 I showed pills in this. I obviously was taking pills for the pain of my knee. I only take one pain pill now a night before I go to bed. So I don't feel, don't like get worried for me or anything. I mean, I was worried for me. Like I was like, I don't want to take any more pain pills but I just take one pain pill before bed and I'd be profiting in the morning to reduce swelling. So I do take pills. I feel like I'm in a good head space enough to not abuse them. So that's good. So yeah, as you saw from that clip, Trisha Paytas is back on Pain Killers and I received quite a few messages about this. So I wanted to discuss what is up everybody. This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I try to do is take different topics going on in the YouTube community, try to see what lessons we can learn from them to improve our own mental and emotional well-being. And two things that I'm really passionate about are mental health and addiction recovery. So if you're into any of that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So real quick, I get a lot of messages about people who have a loved one who is struggling with an addiction and they ask me questions and don't know what to do. Well, I wrote a book. It's right here. It's called Caught in the Crossfire. It's only $3, short e-book but I go through different intervention strategies but my main goal of that book is how to stay mentally well, whether or not your loved one gets clean. So I'm gonna link that down in the description and in the pinned comment below. So real quick, before I jump into this, why am I talking about this? For those of you who don't know me, just a quick rundown of my qualifications. First one is, back on June 23rd, I celebrated seven years clean and sober. I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. My primary drug of choice was prescription painkillers. Aside from that, I worked in a drug and alcohol treatment center for a little over three years. We specialized in dual diagnosis treatment. So not only did we treat addiction, we also treated mental health issues. Also, I am halfway done with my CADC which is a certified alcohol and drug counselor license. All right, so that's why I'm gonna be discussing this but big fat disclaimer, I do not personally know Tricia Payness. Okay, I'm going to be sharing my opinions on what I can see and what everybody else can see which is public knowledge, all right? And I'm gonna explain why if I was Tricia Payness's friend or I loved one of hers, I would be worried, okay? Because my main goal with these videos is to use this topic just to get a conversation going because you might have someone in your life who is clean and now because of an injury, they're back on pain meds. And this doesn't always mean that it's gonna lead to a relapse but we're gonna discuss it in this video, all right? So those of you who aren't caught up to speed earlier this year, Tricia Payness, she got clean. Her drug of choice, like me, was prescription painkillers, all right? She got clean, she was talking a lot about recovery and therapy and everything like that since her breakup with Jason Nash. And yeah, she posted a video about withdrawal and everything, right? Well, she's been on tour recently and she's doing all this dancing and stuff like that and she hurt her knee. And this is one of the biggest fears of anybody who is a recovering opioid addict, all right? Like, I remember when I first got clean, I'm like, well, well, well, what if I get hurt? What if I get hurt? I need pain medications, right? So it's one of the biggest fears and I actually eventually did get injured quite a bit. It's happened a few times in my seven years clean but I'll talk about that. So yeah, Tricia Payness, she recently opened up about how she's back on pills but I'll play that clip again for you. I showed pills in this. I obviously was taking pills for the pain of my knee. I only take one pain pill now a night before I go to bed. So I don't feel, don't like get worried for me or anything. I mean, I was worried for me. Like I was like, I don't want to take any more pain pills but I just take one pain pill for a bed and I'd be profiting in the morning to reduce swelling. So I do take pills. I feel like I'm in a good head space enough to not abuse them, so that's good. So again, I do not know Tricia Payness. She might be 1,000% honest right now. I am just sharing if this was somebody in my life or one of the clients I was working with at a treatment center, I'm going to explain why I'd be worried, okay? So one of the main reasons why I'd be worried is because Tricia Payness after she got clean, she didn't completely get sober. It was within that first month of her quitting painkillers that she was still drinking, all right? So like I said, I'm recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Like I had to get to a place where I realized that if I put any type of mind-altering substance, like an addictive substance in my body, I lose control, all right? One of the things that led to my last relapse eight years ago was I thought I could still smoke pot as long as I wasn't doing the pills or drinking, but it just slowly led me back into my addiction. And this is why we often teach people complete abstinence, all right? We try to get down to the root cause of why are you turning to alcohol or drugs in the first place? So that's one of my concerns is that she was still drinking that whole time. The next thing is, Tricia Payness says, don't worry, she's in a really good head space right now. And again, this is just public knowledge, what we've all seen. It doesn't seem like she's been in a good head space, all right? It's been just within the last few weeks that she had her public blow-ups about Jeff Whittock and David Dobrik and the vlog squad and she made those videos saying that she was gonna expose all of them and everything like that. So I don't think she's in that good head space that she said she's in. And this is something that we do, like the disease of addiction, it minimizes, right? And it justifies what we're going through, right? Like, oh yeah, no, I'm totally fine. Don't worry about me. But when you look at it like, no, I'm not in a great head space. Like, listen, I'm seven years clean and sober. