Corinne Olympios seems like a fun person who’s partied before, so it always seemed kind of odd that she blacked out for the scandalous poolside sex romp on Bachelor in Paradise.
That’s one of the reasons that, when the news first broke that production had been shut down, we wondered how much of the story we weren’t getting.
It turns out that Corinne’s figured out what happened … and it has to do with mixing drugs and booze.
So, you know when your pill bottle says to not mix drugs with alcohol?
That’s not just a suggestion.
Now, maybe you think that it’s overblown and only on the label like government mandates, like a lot of expiration dates.
Maybe you’ve watched people crush their prescription pills, snort them, and then down a half-dozen shots of rum and just keep on partying with zero apparent consequences.
But different pills have different effects and interactions.
And different people’s bodies handle those combinations in very different ways.
What’s good for the proverbial goose could kill the gander … or at least make them have a blacked out pool hookup with DeMario Jackson.
(Which would be fine … except for the blacked out part, and everything that followed)
TMZ reports that Corinne Olympios had mixed booze and pills that day.
It sounds like she’d taken prescription medication before she began drinking, and so when she drank, the two interacted and resulted in … well, everything that happened.
This report came out at the taping of the Bachelor in Paradise reunion special, which filmed on Saturday.
TMZ didn’t provide any direct quotes from Corinne explaining, and we don’t know the exact medications involved.
(Which, you know, is totally her private medical business)
But we’ll get to hear it all once this season of Bachelor in Paradise airs its reunion special.
Well before that, of course, viewers will actually see Corinne and DeMario’s pool sex encounter for themselves.
(With obvious censorship and editing where appropriate)
You might be thinking gee, why didn’t Corinne mention this earlier?
Remember that, first and foremost, she didn’t know what happened.
She was told about what happened in the pool by the show’s production after a producer saw what was happening and worried that a sexual assault had taken place.
Warner Bros’ own investigation determined that there was no sexual assault.
More convincingly (no offense to WB, but internal investigations are what they are), Corinne closed the book on the topic, expressing that she was satisfied with their findings.
That must have been a horrifying ordeal for her.
It must have been awful for DeMario, too.
While no one involved — Corinne included — ever actually accused him of sexual assault or any sort of wrongdoing, some people added two plus two and got “DeMario’s a bad guy!”
There’s a long, sad history of racist accusations against black men for sexual assault when it comes to hookups with white women.
DeMario spoke about how much the scandal impacted his mother.
He’s been cleared of all wrongdoing, officially, which is great.
But it must have been awful.
Corinne wasn’t mixing pills with drinks to party or anything, but her story is still a good cautionary tale, folks:
Pay attention to the instructions on your medications.
Don’t mix them with alcohol or other medicines (prescribed or alternative or whatever) without knowing how they’re going to interact.
You might get sick, you might die.
Or you might do something that you regret forever.
Everyday people don’t have producers and crew members to stop them from driving when they’re unaware of their own actions.
As bad as this scandal was, it could have been so much worse.
