As an addendum to my last post: I don't think Nick's life is actually like Requiem for a Dream.
I think it's actually much worse.
Requiem was a story about four people who had unrealistic or misguided dreams of success and didn't get to achieve them, and ruined their lives with drug use. Nick succeeded in chasing his dreams. He had a law degree, a loving family, created a successful YouTube career for himself from his bedroom, and had a huge circle of friends and fans willing to support him. He achieved his dreams, and was living the best possible life a person could hope for.
There were also no minor children involved in the movie. It was just adults making bad choices and facing the consequences of them. There's children on both sides of this who never chose to lose their parents, live in a crack house, be exposed to all of this degeneracy or endure the horrific psychological trauma they're going to be enduring for years to come. Idk how many kids April and Aaron have but iirc they have some. Nick has five. That's nearly a dozen fucking children harmed by this shit. Half a classroom's worth.
This is no way to live. This is the kind of life people have nightmares about having. The kind where they wake up crying and have to talk to someone they love so they can calm down. Then you'd start explaining the more ridiculous parts to them like screaming at Mr Metokur about Elizabeth Warren's butthole for four hours and you'd start to calm down, because you start to realize the nightmare is so ridiculous it could never happen in real life. Except you made it real. This is as fucking horrible as it gets.
This isn't Requiem for a Dream, this is A Living Nightmare.