I was a Drug Addict. (the truth about everything)

hey guys i am here today to share with you something that i have been keeping a secret for a pretty long time and i never thought i would share this story or this part of my life on my channel but i felt that maybe something good can come out of this whether for my own personal healing or helping someone else out there as you can probably tell by the title of this video i was a drug addict on my youtube channel and no one even knew it was a secret that i kept behind closed doors that i hid from my friends my mom and all of my youtube subscribers for a while and i'm ready today i'm terrified but i'm ready to talk about what happened to me and how i overcame my issues and my addiction how i dealt with that also some personal stories of when i was under the influence stories that you guys you know you have no idea about and they might sound a little unbelievable to share but i feel that this is the time for me to talk about it because i've decided i'm ready to tell my story i'm ready to share with you every single detail of that really dark time in my life so that maybe you could learn something about me but i think i'm ready to talk about it now and it's been three years that i've been sober off of hard drugs and i'm ready to share my experience because now i have come to a certain place where i'm confident in myself that no matter how people react to this story whether people are inspired by it as you know a story of victory and overcoming adversity or if people don't believe me or they shame me for decisions that i've made in the past i don't think that that will bother me anymore so i am here to talk about when i was secretly a drug addict on my youtube channel and no one even knew so i am aware that i have a lot of really amazing new positive encouraging subscribers here on this channel and if you are younger than 18 and you are watching this video right now i would really ask your parents if it's okay to watch this because it is a little bit more on the graphic side of things but i promise this is not a sad story this is a story of victory and overcoming crazy crazy demons and how i did that i'm gonna give you guys a little window to peek into my past and see things that were going on that weren't out in front of the camera so it's gonna be a really eye-opening experience for you guys probably and also a good emotional spiritual experience for me to get this all out there you know they say always say the truth will set you free at least that's what i've heard and that's what i've found over the years i've acknowledged this truth you know in my personal life and with my family and my friends you know they all know about it and you've heard me talk about my sobriety before but you never knew what happened so i'm just going to go ahead and get into it i want to start by saying that this video is going to be a fundraiser and there can be a link below where you can donate anything that you can to the cause i think i'm going to make the fundraiser of this video for drug addiction and i'll find a really good charity that you can donate to i don't think i can monetize this so i want to make sure we have a fundraiser down there that you have access to also i am making an effort to raise money for suicide prevention week which is the first half of september so i will be doing virtual meet and greets you can purchase tickets in the link down below 100 of the proceeds are going towards suicide prevention and suicide awareness within teens and young adults that is going to tie into this story a little bit as well so if you're interested in meeting me virtually online there will be a photo booth you can get your ticket and help the cause so now that i have said that i think i'm ready to begin i'm gonna be touching on multiple things in this video all of which happened over two years ago so i want to set up the timeline correctly from 2018 forward or whenever it was i came back to my youtube channel with this whole rebrand and everything had changed about me and my attitude that has been me and my recovery and i am so proud of this new audience that i've built you know i grew my channel three times larger than what it was before and i know that means a lot of you guys weren't here before 2018 and maybe you didn't watch my content before then but either way i think it's really important that i still share this with those that maybe weren't around back then and the last thing that i need to note is in this video i won't be listing out the specific drugs i was experimenting with because even if i don't condone any of you guys using those drugs i understand that i have a responsibility now and the power to influence people indirectly or directly so for that sake i will just be saying the term hard drugs referencing a numerous amount of things that i was experimenting with not listing specifics back in 2016 i had my very first viral video on youtube and it was me telling a story about how i was kidnapped when i was young when this video existed on my channel it was the main reason i gained subscribers within the first couple months of my youtube platform and i explained in that video that i have a biological father who abducted me when i was seven and i shared very personal information about his mental state i'm personally comfortable with sharing online my biological father technically abducted me and had schizophrenia i'm very open about that story and it's just important for what comes later because i do come from a family of mental illness history and you'll see how that actually affects me later on in this story so flash forward to late 2017 after my kidnapping video i was accepted into a group collab channel of other youtubers called trash now this group was made by tana i'm sure you guys have either heard me talk about it or any of the members talk about it i won't be addressing too much of that in this video because it's not so much about my drug story but it is important to note that trash was what launched me into a whole new world of youtube i had never really met other youtubers before or collabed with people and it was a an experience all in its own and it felt like i had finally reached this point in my life you know like tana mojo knows who i am it's a big deal for someone that's not a large youtuber at that time so i really had a sense of invincibility and meeting these big youtubers and having them know my name and hanging out with other kids that were in a similar position to me it just makes you feel like you're on top of the world and nothing bad could ever happen to you and not that that is an excuse