 In light of recent news about Nicole Taylor Dean, as well as her boyfriend Johnny Craig, it's time to talk about addictions. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And what I like to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community, try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. But I also talk about addiction, addiction recovery and treatment and all that stuff. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So yeah, we're going to be talking about addiction today and what I'm going to do because addiction and mental health is such a big issue that it's plaguing so many people around the world. I have a mailing list and what I just did, I updated it. So if you sign up for the mailing list, you'll get a free copy of my book, Hope, How I Overcame Depression, Anxiety and Addiction. So a lot of you asked me about my story. I've dropped little pieces of it in different videos and stuff, but this book is one that I wrote a couple years ago. So if you join the mailing list, it will email you a copy of the book. It's in PDF form so you can read it on your phone or read it on your computer or laptop or tablet or whatever it is. And feel free to take this PDF and send it to someone you know who might be struggling with depression, anxiety or addiction. There's a lot of stuff in there. So I don't know much about Nicole Taylor Dean, but I've had so many people request videos about it. To my understanding, she has a channel about like animals and stuff. She has a ton of animals and a ton of people asked me to make a videos about like animal hoarding and things like that. So actually this video right here where she was like talking about all this animal stuff and I guess she's had pet dies, pets die and all of that. And like I watched it, but I never made a video about it. But yeah, it's something that people have been requesting for months. But now that I understand that there's issues with substance abuse and things like that, things make more sense. So later in this video, I will be talking about addictive personalities and multiple addictions and all that kind of stuff. So full disclaimer, I don't know Nicole Taylor Dean. I do not know Johnny Craig. There is a bunch of stuff going around online. I'm going to read some stuff and all of that, but like I don't know him. I don't have any proof that, you know, they're using substances, but, you know, in some of the tweets that Nicole has sent out and all of that, like, there has been admission of her using substances. All right. But the goal of my video, the goal of this video is to help unpack some of what's been going on in the recent news of all this stuff. So if you're somebody who is struggling with an addiction or you know somebody who is struggling with addiction, I hope to kind of shed some light and explain, you know, how to get help, what might be going on and all that. So those of you who don't know me, I am a drug addict and alcoholic in recovery. I got clean six and a half years ago. I have worked in addiction treatment for over three years. So addiction is something that I'm very, very familiar with and I do a lot of studying and I've been, you know, in class for it and all sorts of stuff. So we're going to take some of the topics and hopefully it will help some people in the long run. All right. So the recent news is that Johnny Craig, he's in a band and they recently released a statement and this is what's gotten a bunch of people talking about addiction, substance abuse, people are talking about heroin use and all that. But anyways, here's a statement that they released. To whom it may concern is with a heavy heart that we announced that Johnny Craig has been removed from the band Slaves. We all have struggles in our daily lives, but for some, those struggles are personally and physically dangerous. There's no secret that Johnny has battled with addiction in his personal life. Sometimes those battles are won and most recently lost. It's also unfair for a band to rely on someone who just can't rely on themselves. Addiction is a disease. And we hope Johnny gets the help that he needs. Unfortunately, Johnny chose his addiction over the band and left them high and dry while checking in for their international flight while he boarded a plane back home. As a band, we've worked too hard to stop now. Fans that have been touched by our music, everyone that has enjoyed our songs, to anyone that has met us as a band and will continue on with Slaves. Unfortunately, due to this, we are forced to cancel our Bristol UK show tonight. Never fear, thankfully, our good friend, Matt McAndrew, who you'd recognize from The Voice, will be filling in on all remaining England and European tour dates to help us in this trying time. We also have some exciting news on the future of Slaves. We think you will be excited coming soon to everyone. Thank you for your continued support. So yeah, this is important. And what we're seeing right here is setting a boundary with someone and no longer enabling them. But as you see, addiction affects everybody. So on average, one out of every 12 people has some kind of addiction to either drugs or alcohol. So that means if you know 12 people, one of them has an addiction problem. That's why we need to start educating people and people need to understand this and all that. But two things, allowing Johnny to stay in the band while he's still using, that is enabling his behavior. You're not getting the consequences of your action. So what it sounds like, it sounds like the band members of Slave have given him multiple chances, but this was the final thing where they're finally like, dude, we got to cut you out. We got to cut you off. Because not only is it affecting Johnny's life, but it's affecting the band. It's also affecting all the fans. So this is a boundary. This is an ultimatum. So