom. We were very close. I was my
father daddy. I'm fit, daddy's favorite kid. I'm the most entitled,
I'm all of that. And then life just got hotter.
I was bullied in grammar school, terribly bullied. I was
told how ugly I was on an everyday basis, so
(30:19):
I took that on that became me. I was ugly
no matter what you said to me. I was ugly.
I felt it in my heart and soul. And you know,
I wasn't allowed to wear contacts until freshman year or
a high school. My mother gave me the worst haircuts
in the world. You know all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
But I were a disaster.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I was physically developed, and I was never ugly FYI
never I know that now, But.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I was physically developed.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
So all the boys liked me, and the two girls
that bullied me, they would invite me to boy girl
parties and send me.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Home because the boys liked me. But there was.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Something wrong with me all of my life. My first boyfriend,
I was like turning fifteen. He was physically abusive and
That's how it started. He ended up my father. I
came home with a black guy and he said, Renne,
what happened.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
To your face?
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I said, oh, I walked into the door. My father goes,
sit down before you walk into the door again. And
I sat there and he goes, what happened? And I
told him. My father made a phone book two phone goals.
One was to the boyfriend's ex boyfriend's father and the
other one was to four guys.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
My father said, get in the car. I said, okay,
and don't talk. Swear to God.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
True story in the Lincoln Townclock. We get to our
family restaurant. My father goes, go in the restaurant and
don't go by the window.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
So what does that mean to you? What is it?
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I could go by the window, thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I watched him have his arm broken.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
And it was that day that I never ever would
tell on another person again because I felt that was
my fault.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
But it was so Now add.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
This all insecurity, abuse, dysfunction in the household.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Action, highs and lows.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Murder, my father's in jail, all this stuff. I meet
my ex husband when I'm very young. I was twenty,
got engaged a month and nineteen days after I met him,
my ex my father did not want me to marry him.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
He was not Italian. Somebody spoke on his behalf.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
That person too became a snitch, so we should have
never trusted him. And my ex husband started with the abuse,
knocking the shit out of me.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
My father was it'd be weird to go knock the
shit out of a mob boss's daughter.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
But he also knew I wasn't telling.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Still fucked up it is? And what is your relationship
with your family now? Besides your sister? Like, are you
mending my senses? Do they trust you?
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Everybody?
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Since I checked in on November three last year, I
have spoken to my son every single day, at least
two times a day, at least two times a day.
I just flew my grandkids out to California. We went
to Disney and Universal. My daughter in law and I
have had like the relationship.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
We're on the phone. Got the bing like, oh yay,
everyone in my family.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
That's you really meant you really did? You did the work?
Friend that every one of your friends that are my
real friends. Yeah, yeah, I know, Rene, We're proud of you.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
I can't believe. And what has happened in four months.
I can't even tell you, Like.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
The job that I just got, getting paid, the amount
of money I just got, It's like, oh wait a second,
I don't got to sell my soul anymore.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
You have like a real job, and it's not like
bullshit entertainment. We have to have the high schlegs. You're
like a legitimate, like grown up job.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
I you know, I spoke with Vivoca Fox, Justina Valentine
Havoc from Mob Deep. All these people are like I
asked them, you know, can I innovate view you? Jason
from the Dallas Jason Hatchet from the Dallas cab with
It's like an A list celebrity lineup, amazing Bunny roll.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Whatever, whatever you need, we got. You don't pay for anything.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
What's fascinating is because I hear this with other people.
You hit the bottom, but it wasn't really the bottom.
