You wouldn't call having your kids taken away, completely losing a high-paying career, getting your house ransacked by cops, pleading guilty to a felony, having your reputation being absolutely ruined, being considered a child abuser and possibly even a child molester, and on top of that, being The Biggest Cuck in the Universe, at least a bit of a problem?
It definitely is, but I tend to think that the drug use was a second order problem rather than the cause of those things. That said, causality is very difficult to sort out in those cases.
Lots of people -- quite reasonably -- associate drug use with sociopathic behaviour, and they immediately assume that drug use is the causal factor. The truth is though, sociopaths like taking drugs. Not all addicts are sociopaths, but it's unusual to find a sociopath who isn't also an addict. They're self-centred, hedonistic and don't give a flying fuck about the impact of their behaviour on others. When the money runs out, they engage in predatory behaviour to get the money to buy more.
Rekieta's drug use started really late in life. He was definitely drinking heavily during the period of major success. The amount he was consuming was way over the amounts anybody would recommend, but people weren't really calling it out. Nobody was using it as a reason to avoid his shows.
The point at which he starts using seems to have been around Anime Matsuri or his first trip to Hedonism. That's not THAT long ago. But I'd also argue that his slide into lolcowism has already begun at this point. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I think it's a mistake to see his drug use as the cause of his slide. It was his arrogance, his vanity, his clinical narcissism that was responsible for his slide in quality and his alienation of his friends and audience. I think his clinical narcissism was also the thing that was fuelling his drug use. "I'm smarter than everybody else. Not only can I use copious amounts of drugs -- I can do them on my show while thousands watch me do it and nobody will be any the wiser."
But the real loss of his friends only came AFTER he got busted, I think. Most of those lawtubers were still happy to kiss the lawpope's ring up until that point.
And he's only been using illicits for a year or two at that point. In my experience, a lot of people can engage in heavy end recreational drug use and might fuck up bigly before they start modifying their behaviour -- but modify their behaviour they do. And at the end of the day, the only person how he categorizes his drug using behaviour to is Nick himself. Use what you want, don't use at all -- I couldn't give a fuck either way. But his life has very definitely gotten away from him and his drug use is definitely a component in that. But there won't be any physical dependence and his use definitely has become a problem. It's already become a problem by the time the police are getting warrants issued.
But a normal person wouldn't have much difficulty making the changes to their life that they need at this point in their drug using career. Again, with Rekieta I don't think the problem is his drug use as much as his narcissism. He'll never accept the idea of somebody else imposing their definition of reality upon him. And I think that's a bigger obstacle to him making the changes in his life that he needs to make if he wanted to attempt to get back to where he used to be. Of course, Rekieta is going to insist that he doesn't want the career that he used to have. He'll tell the world that he only wants an audience of 50 paedophiles who really 'get him'.
