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Chris Bukowski says knew he was done with reality TV after he woke up in a Mexican hotel room with no recollection of what had happened the night before.

"I just drank so much," he tells Business Insider. "I honestly didn't remember my time there. That's when I knew I had to be done with it."

The "Bachelor" franchise alum had just left his second season of "Bachelor in Paradise" after one night.

The departure marked the culmination of a few rocky years of reality TV show appearances that Bukowski says nearly ruined his career — and his life.

After graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas with a degree in hospitality management, Bukowski had kicked his career off working in sales, first for the New York Islanders and later for Front Row Marketing Services.

"From a career side, I'm going to say I was doing better than 99% of the people my age," he says. "I was really enjoying my job and I was doing well and making good money. I was only going up from there."

Then, in 2012, he says he got an email from the casting department of "The Bachelorette," a show he'd never watched. One of his friends had submitted him as a candidate for the show. With the support of his family, friends, and employers, he says decided to give it a shot. When he was selected as a contestant for the eighth season, he says his supervisors even gave him the time off to pursue the show. Bukowski ended up making it to week eight out of ten and was one of the final four contestants when he was eliminated.

As soon as he returned home, he received another opportunity, this time to appear on the third season of the spinoff series "Bachelor Pad." The season would start shooting in four weeks, and he decided to quit his job. Unlike "The Bachelorette," contestants on "Bachelor Pad" were paid — and given the chance to compete for $250,000.

"I had no idea what the heck I was doing when I was on 'The Bachelorette,'" he tells Business Insider. "I think that's why it was probably my favorite experience, just because I didn't know what to expect. Going on 'Bachelor Pad,' I felt like a pro. I was just on camera for 30 to 40 days and I was confident in myself because I made it all the way to the hometown dates. Going on 'Bachelor Pad,' I kind of went in there confident and more of looking to just have fun, enjoy myself, and maybe win some money."

However, that's not how things played out. Bukowski ended up getting labeled one of the season's villains.

"I didn't even have a Twitter account before these shows and all of a sudden I had 60,000 Twitter followers," Bukowski says. "People are saying things not only about you, but about your family members. That's just the most disheartening thing that you'll ever have happen."

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This is when Bukowski says his career really began to suffer.

Bukowski's dream since college had been to open his own restaurant. After "Bachelor Pad"' he pursued that goal with his business partner and in 2013 opened up the Bracket Room in Arlington, Virginia.

But despite the time commitment it took to run his own restaurant, Bukowski says he still couldn't get the siren song of reality TV out of his head, and he made the "awful decision" to go back on "Bachelor in Paradise" twice and to "party crash" the tenth season of "The Bachelorette," in an appearance that he says was staged.