by Carter, Nick
I STOPPED LIVING AS IF I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT THE FUTURE.
We were in denial, obviously. The fact is that our bodies didn’t know the difference between just partying and serious addiction. Our livers, brains, kidneys and hearts were suffering from just as much damage as the vital organs in those older bar flies and die-hard clubbers.
You can pretend you don’t have demons. You can think of yourself as young and bulletproof, or as someone just having fun. But sooner or later, your body will speak the truth, and you will crash and burn. Or worse, you’ll hurt someone else.
Like most binge drinkers, I rationalized my heavy drinking by saying I didn’t do it every day, or I never did it before six o’ clock at night. I also convinced myself that I could stop any time I wanted to. But when my therapist talked to me about my drinking, he asked how I’d feel if I killed someone by driving drunk, or what if my young fans saw me wasted on the streets some night? What if I was kicked out of Backstreet for being a drunk?
The truth is, you can hide from the demons, but you can’t hide from the consequences. If you are acting like the king or queen of denial when it comes to binge drinking or drug abuse, you certainly aren’t alone. My friends and I were there and so are many other people of all ages and economic levels. I’ve seen reports that indicate nearly nineteen percent of those between the ages of 12 and 20 have tried binge drinking and a CDC survey found that as many as one quarter of all high school students and adults between the ages of 18 and 35 have done it.
Experts say that more than thirty million adults binge drink now, and that number isn’t decreasing. I was also surprised to learn that more than forty thousand people die each year in the United States because of it—that’s half of all alcohol-related deaths in the country. Medical reports say that not all binge drinkers are alcoholics, though most have serious alcohol abuse problems.
The toll is steep. One study reported that those who binge drink are fourteen times more likely to drive while intoxicated than moderate drinkers. Approximately five thousand young people under the legal drinking age die from alcohol-related causes each year, but those are just the easy stats to collect. Who knows how many people die prematurely because of the damage they’ve done to their bodies and minds from alcohol and drug abuse?
Medical research has found evidence that binge drinking can affect the development of brains in teenagers, whose bodies typically haven’t reached full maturity yet. According to one study, binge-drinking teens may actually suffer a loss of white matter in their brains, which is the tissue that affects learning and controls communication.
Drinking until you drop is a huge trend on college campuses in particular, but it’s happening off campus too. I’ve heard that there are concerns about an increase in binge drinking among women with children. I read a few years ago about a woman who killed herself and seven others in a head-on collision while driving the wrong-way on a highway in New York State. She was en route home from a camping trip with five children in the car including her son, daughter and three nieces all under the age of nine. Police found a bottle of vodka in the car and subsequent tests showed that she’d had the equivalent of ten drinks in her system and that she’d been smoking marijuana too.
It’s one thing to endanger your own life with reckless drinking and drug use, but can you imagine killing your own children, loved ones and other innocent people?
BINGE AND A BUMP
As I mentioned earlier, my friends and I would often take a hit of cocaine late in the night so we could keep partying. It’s a pretty common practice among the clubbing set especially.
At the time, I thought feeling more awake and pumped up was a good idea, but I later found out that when you drink heavily and then do cocaine on top of it, some weird and dangerous reactions occur in the body. For one thing, cocaine is a stimulant that sends alcohol more quickly to the brain, so if you’ve been binge drinking, cocaine will make you drunker faster. Worse than that, the mix of alcohol and coke in your liver can create a toxic chemical called cocaethylene. This chemical is even nastier than it sounds. I’m told it is the only known example of the body creating a third drug after you’ve taken two others. Along with damaging your liver, cocaethylene may also cause serious heart problems or even heart attack.
When I started looking into this for reasons I’ll explain later, I also discovered that there are some potentially serious dangers to drinking while using many prescription drugs, too; especially depressants because the combination increases the depressant effects of alcohol. Adderall, an amphetamine used to treat ADD and other disorders and often taken by college students to help them focus while studying, should never be mixed with alcohol, nor should sleep medications for obvious reasons. Even aspirin, antihistamines, ibuprofen and acetaminophen can cause problems to your liver or stomach if you drink with them in your system.
My research into all of the dangers of mixing alcohol and drugs came only after I’d abused my own body and mind for years by drinking and taking whatever drug was offered. I never thought of my binge drinking and drug use as an addiction, but in many ways, I was an addict. Acknowledging that I wasn’t just a fun-loving party guy, but someone with a serious problem, was a really tough but necessary step toward changing my life.
In my heart and mind, I knew that there was something more to my heavy drinking and drug use than simply wanting to have a good time with my buddies. I was afraid to ask myself what the real reason was because I didn’t want to deal with that demon. My therapist helped me understand that you can’t change your life for the better if you refuse to honestly look at what drives your self-destructive behavior. Sooner or later, you have to ask, “Why am I doing this?” Am I really just looking for a good time or am I self-medicating so I don’t have to face my fears? Is this the only way I can deal with the pain? The depression? The emptiness in my life?
I’D GET ANTSY AND LONELY AND THE DEMONS WOULD COME OUT TO TAUNT ME.