When you went, when you almost died, you went back
and used again like you didn't go. You didn't go
to rehab, like what the fuck? Like people would be like,
what the fuck about that?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I didn't go For a month, I didn't go, so
what was that much? I was really battling with the devil,
Like I kid you not. I feel like he, literally,
the grim reaper king.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Was holding you there with the battle.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Every day I get up and and that.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Next six weeks, I definitely use like I would say
maybe five or six times.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Absolutely absolutely, But.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I was interested that at no.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
I went back to the pill from the pharmacy. Let
me take that pill. I know where it's coming from.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
But because you're you're justifying in your mind, that doesn't
count because it came from a doctor. Like it's different
than yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I wanted to die. You know.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
I touched on this a little bit when my father
passed away in nineteen. I went to a hospital and
they said, okay, you know what, you're a candidate for
shock treatment. You have major depressive disorder. We're gonna do
six sessions. You're not going to be sad anymore. If
someone would have told me you're gonna get hit on
your head with a block of cement and you're not
(35:44):
going to be sad anymore, I would have said, drop five,
drop five. So I did six sessions and it destroyed me.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It's uh, the opposite direction.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Oh yeah, that's where my addiction then became. Like I
stopped sleeping completely. Everything was magnified, magnified. My body's in
physical pain all the time from like the surgeries I've
had over the years. So now I suffer like with
physical pain. But I put on a light a gain
(36:16):
patch five percent light gain.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
I don't take any medication to that.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
I take prozac, which they're giving to every woman now
in menopause.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
And you don't drink, No, I never liked alcohol, So yeah,
you're in a world now where I know you didn't
like alcohol. But people, so many people are sober curious,
So many people are just walking around sober now, and
so I think it's an interesting time. I mean, I
have a mocktail brand literally because I wanted to speak
to this space. But it's very prevalent. And are you worried?
(36:52):
Do you crave? Do you think about it? Are you
worried about going out and being social and being normal
and not hanging out with other addicts going through what
you're going through? Hang out with people that are partying?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Okay, So my core group of friends, they drink, they
don't get high, never did, nobody does.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And you don't want to drink, so you don't care.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah, I lost someone who I considered a brother to
suicide in October, and that's where the change came. Like
I couldn't believe I lost this person in my life.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
That was like my brother.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
He was the savior and he committed suicide and it
devastated me.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
And that was my choice to get right.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
And since then, when I tell you Beten, he it's
just I don't know what the feeling is. I can't
even explain it to you. It's this feeling of, oh
my god, I'm happy.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
What do I do with happy? That's what scares me.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
I get it. I get it.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Why does this guy want to take me out on
a date? Oh no, oh no, you know what I mean.
Like so there's like this siren that goes off, which
I have to attention to that siren because for me,
that's like danger. Danger, and danger to me means self medicaid.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
You know what a great therapist and life coach you have?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Great?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Because I have the great person out in La not
touchy feeling, not freud, but like okay, full on. He's amazing.
You should have him on you. He's amazing. He's like
intervene in your own life. He's very he's amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I'll give you his information. Yeah, I mean, I also
have an incredible I've been with the same. I have
an incredible therapist. But the life coach guy is in
lak and he's had the craziest life too, of like
money and addiction and wealthy parents and dated all these
famous models and like he changed his whole life years ago.
But he's a major. He's a major guy. You would
like him. He's not bullshit either.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I became a life coach and twenty myself, and I
can coach somebody else's life.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Just not no, but not yeah, I get it. Yeah,
when you're sometimes people feel uncomfortable. For me, it's not
being happy, it's it's normalcy. And peace feels weird, just
like level and normalcy and not the eyes and the
low sometimes feel weird. Just like you just feel like good.
You just feel okay. You wake up okay, you feel settled.
You don't feel mercurial, you don't feel erradic, you just
(39:09):
feel like a human being.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
I wake up every day and I'm like, okay, the
sun is shining, even when it's raining, the sun is shining.
It's the conversations between my son and I that are
really everything to me.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
It's everything.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
My sister Jennifer just signed back on from management with
my other manager, Chris, Like it's just incredible that four
months and it turned around like it never happened. However,
it did happen, and I have to remind myself every
day that that did happen.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Right, you could be on the high of the sobriety
right now, Like that's a different high, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
I'm not on that pink cloud because I do cry still,
So I'm not on no.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I do miss my father.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
I did a ketymine treatment and I don't know if
you know who Zappi is.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Do you know that name?
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Okay, oh lamar Odom And this gentleman Zappie bought like
fifty acres in Malibo and they do these ketamine treatments
so ten years ago and you do it with a doctor,
you know you process. So for me, I had to
figure out how am I gonna let go of my father.
(40:23):
Stop saying I want to be with my father. I
have full grandkids. That's the most selfish statement in the world.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And I gotta live. I have to live.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Big Ann's died and She used to always say, We're
out here for a long time, for a good time,
And it's been playing over every day in my life.