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. I am surrounded by drugs and alcohol and everything like that. And I have to keep in check like where I'm at mentally because if I'm in a bad head space, I won't even go places that are serving alcohol. You know what I mean? Because I love going to concerts and things like that. Or I live, like I said, in Las Vegas. It's freaking everywhere. But I have to be honest with myself about where I'm at with my own mental and emotional well-being. But the last thing is like, kind of to piggyback off the good head space is she's been hanging out with Aaron Carter, okay? And if any of you have been watching Aaron Carter, like, dude's not doing well. And I was thinking about doing a video on him because there's a lot that we can discuss when it comes to if you have a family member who's dealing with mental illness and things like that. So if you want me to make a video on that, like, let me know down in the comments below. But anyway, Trisha Payness has been hanging out with him. So I just don't, you know, in my opinion, I don't feel like she's in that good head space. Now, like I said, is it possible, is it possible that Trisha is being completely honest and she's only taking one pain med before she goes to bed and then taking ibuprofen? Yes, all right? So when I first got sober, I had a friend who got sober with me and basically how his addiction started was he broke his neck, okay? Like, he had to have screws in his neck and everything like that. So they gave him the pain meds and that progressed to heroin, all right? And he was clean for, I think a year or two and his neck just started hurting out of nowhere. And he went back to the doctor and was like, yo, what's going on? They did an x-ray and the screws in his neck actually broke, all right? So they had to go back in there and redo the surgery. This dude had two years clean off of prescription opioids, drugs, alcohol, everything, right? So what he did was because like, nobody would expect him to have people go into his neck and screw into his bones and not take anything but he had his meds and he gave them to his sponsor. So that way he had some additional accountability. And again, without knowing Trisha Payness, like that's just one of my concerns is it doesn't seem like she's involved in any type of program. She talks about therapy every now and then but typically for us in recovery, if we have to, have to, have to take these medications, we'll have somebody else dispense them to us because that's one of the issues with addiction. We can't even trust ourselves. But my friend is still clean and sober and this happened, you know, we had to have that surgery read done. It was five years ago. So it is possible, all right? But lastly, I just wanna talk about like, do we need these medications? All right? Pain is a very tricky thing. And I can go on for another hour about this because in the United States, we over prescribe for pain. We prescribe more pain medications than anywhere else on earth. Like you can combine like the next 10 places and we still prescribe more than them. So we treat pain with medications rather than trying to help fix that pain. But anyways, like I said, when I first got sober, I'm like, well, well, what if I get hurt? Well, my mom, she is also in recovery. She is celebrating 14 years in a month or two. And when I first got sober, similar to Trisha Paytas, she tore some ligaments in her knee. And I'm like, oh, sweet. Like, I'm like, mom, cool. You get to take some pain meds, nice, right? Well, my mom, at the time, she was like 50. She didn't take any pain medications at all. Like, what a bad ass, you know what I mean? I was sitting there, I'm like, what, like they even did surgery on her and she flushed the pain meds that they gave her. I'm like, dang. Well, if my mom can get through that, then maybe I can get through some pain too. And yeah, when I was two or three years sober, I got in my very first car accident, which is crazy because I used to drive intoxicated quite a bit and I got in my first car accident sober. It was a head-on car crash and thank God I was wearing my seatbelt and it messed me up. And one of my biggest fears was I was gonna go back on pills and I went to the emergency room and they offered me pills three times. They sent me home with a prescription for Norco and even though I kept denying the pills, they kept trying to give them to me and I didn't take a single pill even though I got into a car wreck, all right? Because the way I live my recovery is in my active addiction, I would do anything to get high, right? So today, the way I live my sobriety is I do anything to avoid getting high. Now, I've never had a limb chopped off or I never had a neck surgery so will I ever need to take a pain medication? Maybe, but today I don't. So I choose not to worry about that, all right? Like many of us in sobriety, we take this thing one thing at a time, all right? So at the end of the day, I hope Trisha Paytas is being honest and she is not abusing these medications. This video was just sharing my opinion if this was somebody in my life, I'd have some concerns. All right, but if you have a loved one who is struggling with addiction, don't forget down in the description and in the pinned comment, you can check out my book, Caught in the Crossfire. It's only three bucks. It's a quick read, has some intervention strategies in there and everything like that. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon as well as everybody who supports the channel in other ways like buying merch like this shirt with a picture of my adorable cat or my books that all helps the channel out. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.