for you know lapse of judgment but that's where it all started for me that's when i felt like i was questioning everything that people have told me up until this point you know everyone always says you can't you know make it in this industry and then you do and you're like okay well that was wrong here i am and you start to question what other things that were taught to you that are also wrong one of those things being if drugs are actually bad like if they're introduced to you you're always told that they're bad but when you are put in the situation and you have all of these other reasons to rebel against your parents and your friends and everyone it it kind of becomes a blurred line so this is the point in my life where like things are totally changing for me my mindset i'm hanging out with new people i'm experimenting more with drinking and smoking and it's just turned into more of a party phase and a lot of my friends i'm making because we have common interests with partying not that i even really knew any of these people very well we were just bonding over liking to party and i it's weird looking back because i really didn't know any of them but at the time it didn't really matter so now trash era has begun and insert people that i've met ali hardesty colin berry sierra watts these are all like youtubers that i made friends with also anna campbell now i feel really bad bringing up anna's name because i don't want there to be a misconception that this video was a smear campaign for anna campbell because you know we dated and we were very open about our relationship online and she's a prominent figure in my story so it's just hard for me to talk about this stuff without saying her name i mean without saying her name you guys would still figure it out anyways so i'm just trying my best to be as honest as i can on my channel and as fluid as i can and i feel that it's best for me to just say it how it is as you guys know i met anna when we were both on trash you know we later pursued a collab channel together called natana and i know that's not relevant now but that was all very public back then and that's how i portrayed my life back then and i want to talk about my story behind the scenes so you know time that i hear other people at least tell their story about experimenting with hard drugs there is almost always like more than one person involved like it's it's not just usually one person doing it by themselves it's usually they like make friends that are also interested in doing those things and you have a group of people or a duo or you just surround yourself with others that are interested in doing that exact same thing and that is the number one thing that i really want to get through to my audience in this video is that i was not being aware of who i was making my friends with and what relationships i was building with other people and what effect i could have had on other people i i wasn't thinking about my personal influence or other people's influence on me it didn't make sense to me you know i'd always heard the saying show me your friends or show me your friend group and i'll show you who you are and i i've never really clicked with that before so i have to say that when i became friends and you know pursued a relationship with anna it really became a toxic relationship that i had never experienced before up until that point literally like if you put gasoline and fire together it was just a recipe for disaster me and her and it was after i met anna that i and her started to experiment more with harder drugs behind the scenes and you know i think there was a certain level of trust that i had with this person because you know as far as i was aware she had a psychology degree and she knew a lot about drugs and you know she's very open about this on her channel i'm definitely not spilling any tea right now but she's very open about her experiments with drugs and i felt like being with this person gave me a sense of safety or security when in reality i definitely misjudged that just because someone else has done something before you doesn't mean that it's a good idea for you to do it not to mention how i had blissfully no idea how drugs could affect me psychologically because of my family history with mental illness and we'll get into that so i started trying drugs and all the while i am still on my youtube channel posting regularly scheduled videos you know acting like nothing is going on pretending that i'm still you know the same exact person that all of my subscribers already knew but what they didn't know was behind the scenes i was going on you know multiple night benders with no sleep it got to the point where i actually got a house for both of us to live in and we would just do hard drugs we would mix drugs we would invite more people over to supply us with more drugs and stay up for multiple nights in a row and one of those benders i specifically remember because it was very traumatizing to look back on now how i made these decisions myself yes i made these decisions and it affected me in a really dramatic way but there was one specific time where we had been up for maybe a day or two days i don't even remember doing drugs like every couple hours and i was looking at a wall and for some reason i thought that if i i'm sorry i'm laughing but like seriously i went up to a wall and i like peeked at it was just a concrete wall with wood like there was nothing that you could look into but for some reason i'm you know out of my mind we were looking through the wall and i was like seeing hallucinating people on the other side of the wall i was like looking at nothing but i thought i was staring through a peephole and i was like spying on people it was just the most weird insane thing to be so out of your mind and so strung out that you're like staring through a wall and i was seeing like people running on the other side of the wall and i was seeing animals and like a farm like literally what what and then the next day i would come down off of all of this and make a youtube video and no one had any idea and then as soon as that was done you know the next night we would do it all over again stay up for obscene hours like 48 hours at a time just doing drugs all all day all night and there was another time where i was literally just stare another wall i don't know my fixation was staring at walls when i was strung out unfortunately i thought i was watching a movie like i was so high that i was looking at the shadows on my walls and i was talking to anna and telling her that i was watching a movie and we were both there you know and there were