Middletown Woman Airs On 'Naked And Afraid' May 12

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — This Mother's Day, after the brunch and the flowers, you might want to tune into the Discovery channel to watch a mom who grew up in Middletown strip down and dirty on "Naked And Afraid."

Yes, Trish Bulinsky, a 47-year-old mother of three (and grandmother!) from Middletown, said she was actually motivated to audition for "Naked and Afraid" because, "My husband had been aggravating me. My kids are getting older. I needed to get deep and challenge myself. I just wanted to do something different."

So she went through the grueling application process for the show, now in its tenth season, and was selected last year. Last May, Bulinsky spent 21 days trying to survive in the Amazon rain forest with a two-person film crew and a strange man. As the show's title implies, both she and him were completely naked the entire time. Bulinsky currently lives in North Carolina, but she was born and raised in Port Monmouth, and still owns a home in Middletown.

Her children, ages 16, 19 and 27, went to Harmony Elementary School and Thorne Middle School, and her oldest, a son, went to Middletown High School North. Bulinsky herself is a 1989 graduate of Middletown North.

She had only seen two episodes of the show before she auditioned. The premise is that a man and a woman meet in a setting Discovery has chosen, be it a beach, a forest or a jungle. They are given a few secret survival items and a map, and are told they need to reach their destination within 21 days.

So, what was it like being stripped down in front of strangers?

"I grew up going to Gunnison Beach (Sandy Hook's nude beach) all my teenage years and in my 20s and 30s, so being naked is not an issue," she said. "I'm also naked in the woods around my house all the time. Also, I've had three kids. I've aged; gravity has taken over. I'm not 17 anymore. So my body is far from perfect. But I don't care. I wear it like a badge of honor."

"And once he got naked, it was like, OK. You get over that really quick. You check out the goods; you see that what he has is just like everybody else's and then you say, 'Let's find out how to make a shelter.'"

The man Bulinsky was paired with, Jeremy, was in his early 30s and from Oklahoma. In case anyone was hoping for an Adam and Eve revival, there was also zero sexual or romantic tension between them.

"First of all, I'm married, so it's not going to happen. Also, let's just say we had an interesting time out there," she laughed, alluding to some tension with her co-star. "All I will say is we survived together. It was a Jersey girl meets Oklahoma boy."

(Side note: Patch checked with Discovery, and there is nothing in the show's production rules that prevent participants from trying to cover themselves. But Bulinsky said trying to secure a banana leaf around her waist was quickly forgotten as the two focused on the more pressing tasks of finding food and shelter.)

Before the show started, they were given a half-day briefing on the area from a local naturalist and told what plants and animals to stay away from, to make sure they didn't eat or touch anything poisonous. Other than that, they were on their own. The biggest concern day to day for the duo was finding shelter and food.

"They put you in a place that's close to fresh water, so you can drink. And usually there is some sort of food source — you just have to be able to catch it or trap it," she said.

Hunger — bordering on starvation, in fact — was a very real issue.

"We ate a lot of plants from the ground. We tried to catch fish," she said. In one of the publicity photos above, you can see she and her partner trying to weave a basket to catch fish from a nearby river. "If there was a guinea pig, I would have eaten the hell out of it. I would have eaten a snake. That's how hungry I was. At night, I would fall asleep dreaming of ziti pizza."

But what about the very real medical concerns? What if one of them did pass out from hunger or exhaustion? Or if they did eat a highly toxic plant? Or were bitten by a spider? Such instances have in fact happened on the show, such as when past participants have suffered machete cuts or broken bones. Some participants have also cried uncle before the three weeks are over.

"There was always a medic within a few hundred yards away, but they were hidden with the film crew," she said. She and her partner also wore necklaces that have hidden microphones, so they could instantly call out for help. But the two-person film crew that followed them around was also very discreet, she said, and she usually forgot they were there. At night, when it got dark, the staff would retreat into a tent a good distance away. Infrared cameras captured everything that happened in the dark, "including if a tarantula decided to come down for a little visit."

"There was everything in this jungle: Tarantulas, snakes, ants that could take over the world," she said. "We slept under rocks, in caves, on the jungle floor, on the beach. The best place to sleep was a shelter we constructed ourselves out of jungle vines. It took us two days to build that. But every day we had to work on re-fortifying the roof, to prevent rain from coming in."

You may not be surprised to learn that Bulinsky loves the outdoors and loves to camp. She grew up camping with her Dad in the backwoods of Virginia and Pennsylvania.

"I was actually the little girl who would grab snakes and bring them into my tent to sleep with me at night," she laughs. "I would crumble crackers on top of ants' nests to watch them work. I've always been fascinated with how things outside the human world."

But no amount of camping could have prepared her for what this experience was like.

"I would wake up every day and say, 'This my plan: I'm going to get water, I'm going to hunt for food.' My mind wanted to do it, but my body would just say no. I was so weak and so tired."

Incredibly, the experience helped her relate to her oldest son, who has struggled with opiate addiction. He grew up in Middetown and still lives there, and has a 6-year-old daughter, her grandchild.

"There was this daily battle between my mind and my body. My mind remained strong, but my body wasn't. All of a sudden, I had this moment in the jungle where I said, Ah ha! This is what addiction is like. The addict will say mentally, 'I'm going to quit, I don't want to live like this anymore.' But their body craves the drugs."

Seeing her son battle addiction, "is the hardest challenge that any parent can be faced with."

Did Trish and her partner make it to the end? You'll have to watch Sunday night at 8 p.m. to find out. And even if they did, they don't win any money or prizes.

"There's just the badge of honor and mindset to know you can conquer anything life throws at you," she said. "This is all about people facing their fears."

At the end, she said she and her partner became "like animals" in the jungle.

"After 21 days, we could actually smell the larger film crew when they came into the forest. It's not like they were wearing perfume or cologne or making loud noises, either," she said. "You just get so in tune with your natural surroundings that you can smell another human."

"Your animal instincts come right back. It's like being able to smell a rain storm coming," she continued. "It makes you appreciate wild animals: How in tune they are with their senses and their environment. It reminds us that we are all animals. It's such a freeing feeling."

Tune in this Sunday, May 12 at 8 p.m. on the Discovery Channel to watch Trish Bulinsky in "Naked and Afraid." Follow her on Instagram @trishbulinsky