Like many people who abuse drugs and alcohol, I pretended that passing out or getting sick night after night was no big deal. Everyone else was doing it, I thought. I certainly had friends who were much bigger drinkers and drug users than I was. Of course, I was playing the denial game, trying to convince myself and everyone else that I was in control and that my behavior was perfectly normal. Some people can snap themselves out of that self-delusional pattern in one of their more lucid, sober moments. Others need the help of friends, family or professionals. I encourage you to do whatever works for you, but urge you to do it before it’s too late.
Eventually I realized that rather than trying to break self-destructive behavioral patterns, it’s much easier to replace them with more constructive activities. Instead of going drinking every night, for example, I began working out, reading motivational books, and focusing on expanding my mind and building up my body. My therapist helped me learn that replacing the highs of heavy drinking and drug use with the much longer-lasting highs of a good work out or self-education would take a lot of the stress and anxieties out of my life.
Part of my problem was that my career led to a lifestyle where I had long periods of intense activity including touring, recording and traveling, followed by long periods with much more idle time on my hands. I didn’t know what to do with myself during the slower times on the road or at home. I’d get antsy and lonely and the demons would come out to taunt me. To hide from them, I’d call up my drinking buddies and hit the bars.
Finding other ways to spend my free time was a big step in the right direction. I began using that time to explore new career opportunities, healthier lifestyles, and new subjects that had intrigued me.
PROMISES TO KEEP
I didn’t discover these methods for breaking my addiction to binge drinking and drugs until I committed to changing my life. Because I had no idea where to start, I figured I’d ask for some help.
That first step, when I called my publicist to accompany me to rehab, wasn’t an easy one to take. I remember sitting a
nd crying in my car for what seemed like hours before driving to get her. We then drove to Promises, an addiction treatment center in a big, old craftsman-style house in West L.A.
I WAS IN A TRANCE AS WE WALKED IN.
I was in a trance as we walked in. My publicist explained that I was still under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, and maybe Ecstasy too. The admissions person calmly asked me a series of questions as if this was a normal thing—having a totally wasted boy-band singer walk in blitzed and scared out of his mind.
While I was being given a tour of the place, I recognized other celebrities in residence. Some of them tried to hide their faces. Others looked at me like, “It’s about time you checked in.”
Seeing them made the reality of my situation hit all the harder. Promises was obviously a well-run, comfortable place, but I wasn’t sure if it was for me. I wasn’t much for structured environments like this. It felt too confining. Maybe I needed to do this on my own, I thought.
I told the Promises staff member that I wanted to go home and think about the residential program. He suggested that I begin my treatment as an outpatient patient, which would allow me to come back for counseling and therapy. Really, I’d decided that before anyone else could help me, I needed to get my mind cleansed and my thinking straightened out. The only way I could see doing that was to remove myself from the poisoned environment I’d been living in.
IT FELT TOO CONFINING.
Then the thought hit me: Cool Springs. I need to go back to Cool Springs.
PERSONAL NOTES
CHAPTER SIX
COOL SPRINGS REHAB
I WAS A wreck during the recording of Backstreet’s Unbreakable album in 2006. I knew I was seriously mistreating my body and that I wasn’t living up to my true potential.
I was so depressed that I couldn’t contribute a lot to the songwriting process or do much else on the album aside from singing in the studio. I was in a steep downward spiral, dealing with problems clearly of my own making.
AS MUCH AS I LONGED TO MAKE A CHANGE, I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT LIFE WOULD BE LIKE IF I GAVE UP MY DEPENDENCIES.
I wanted to stop partying and getting wasted, but I was afraid to. As much as I longed to make a change, I didn’t know what life would be like if I gave up my dependencies. I was like a guy who freezes halfway up while climbing a wall. I knew I had to make a move, but I was afraid to let go long enough to reach higher.
Fear of the unknown can hold you back; so if you ever find yourself locked up like that, knowing that you need to make a change but afraid to pursue something better, ask yourself: What’s the worst that could happen? Then consider: Is it better or worse than where you are now? Sometimes we subconsciously equate change with death. We’re afraid that if we fail or fall short, something in us will die. But in most cases, when you let go to reach for something better, you actually improve your situation.
I was trapped in a self-destructive lifestyle. I knew I needed to break free. Thoughts of escape kept coming to me, though I felt more like I needed to run toward something better. Your life is the product of the decisions you make along the way, and my decisions had been consistently bad for a long stretch in my twenties.
I WAS LIKE A GUY WHO FREEZES HALFWAY UP WHILE CLIMBING A WALL.
Have you ever felt like you weren’t the person you wanted to be, or the person you were meant to be? In my case, things just seemed out of synch (no reference to that other boy band intended!). I was lucky to have my music and BSB because other than that, I was lost. My relationships with my family members weren’t going well and I hadn’t found a girlfriend yet who seemed interested in anything other than my celebrity status, which I never felt particularly comfortable with myself.
