Nick is pity farming for attention. Something happened and he's compensating. Just wait for the news to break.
View attachment 6652191
He's not wrong that some people see everything a reckless substance abuser does through that lens...and people are quite fond of simple explanations, when in some cases there are other things going on and it's not quite so black & white as it may seem.
In Nick's case, drug/drink misuse and abuse isn't the alpha and the omega, and I don't think most people think it is. The people who know him are saying that either because it's a cheap & easy go-to that doesn't require much investment, or because they don't want to say the real part out loud: that the alpha and the omega of the troubles of Nick's life is Nick's fundamental character - and it is a poor character, a weak character, a bad character.
His problem is lack of integrity and a personality disorder that he embraces, defends, and quite literally glories in. He both thinks he "is" Jesus and has spent time arguing the non-specialness and the fallibility of Jesus (bringing them into alignment even more into a lugnment in his mind), and that Jesus would have loved Nick's impression of Malcolm McDowell's
Caligula.
Nick's spent a life making himself the center of the world in his mind, arranging his immediate circle around that, and expecting the rest of the world to fall in line.
It's amusing how irritated he is that he bit off more than he could chew. He can't stand not having control over everyone touching his life, and it must be a very unsettling realization that not only can he not control the philistines at the gate, but that the philistines don't actually think he's the "center" (of importance, of influence, morally, etc.) of anything except the maelstrom of his own making.
And here, when you pull back the camera and zoom way out - call it the God's eye, or just the bleacher seats - you see that what looks like a massive maelstrom to its originator, surely sweeping the entire world into its swirl, you see what it really is - just dirty bathwater circling the drain.