Real World: Hollywood's Joey Kovar: I Used Coke & Ecstasy Daily

"All the roommates had promised, 'Oh we're gonna change if you come back [from a stint in rehab],'" Kovar, 24, says. "It was just a bunch of b.s. 'cause nothing changed."

"They could have just said, 'Joe, you know we don’t really wanna give up partying,'" Kovar explains. "That's all they had to say instead of from coming
to rehab back to the house to home I would have just stayed home and they didn't have to waste my time or theirs."

Kovar's emotional decision to leave the show followed the realization that his addiction came from his childhood and his parents' problems.

"I remember being young and I always used to see my dad beat the crap out of my mom because he was a raging alcoholic, like the worst that you can be," he tells Us.

Kovar says his parents would use cocaine. "Now that I've done coke, I know that that's what they were doing," he says. "Basically that's where [my addiction] stems from."

He revealed to Us that he had his first beer when he was 16, used hard alcohol at 18 and turned to steroids at 19 with the hopes of becoming a professional wrestler.

"Me being an addict – born an addict – my mentality always is going to be 'more is better,' so I started abusing steroids," he recalls.

The steroid use lead to cocaine. "You feel like a bus could hit you and you're not gonna die, so I was like 'you know what, 'I'll do [coke], I won't get hooked, I won't get addicted,'" Kovar says.

At 22, Kovar lost over 100 pounds when he stopped using steroids.

"I just felt depressed everyday," he says. "I had suicidal thoughts, so basically that's when I started using cocaine everyday. I started using ecstasy everyday."

Kovar did attempt suicide by hanging himself in August 2006. "I had lost all hope," he says.

Before entering the Real World house, he had cleaned himself up. "I failed to realize that Real World is known for getting bombed all the time," he admits.

After taking a break from the show to enter rehab, Kovar – who's now working as a personal trainer – has been sober since September.

Kovar has no regrets about doing the show. "If I didn't go to rehab, if I didn't get on the Real World, what would have happened?" he asks "Would I have stayed clean then? Everything happens for a reason."

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