in light of recent news about Taylor Nicole Dean as well as her boyfriend
Johnny Craig is 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 talked about addiction addiction recovery and
treatment and all that stuff so if your internet makes you subscribe and ring
that notification bell so yeah we're gonna be talking about addiction today
and what I'm gonna do because addiction and you know mental health is such a big
issue that is 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
of 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 you
know computer or laptop or tablet or whatever it is and like feel free to
take this PDF and send it to someone you know you know who might be struggling
with depression and anxiety or addiction there's a lot of stuff in there so I
don't know much about Nicole Taylor deep
I've had so many people request videos about it to my understanding she has a
channel about like animals and stuff and she has a ton of animals and a ton of
people asked me to make of videos about my animal hoarding and things like that
so actually this video right here where she's like talking about all this animal
stuff and I guess she's had pet does pets die and all 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 alright so full disclaimer I don't know
Taylor Nicole Dean I do not know Jonny Craig um there is a bunch of stuff going
around online I'm gonna read some stuff and all that but like I don't know I I
don't have any proof that you know they're using substances but you know in
some of the you know tweets that Nicole is sent out and all of that like there
has been admission of her using substances alright 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 gonna take some of the topics and
hopefully it will help some people in the long run alright so the recent news
is that Jonny 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 the
statement that they released to whom it may concern it's with a heavy heart that
we announced that Johnny Craig has been removed from the banned slaves we all
have struggles in our daily lives for some those struggles are personally
and physically dangerous there is no secret that Jonny Craig 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 Jonny Craig 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 recognized 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 like what we're seeing right here is
setting a boundary with someone and you know no longer in and enabling them
right but as you see like addiction affects everybody so on average 1 out of
every 12 people has some kind of addiction to either drugs or alcohol
right so that means if you know 12 people one of them has an addiction
problem that's what we need to start educating people and people need to
understand this and all that but like two things like like allowing Johnny to
stay in the band while he's still using that is enabling his behavior right
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 with a phone like dude we got to cut you out we got to cut
you off right because not only is it you know affecting Johnny's life but it's
affecting the band it's also affecting all the fans right so this is a boundary
this is an ultimatum so like for me when I got sober like the ultimatum I had was
like listen you're either gonna be homeless on the streets or you're gonna
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 cuz 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 Taylor Nicole Dean and if you want if you want more on this
information and deleted tweets and like all that stuff if you're into like you
know just if you want to research it more I won't say into the gossip of it
but some I know some of you just are right um some somebody sent me a link to
this Twitter page it's called like TN DT 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 in let's do let's
talk about couples in addiction so working in treatment as well as just
being in various you know 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 it's very is 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 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
you know isn't putting in as much effort at you I'll never forget one of the the
first couples I met when I got clean you know the the wife and the husband were
coming to meetings and it seemed like you know the husband didn't really want
to be there but the wife was like really into it you know 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 and
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 seventy six people right and
it's 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 we might both
people are going to like separate treatment centers or separate meetings
and working on their own thing that separate their apiece 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 there's 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 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 to 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's 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 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 I 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 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 like when I was like doing research on this video you see so many people
like calling the Kol Taylor Dean how for her lies and like even Nicole Taylor
Dean she's like getting in like these or wait Taylor Nicole D and I'm sorry she's
getting into these like public back-and-forth with people and stuff
like that and it's just it's just sad like people with an addiction have a
disease and you're arguing with somebody who is not in the right state of mind
okay like pulling out a drug addict on their lives it's 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 read the stuff
that goes all with Eugenia Cooney and all that because when you are beating
someone up constantly it 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 him because
something I was talking with one of my subscribers about before I recorded this
video is that Taylor Nicole 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 this disease of addiction is so messed up
because if they'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 that public light and
struggle 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 had this huge following now on youtube it would be
very very difficult for all of you to find out and all the backlash I would
get online and you know 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 got to deal with
that stuff now let's talk about the animal hoarding okay so something I saw
and one of the tweets that Nicole Taylor Taylor Nicole Dean was going back and
forth with somebody my sister's name's Nicole I think that's like his Saint
Nicole but Taylor Nicole Dean going back and
forth with somebody like she talked about how a friend of someone took
advantage of her because they know she had an addictive personality so that
video I mentioned right there like something that Taylor Nicole Dean talked
about was how she would bite animals when you know she was feeling
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 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 gonna do
I'm gonna 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-centred 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 gonna die of
course is 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 I was 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 lives where kids are like on a kamikaze mission every five minutes it
is so crazy that nothing bad happened to him you know what I mean but this is
something that you know I I would imagine
Taylor Nicole Dean doesn't even have the clarity to understand is that you know
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 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 um you know
what 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 Nicole Dean's case we're animals to be taken care of why you can
get the help that you need like I was away from my son
a year a freaking 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 alright but anyways I hope this sheds
some light on you know 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 but like go
get help call somebody do some research like
looking to rehabs looking to you know 12-step meetings if you can't afford a
rehab 12-step meetings are free even if you don't want to do 12-step meetings
check out my playlist you guys it makes me I'm sorry to say this but it
makes me want to shove my head through a wall when some of you asked me to make
more videos about an addiction right about addiction I have an entire
playlist called ask an addict and it has hundreds hundreds of videos in there all
dedicated to addiction so check it out I even have 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 alright so go check out those videos get
help or educate yourself some more so you can possibly get someone else
somehow alright and don't forget if you would like sign up for my email list
that's gonna be down in the description as well as down in the pin comment sign
up and you'll get a free copy of my book about like how I recovered alright
anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please give it a
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alright thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time