Every day I hear that and I'm like, Okay, what
am I gonna do today? Today, I'm gonna go to
the beach, I'm gonna sit by the ways. And it's
changed me. I just I want to help somebody, like
I want people to understand you do have a purpose.
(40:55):
I spoke at and I had like ten minutes to
give this speech, and I was like, what am I
going to say? And I said, basically, Uh, if the
disease of addiction would have told me that I was
going to rob my son of thirteen years of his life,
I would have fought harder.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
If the disease of addiction would.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Have told me that I'd marry my abuser, I would
have thought harder. If the disease of addiction would have
told me that I was going to cause pain and
suffering to the ones that loved me and anyone who
entered my life, I would.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Have fought harder.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
It goes on for like three more and then at
the end, I said, matter of fact, the disease of
addiction did tell me, but I was too high to
hear it.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
M wow and wow. Do you have any attraction now
to entertainment and fame or you don't care.
Speaker 3 (41:44):
I know this is going to sound a little off,
but I feel like I've always been in that limelight
because of my father.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
So uh huh, fame. Fame is infamacy, you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Like, yeah, infamy, Yeah, of course I do.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Realizy TV. Again, I'm grave at it, but I mean
break bringing TV. But I you know, with the exception
of Mob Wives, I didn't use on television mob Wives,
I was still an addiction, but I don't use when
I work like that's a different I'm just naturally, you know,
good crazy.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
I say what's on my mind, so do you. You say
what's on your heart period. You don't care. You say it,
and you skin what you say.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And that's why I have a disrespect for you, because
you do it, you say it, you do it, and
that's what I am.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Very welcome.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
I have to do what I say w well, and
don't care about the dream is of the world or they,
you know, and I.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
The men don't get Men don't think like that. Men
don't think like oh my god, I can't. I just
said that to her, and I feel bad now, and
what's everyone going to think? And I'm still even programmed
a little bit like that, even though it doesn't seem
like I am. But men don't second guess what they're
saying and thinking like little babies like we do, and
we have to. That's one thing that should even out.
You said it and back it up and it's okay.
(43:01):
And you try to please everybody, You please nobody, and
you don't have to be best friends with everybody.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Oh please.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Dating is off the table, and smack can smack people
with my words.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Dating is off the table. I'm done. It's been a April,
will be a year. I'm good.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Last night I was thinking about Drew Barrymore seeming like
she's got a you know, on her show, she's got
a career, she got a meaningful life, she has purpose.
She doesn't seem that interested in she talks about it,
doesn't seem that interested in it. And Kelly Clarkson was like,
I am not interested in it, but not in a
way where you're bitter Like they're like, I have a
relationship with my kids. I am of a successful show.
And even Hodah was saying she went on dates. And
(43:38):
it was funny because Jenna was saying, and you know,
and now there means there is hope. But you could
tell that Hoda was saying, no, I just went on
dates because it means I'm not with my kids and
I'm not working, but like, I don't need it. Just
seems like everybody's not being defiant when they say I
don't need a man, but they literally are saying I
don't need anyone to complete me. I'm good.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Anybody couplicate me, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Like, that's what I'm here aring a lot from women
fifty plus and no one's really it's getting louder like
it's really a thing women being like I don't need it.
I'm good and not in a not in an insecure way,
is what I'm saying. We've heard that before, right.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
I think a lot of young girls are just giving
it away.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
And why buy the cow if you get the milk
for free, Like my mother would always say that to me.
So why am I going to add this guy into
my life who wants to day twenty five year old
girls because he's going through midlife prices?
Speaker 2 (44:28):
Take your midlife prices, and stick it up your ask.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, I think a lot of young girls also want
someone to save them, want someone who's rich going to
take care of them. And then they're going to realize
in ten years when they're sitting home smoking cigarettes, drinking
wine with their friends and bored and like want to
go on all these trips that they should have enjoyed
their lives on the front end, because you have your
whole life to be bored, to be old, to complain
(44:52):
about your back to the biggest exciting thing is like
had you sleep last night? So on the front they
shouldn't be rushing that process because the people that are
in their fifties are realizing that they've done the marriage
and it ain't all it's cracked up. To me.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
My ex husband's last name is Pagan. Wait ready, I
got married in a church called Our Lady of Pity
and a black crow sat on the perch like on
the thing above me, and the priest had a three
kara dainty ring going on the way down the aisle.
