A reflexive verb is a verb that can be used with a reflexive pronoun (the equivalent of English ‘myself, himself’) indicating that the subject and the object are one and the same: mi lavo ‘I wash’; si è fatto male ‘he hurt himself’. Sometimes the verb can only be used reflexively, and no object is actually present: molte volte i drogati si vergognano di quello che fanno ‘often drug addicts are ashamed of what they do’.