My therapist later taught me about the concepts of the authentic self and the inner critic. Basically, whether we know it or not, most of us have certain principles and values that make up the moral code by which we live. These values include ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, proper and improper. Most of these are based in common sense standards that society in general views as good for our shared quality of life. Few would argue, for example, that honesty is usually the best policy, that fairness is better than selfishness, and that it’s best to treat other people like you would want to be treated.
We live consciously and subconsciously according to the moral code that we’ve created for ourselves based on how we grew up and what we’ve learned along the way. If you were lucky enough to have parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, or other adults who guided you and worked to instill strong values within you, then you likely are very conscious of those values when you make decisions.
My parents weren’t big on instilling such values in us—at least not intentionally. They did provide us with some good examples of hard work, but they never talked about other values, principles or moral codes, as I mentioned earlier. Since my formal education ended at such a young age, I didn’t get much help in that department from teachers or coaches either.
Still, over the years, I did develop my own set of principles. I didn’t always live by them, but I used them to measure my own behavior and the behavior of people I met. I came to appreciate traits like honesty, excellence, continuous growth and trustworthiness.
INTERIOR WARNING SYSTEM
I sincerely wanted to live according to those values, but as I entered my mid-twenties, I sensed that I’d turned my back on many of them. It felt as though my life had come off the tracks. I didn’t much like or respect myself. If you ever have feelings like that, my advice is to pay attention to them. Our survival instincts are strong, but sometimes we tend to ignore them. We get busy or comfortable or scared. Change can be frightening, but when your instincts are screaming for you to save yourself, the prospect of not making a change can be the scariest thing of all.
IT FELT AS THOUGH MY LIFE HAD COME OFF THE TRACKS.
When we work in the recording studio, we put in long and often intense hours, but there’s also lots of time spent waiting for the studio engineers to perform their magic. Downtime was my downfall. In our free hours I was constantly partying, going out to clubs every night and often hitting the bars during the day. I was surrounded by an entourage of people addicted to the same party mentality. Our binges kept getting worse and worse, lasting until three or four in the morning when we’d end the night in the homes of strangers. We’d be obliterated to the point where we’d wake up the next morning not knowing where we were or how we’d gotten there.
The only time I felt good during that stretch was when we moved our recording sessions to Sound Kitchen Studios, just south of Nashville in an area known as Cool Springs. While the name Cool Springs might conjure images of a backwater town, that was not the case. There is a big Galleria mall there surrounded by shops and restaurants. Beyond those shops, in the town of Franklin, there are hilly, wooded neighborhoods with nice, comfortable homes.
The area reminded me of the times I spent with my Grandpa Carter, who was from Chattanooga—a beautiful part of Tennessee. He later moved to Jamestown, NY, and when we lived in Florida, we would drive from Tampa up through Tennessee on our way to visit him and my grandma. These trips provided some of my few cherished memories of childhood. Dad would pile all of us into a van, and for me the best part of the trek was driving through the mountains in Grandpa’s home state. I was fascinated by the Tennessee countryside, which was much more dramatic than anything I’d seen in Florida. I felt as though there was something healing about that part of the country.
It’s probably no coincidence that I was drawn to Tennessee and ended up buying a home there for myself when I got older. Since I’ve mostly lived in urban or heavy residential areas, I find it comforting to be in a more rural setting at times. I like the slower pace, the normalcy and the family feel of Cool Springs. For all of these reasons I felt better there, but my friends in the area were a major factor too.
We were staying at a hotel near the studio so I really didn’t explore the area much u
ntil I had an opportunity to hang out with Andrew Fromm, a great songwriter who had two songs on our Millennium album. We were working at Sound Kitchen Studios with him and Dan Muckala, another award-winning songwriter and producer, when Andrew invited me to the nearby house he’d just moved into after coming to the Nashville area.
Andrew is this Jewish guy from New Jersey who moved to Tennessee and discovered that he loves the country life. He drove me to his new place in Cool Springs, which spans two adjoining Nashville suburbs, Brentwood and Franklin. He was real proud of his home and excited about settling down in such a laid back area with so many creative and talented musicians. He is a very grounded, clean-living guy who doesn’t drink or do drugs. Back then, Andrew was single, but now he has a beautiful wife and son.
Being around such positive and healthy people was a big change for me. I felt like I could relax and breathe around them. Their idea of partying was nothing like the Hollywood crowd’s. We weren’t in Cool Springs that long, but I found myself thinking several times during our stay that it might be nice to have my own place there someday, just to get away from the craziness of life on the road or in L.A.
GOIN’ COUNTRY
Cool Springs came to mind again after I had my Night of the Zombies crash and burn. When I walked out of Promises rehab center in Los Angeles, I knew that I needed to get away from the whole 24/7 Hollywood party scene. I wanted to clean up my act, but it was evident there’d be no chance of doing that if I stayed around people who partied all the time.
I FELT LIKE I COULD RELAX AND BREATHE AROUND THEM.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of heading to Tennessee. Cool Springs and the town of Franklin seemed perfect because there’s a big music scene and my friends there were better influences on me. I knew they wouldn’t be pushing me to go out night after night. I envied their lives in many ways because they seemed so content and grounded. So, I headed to the hills of Tennessee to find the person I wanted to be.