(45:26):
I go, dad, I don't want to marry this guy.
He got swear on everything holy. He goes like this,
get down the fucking aisle because I just spent two
hundred and fifty thousand and two, So two fifty and
nineteen ninety three was he h, we'll get to boss tomorrow.
You got five hundred people coming down the aisle and
I cried his derekly and people thought I was crying
(45:46):
because I was happy.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I was crying because I was marrying the devil.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
That's hilarious. That it's hilarious. Now it's not that, but
that's your son's father. Unfortunately, yes, he's the they have
a relationship. Did know he rated on my father?
Speaker 3 (46:03):
So I when I died on mob wives from plastic surgery,
really died. Flatlines mersed through my whole body in the
hospital for four months. Read my last rites twice. This
man comes back to me, Bethany and gives me this watch,
and it was the one Rolex I didn't have long
story should when he went into jail, he took money
(46:27):
from me, and he's telling everybody in these interviews he
left me everything. The only thing you left me was
embarrassed and crumbs. Because what you did to me was
you took my father, who just did twelve years, came
home three months and you took my father. My son
bought a beaten from these kids because his father was
a wrat. They gave my son fourteenth staples.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
So what did you leave me? You left me problems?
What did you leave me? My house robbed twice? Wow?
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Where's he now?
Speaker 2 (46:58):
He's the story.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
So he came two years ago, three years I was sober,
ten months sober. He sawed with, I'm gonna kill you.
I'm gonna kill you the threats.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
What are you killing me for? You read it?
Speaker 3 (47:12):
I didn't you with the murderer, not me. You didn't
want to do the time for the crime you committed.
Why are you threatening me? So it's an like it
still happens to this day. And it's terrible because I
won't get a restraining order, but I will tell you
that I might. I might, because you know what, I
kind of feel like it's a little scary with him
(47:34):
because I know.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
He really is a murderer. Okay, he went to jail
for it.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
He he Oh wait, the funny part about the watch.
So after he left and he left me in debt,
I find his watch collection.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I'm like, screw it. I'll hop him and I'll pay
the taxes.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
All the watches were fake and all the watches had wires.
True story swear swear, It's in the court documents. Yep,
he was taping my father and my I hear my
mother on the tape saying.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Junior, do you want breakfast? She wants bacon or sausage
and this, and how do you want your eggs? My mother?
You take my mother? You should go to hell.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
I wish you, well, that's a great. Wow. Oh my God,
like I wish.
Speaker 3 (48:29):
Him one hundred angry renees every day of my life.
And trust me, when I'm angry, I'd rather die.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Well, I mean, I'm so glad that I got to
speak to you because in the times that I met you,
I'm sure it was four minutes, three minutes, six minutes,
And like that's why I will never forget having met
you and gotten to know you again, like never, And
I felt it's weird though, I felt like I know her,
but I don't know how, and I apologize for that
deep people, but like I will never forget again. Ever.
(48:59):
You're amazing. I'm really happy for you. I'm happy you're alive.
I'm happy you connected with the right people, and I'm
really proud that you're sober and if connected with your
family and raising awareness for this fentanyl thing. That's crazy
because I'm hearing stories of snap Chat and people finding
these dealers and teens going for adderall and it being
laced with fentanyl. And like, I've got a thirteen year
(49:22):
old daughter who's turning fourteen, and I tell her, don't
ever even put your drink down, doesn't matter if it's water.
Like you know, you're drilling.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
She lives in.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
Yeah, you're drilling in fear to these kids because it's
a different world than when we grew up. And I
really don't care.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Well, tell us she has the fairy mob mob.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I will my fairy mob mother. Yes, what we got.
She loves California, we love Malibu, so we're we. I
love that you're doing this and let me know what
you need. But I really good for you. Stay the course,
you listen to Steve Madden. Your addiction is more important
than anything and the Sobriety's your best friend and your
family member.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Now, Yes, love you, Bethity Things, thank you
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Love you tonight, Thank you so much, congratulations, thank you,
Bye bye,
Host
Bethenny Frankel
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