for me, when I got sober, the ultimatum I had was like, listen, you're either going to be homeless on the streets or you're going to go into a sober living home. That's it. You know what I'm saying? But if I didn't go into that sober living home and get the help that I needed and stayed clean, my mom would have had me living on the streets. Because I had no money, no place to go because I'd burn bridges with all my friends, all my family. So allegedly the way this story goes is that Johnny went back home to start using with Nicole Taylor Dean. And if you want more on this information and deleted tweets and all that stuff, if you want to research it more, I won't say into the gossip of it, but I know some of you just are. Somebody sent me a link to this Twitter page. It's called TNDT. And it has a bunch of screenshots. There's been a bunch of deleted tweets and all that. So these are all posted up there. So if you want to check that out, go for it. So the first thing let's do, let's talk about couples and addiction. So working in treatment as well as just being in various recovery programs and watching people. One of the most difficult things that I see is a couple who uses together, trying to get clean, right? Like it's very, it's very difficult, if not nearly impossible. I would honestly say in my years of working in treatment and my six and a half years of being clean, I've only seen like out of thousands of couples, I've really only see a few where it works out. And one of the issues is, it's just like, it's very difficult when the person closest to you in your life isn't putting in as much effort as you. I'll never forget. One of the first couples I met when I got clean, the wife and the husband were coming to meetings and it seemed like the husband didn't really want to be there but the wife was like really into it and whatever. And within weeks of me meeting them, we found out that the wife actually overdosed and passed away and they had like three or four kids together. So the guy was left alone with those kids. And it's just a really difficult, difficult situation. That was the first death that I experienced in my recovery. Like once you get sober, I often say it's like entering in like a war, right? Like you never know who is going to be the next one to fall off. Like some of you know, like in the last three and a half years or so, I've lost over 76 people, right? And it's absolutely crazy. But the reason why I see a lot of couples fail to do this, right? It's not only the back and forth enabling but it seems like one person always has more willingness than the other, right? And typically in a relationship, both people need to be working on themselves. So when like both people are going to like separate treatment centers or separate meetings and working on their own thing, they have separate therapists or separate sponsors or whatever, right? But in most times what you see and one of the reasons why we say like if you're single, don't date your first year is because a lot of people think that the other person's love is going to keep them clean, right? But the other part of it is is people who struggle with addiction, they have an issue and it's with the prefrontal cortex again where they justify and rationalize their behavior. So it's like, oh, my partner's using so I can use too, right? But it's also hard to stay clean when someone's bringing drugs into the house or even bringing alcohol into the house. So that's actually something else that came up in this story was, you know, Johnny saying he was clean, but he was still drinking. And there's something that's called cross-addictions, all right? This is why complete abstinence is typically the only way to stay clean. Like there's not enough research on people who can do one substance, but not the other. But in most cases, if somebody is still using one substance, they always go back to their substance of choice. For example, my drug of choice was prescription opiates, all right? And during one of my times that I was clean, I was smoking weed, right? Because I needed to sleep. And what it was, I often say it was like still having one foot in the door of addiction. So when opioids were presented to me again, it was a lot easier to turn back to them because in my mind, at least, I wasn't fully clean. So it helped me justify going back to my drug of choice. I think the saddest part, the saddest part about this is the public animosity. And listen, I get it, I get it. People, like especially like if I look at the band mates of slaves or people who have been fans of Nicole Taylor Dean, like people get hurt. People get hurt and it's our natural instinct to lash out. And when I was doing research on this video, you see so many people calling Nicole Taylor Dean out for her lies and even Nicole Taylor Dean, she's like getting in these, or wait, Taylor Nicole Dean, I'm sorry. She's getting in these public back and forths with people and stuff like that. And it's just sad. People with an addiction have a disease and you're arguing with somebody who is not in the right state of mind, okay? Like calling out a drug addict on their lies is really doing little to nothing until they get into a better state of mind, all right? So like it's just really sad seeing all this stuff going on. Now, what people will say is I'm doing it out of a place of concern, but something that we know based on research is that shaming people isn't going to help them. That's why I'm against, you know, the stuff that goes on with, you know, Amberlynn Reed, the stuff that goes on with Eugenia Cooney and all that because when you are beating someone up constantly, it makes them justify their use even more if that makes sense. And it's really hard. It's really hard to get somebody to get help. And I'm not saying be overly nice to them because something I was talking with