This is what a lot of people were hoping at the outset. They were thinking what is going wrong? This nice person some of us admire is going into a tailspin, is going to get rekt, we need to help him!
He spat in everyone's faces and then crashed right the fuck down into the ground and once he got down there, started snarling and spitting at everyone who had any genuine concern for him. And then he immediately signed up on Team Pedo with Melton and Vito and the like.
I think a lot of people were hoping (in vain) that the arrest would be a massive wakeup call for Nick. Not even for his sake, but for the sake of his children. In everything he said immediately after however, he's made it crystal clear that he doesn't actually believe he has done anything wrong.
The problem is, he hasn't hit rock bottom yet, and honestly, I don't know if he ever will. Rock bottom isn't when you've lost everything, some people lose everything and still don't hit rock bottom. Some hit it before they lose everything and manage to turn their lives around. Rock bottom is when you can't keep lying to yourself anymore, when the evidence of just how fucking awful you have become comes crashing through the walls you've built up in your head.
He's a narcissistic jackass on top of being an addict, and that just helps to shore up and reinforce those walls. He's not lashing out because he knows that he's wrong and wants to delay the inevitable, he's lashing out because he genuinely doesn't believe that he did anything wrong. Yes, what he did was illegal, but he's not doing it anymore, so why can't everything go back to the way it was before, and why can't he have his friends back?
I'd be willing to wager a decent amount that growing up, he didn't have many friends, and he had even fewer, if any, that could match him intellectually. Stupid fucking decisions aside, he's a pretty intelligent person, though he doesn't use it in any appreciable way. Growing up like that leaves its marks in you, and when you do find a friend, you cling to them. You see these tantrums, and you see the face of the grown man throwing them, but that's not who is throwing the tantrum. It's little Nick inside there, those same childhood issues that never got worked on coming out again. "Why don't they want to be my friends anymore? Yeah, I fucked up, but I didn't do anything that bad, why are you leaving me? Fuck you, I'm not the problem, I'm going to say the most hurtful thing I can, because you're hurting me!."
I lost a lot of friends because of my own addiction, including some that I thought would be around for the rest of my life. The closest one I reached out to on my one year sobriety anniversary, with a picture of the 1 year chip I'd just gotten. He took a few weeks to message me back, and told me that he wished me well in life, but he couldn't be a part of it anymore. I was bitter about that for years. His sister had struggled with addiction and eventually gotten clean. I demonized him in my head for a long while. "If I was getting so bad, why didn't you help me? You could have told me about the programs your sister used, could have helped me, but you didn't, why didn't you? Why can't we just go back, back to being best friends? I loved you like a brother, and you threw me away.".
It took me years to realize it, but it wasn't that he didn't care about me. I wouldn't have listened. I hadn't hit rock bottom yet, hadn't had my delusions stripped from me. I would have scoffed at him and started shit. He cut me out of his life because I had gotten so bad that I was beyond help. He cut me out because he loved me like a brother, and couldn't bear to watch me slowly kill myself. He cut me out because I had gotten so bad that even after a year of sobriety, he was sure that if he let me back into his life, I was just going to tear his heart out when I fell off the wagon and started slowly killing myself again. I'm planning on sending him a photo of my ten year chip when I get it and seeing if he wants to reconnect. I hope he does, but if he doesn't, I can't blame him.
I don't know if Nick even can have his delusions stripped from him, and get to the point where he can see the truth of everything. He probably remembers the state of his house on the day of his arrest in explicit detail, and has an excuse for every pile of clothing, every piece of filth, all keeping the weight of the fact that he had his children in what was essentially a crack den from crashing down on him and destroying his narcissistic self image. I would love to see him hit rock bottom, because at this point, it's the only thing that can save him.
The best thing he could possibly do for himself, and for his family, is to request that the bodycam footage be released, and face rock bottom like a man. I think that having his dirty laundry aired in so blatant a manner is the only thing that could strip him of his delusions at this point. I don't think he will though, and I think that as he fights against it, kicking, screaming, shitting and pissing his pants all the way, he's going to build up his narcissistic self image to the point where nothing will ever get through it, and completely damn himself in the process.
