After Joey Kovar’s starmaking run on MTV’s “The Real World” in 2008, the Evergreen Park hunk predicted he’d be back in the public eye very soon.

On Thursday, it happens. But Kovar won’t be acting or wrestling or starring in commercials, as he thought he would be.

He’ll be on “Celebrity Rehab,” showing the world that his televised victory over alcohol and cocaine, the triumph that made him a hero for addicts everywhere, didn’t stick.

“I’m manning up to everything,” he says. “No more lies.”

Over the next several weeks, viewers will see the 26-year-old performer and new dad own up to his vices, learn the roots of his problems and struggle through withdrawal — all in the company of other semi-famous figures who decided VH1 would be a great place to get sober.

Kovar shared his room in rehab with former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr, a thrill for the big fan of Seattle grunge. He mingled with Tom Sizemore, an actor he remembered from “Saving Private Ryan.”

But the big surprise came when he first walked into his temporary home at the Pasadena (Calif.) Recovery Center and saw one of his boyhood heroes.

“I said, ‘Holy s—, I’m on here with Dennis Rodman?’ Kovar recalls. “He’s Dennis Rodman! He is an icon!”

The former Bulls bad boy even stepped up when Kovar got frustrated with producers and considered quitting the show. “Dennis Rodman came over and comforted me, talked me through and stuff,” he says, “and that was pretty cool of him.”

(But perhaps just temporary. Since the taping last spring, “I’ve been trying to get ahold of Dennis forever, and he don’t answer his phone.”)

Also there: Heidi Fleiss, singer Mindy McCready, model Lisa D’Amato, beauty queen Kari Ann Peniche and an actress Kovar admits to not really knowing: Mackenzie Phillips. “My mom and my grandma,” he notes, “were really big fans of her, though.”

The charismatic Kovar made his name on the Hollywood round of “The Real World,” where he provided one of the season’s most dramatic moments, an all-night, coked-up, boozy bender where he ranted, pounded the walls and terrified his roommates. Offered a chance to clean up, he accepted and spent 28 days in Dr. Drew Pinsky’s rehab program.

Afterward he returned to the “Real World” house, only to find the others there as rowdy as ever. “I was saying to myself, ‘I just went and got help, and if I stay here with these guys partying all the time I’m probably going to relapse and I’m gonna look like a fool on national TV.’ And I just didn’t want to,” he says. “So I decided to go home.”

He gathered the roommates and read an emotional letter in which he bid goodbye to alcohol.

Then, he now reveals, the first thing he did on the plane trip home was order a Jack and Coke.

Kovar realizes he was in a bad place at the time. His self-esteem was low, and he was convinced he would come off badly on the show. “For all those months waiting for it to come out,” he says, “I was a nervous wreck.”

But when “The Real World” finally aired, the opposite happened. Viewers liked Kovar, related to him and rooted for him to get better. He started getting recognized by strangers.

“It helped my confidence,” he says. “It helped my career. It put me in the direction I wanted to be going.”

By then, though, he was fully returned to his old habits. “I’d go out on the weekends with friends to a bar or a club or someone’s house,” Kovar says, “and we’d get messed up, with the coke or drinking or whatever.”

He didn’t think twice when VH1 called. “I knew I needed the rehab again because obviously I’d relapsed,” he says. “I wanted to get clean for my son. And also — I’m not gonna lie to you — I saw this as a great opportunity, too.”

Kovar again worked with Dr. Drew, this time getting more one-on-one time with him and learning about the psychology of addiction. He used to tell himself that drugs and booze were bad because they’d slow his showbiz career, but in the end that wasn’t motivation enough.

Now he believes he has a better reason to stay clean: his new son, Joseph, 2 months old. “He looks like a little clone of me,” Kovar says.

Kovar’s been sober seven months, he says, and he’s back in Evergreen Park doing personal training and working on a book. Next month, he expects to start shooting in New Orleans on “10,000 Doors,” an oft-delayed film project in which he’s been cast as a killer.

He realizes he won’t come off perfectly on “Celebrity Rehab,” and this time he’s OK with that.

“I need to show people the dark side of this,” he says. “I think when people see somebody on TV doing [drugs], it will get a lot of people’s attention, and I want to get their attention for a good reason. I want to show them the dark side of it, and then I want to show them my journey through ‘Celebrity Rehab.’ “

Reposted from the Chicago Sun-Times