one of my subscribers about before I recorded this video is that Nicole Taylor Dean has a lot of fans who will come and defend her. So on the opposite side of that, you get enabling, right? So it's like, what do you do? And that's why this disease of addiction is so messed up because if you're too hard on them, it might make them want to use more. But if you're too nice to them, it can enable their behavior, right? So there's a bunch of different strategies on how to talk to somebody who has an addiction. But these people like Demi Lovato, for example, being in the public light and struggling with an addiction, it just makes the situation so, so, so, so much more difficult to deal with. Like for example, if for some reason, for some reason I relapsed, right? And I have this huge following now on YouTube. It would be very, very difficult for all of you to find out and all of the backlash I would get online and all that stuff, like I can only imagine. But I'll tell you this, it gives me one more reason to stay clean so I ain't gotta deal with that stuff. Now let's talk about the animal hoarding, okay? So something I saw in one of the tweets that Nicole, Taylor, Nicole Dean was going back and forth with somebody. My sister's name's Nicole. I think that's why I keep saying Nicole. But Taylor Nicole Dean, going back and forth with somebody, like she talked about how a friend, someone took advantage of her because they knew she had an addictive personality. So that video I mentioned right there, like something that Taylor Nicole Dean talked about was how she would buy animals when, you know, she was feeling down when she was feeling depressed and doing things like that. And like that, that she doesn't understand yet is why a lot of people are so upset. So, you know, we're seeing her do it with animals, but I've seen people, and this isn't just drug addicts and alcoholics. I've seen people who have children to think it's going to fix them, right? Like they're like, oh, I'm sad, I'm depressed. Oh, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have a child, right? So like when you're bringing a living thing in to fix you, like this is one of the many reasons why I say we are so selfish and self-centered. So the other issue is when you look at somebody who is addicted to drugs or alcohol and having that many animals, of course they're going to die. Of course there's going to be more accidents. Like it is impossible to fully care for that many animals while you're abusing substances, right? Like I didn't get clean until my son was three years old and I was just a terrible father. Like I was there, like I was physically there, but I wasn't mentally there. Like thank God, like I'm so fortunate that nothing crazy happened. Like my son didn't get injured or anything like that because I was high. How am I supposed to fully monitor my son who was one, two, three years old? Those first few years of his life where kids are like on a kamikaze mission every five freaking minutes, it is so crazy that nothing bad happened to him. You know what I mean? But this is something that I would imagine Taylor and Nicole Dean doesn't even have the clarity to understand is that her addiction is one of the reasons that these animals aren't being taken care of in the way that they should be taken care of, right? And the other issue is, is that I see parents do this, but I can imagine pet parents doing this too. They don't get the help that they need because they have to take care of these pets or because they have to take care of these children, right? So you know, when I'm talking to parents who are afraid to get clean or go to treatment for you know, 30, 60, 90 days, like it's like we gotta find a way for these kids or in Taylor and Nicole Dean's case for animals to be taken care of why you can get the help that you need. Like I was away from my son for a year, a fricking year getting my life together. So my entire first year sober, I only saw my son once, all right? Because I knew, I knew that if I didn't get clean and if I didn't stay clean, that kid was no longer going to have a father in his life because I was going to die, all right? But anyways, I hope this shed some light on addiction and what they might be struggling with. But if you're struggling with addiction or if you know somebody who's struggling with addiction, I hope it offered some clarity. You know what I mean? Like go get help, call somebody, do some research, like look into rehabs, look into you know, 12-step meetings. If you can't afford rehab, 12-step meetings are free. Even if you don't wanna do 12-step meetings, check out my playlist. You guys, it makes me, I'm sorry to say this, but it makes me wanna shove my head through a wall when some of you asked me to make more videos about addiction, right? About addiction. I have an entire playlist called Ask an Attic and it has hundreds, hundreds of videos in there all dedicated to addiction. So check it out. I even had an old video I put in there about how to go to rehab without insurance. So if you're wondering how to do that, go do it. I also have a video about 12-step alternatives, like refuge recovery, smart recovery and some others, all right? So go check out those videos, get help or educate yourself some more so you can possibly get someone else some help, all right? And don't forget, if you would like, sign up for my email list. It's gonna be down in the description as well as down in the pinned comment. Sign up and you'll get a free copy of my book about how I recovered, all right? But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing and if you would like to become a patron and get some exclusive content, be part of our monthly group calls or one-on-one calls, whatever it is, click or tap on that Patreon icon right there, all right? Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.