other people there as well but i thought that that was just like not alarming at all that i was looking at nothing and my mental state was slowly deteriorating before my very own eyes and i had no idea you know and this is normal like this was happening every single night i was staring at things and i thought they were something else i was hallucinating left and right i remember i had a cork board hanging up in my bedroom at that house and i was looking at the cork board and for some reason i thought it was like a map of new york city sounds absolutely insane because it is right but when you're in that mental state it feels like you're on to something like you're doing something right and it's so twisted looking back on it how no one knew like literally no one knew other than my drug dealer myself maybe like a couple of my friends but like not real friends and anna like those are the only people that knew this was going on and there's a certain level of myself just thinking like that wasn't even the worst of it either like i feel like in my mind that wasn't that bad compared to what i'm about to tell you i had gotten to the point where i was no longer doing this for party reasons i wasn't just trying to figure out what this drug makes me feel anymore i was doing it because i was addicted to it and that was a huge difference when i realized that i wasn't just trying stuff now it was like this is something i'm doing all the time like it's becoming a big part of my life and i'm making friends outside of me and anna that are also partaking in this and it just all happened so fast it was like one moment i felt like i was trying something a little edgy in the next moment it was like this is your life now you know i'm spending all of my money what little adsense money i was making on my channel i was throwing at drugs four 300 dollars a thousand dollars it didn't matter to me at that time as long as i had what i needed to make sure that i partied stayed up crashed the next day woke up filmed a youtube video so i could make more money for more drugs like it was just like the worst cycle i had ever been in in my life and i'm just so happy that i am able to share this story i'm just thinking to myself how proud i am for not like you know getting emotional in this video because like you guys know i'm emotional i'm a cancer i cry a lot and like i i'm not gonna cry in this video because this is not a video that i want to make myself look like a victim in any way this is something that i'm doing to help someone out there so i'm just really happy that i got through that part right there because i just remember that being so traumatic to me i guess i'm just really proud of myself for making it this far so we're gonna keep going so as this vicious cycle continues for us i remember thinking to myself you know i am never gonna have a breaking point i'm gonna be able to do this for the rest of my life i don't think i'll ever be clean and it's weird thinking that now because it's like obviously you don't want to be addicted to drugs your whole life but it didn't feel like a bad thing back then and i really did identify with it and i felt like i was invincible and it just kept getting harder and harder the nights were getting longer their you know amounts of consumption were getting larger everyone has a breaking point now my breaking point happened when anna and i decided to go to a festival with a group of people in ohio and while we were at this music festival of course as you guys might know there's a culture of doing drugs at these festivals and raves that i you know wish i never partook in but unfortunately drugs were there they were brought along in our friend group and i experimented with an extremely psychoactive substance at this event and it's so weird because there's a very strange coincidence associated with this breaking point of mine because on the way to the music festival i was driving and i had an anxiety attack while i was driving and i had to actually pull over make my friend drive my car and he took me to the hospital i went to the hospital from anxiety that just came on randomly before this music festival and just looking back that feels like my gut trying to warn me of what was about to happen despite my gut instinct telling me it was a terrible idea to do this drug at this music festival i went ahead with it anyways because i was in a group of people you know that were doing it as well that made me feel reassured and comfortable of course i did it myself i made the decision myself and i accept my own accountability for my actions in my own life and how they have caused reactions as well but i seriously can't stress enough to you guys how important it is that you're hanging out with people that want to have a positive impact on each other and you're aware of your own impact on others and you surround yourself with genuinely good people because i think that it would have made a difference for me if i thought about that kind of stuff and i didn't so i took this substance and immediately i started having a bad reaction more than any other bad reaction i've ever had up to that point this was bigger it was scarier everywhere i looked i was hallucinating myself dead i was literally looking at trees and it looked like me dead and that i don't know if that is something you can kind of visualize while i was on this psychoactive drug which was very intense i was seeing myself committing suicide words can't describe the terror of being in a situation where you have consumed you've made the choice to consume a psychoactive substance that you are now experiencing and it's a terrible dark trip basically i was on the worst trip basically and everywhere i looked no matter what it was it was i felt a message that i i don't know where it was coming from it does it doesn't even make sense when i say messages but it felt that while i was on this drug i don't know if you ever hear of these horror stories of people that do drugs and they kill themselves but i was going through something of that caliber and the experience was extremely terrifying feeling like i wasn't in control of my body i wasn't in control of my thoughts and like i said i can't even put into words the amount of terror that it felt when i was experiencing this effect my immediate reaction whenever i would have like a bad reaction to a substance was to sleep it off and that was what i tried to do i guess i i felt that i was having the worst trip of my life i wanted to fall asleep so that when i woke up all of the effects would be gone and i woke up the next morning and i was still experiencing it like the drug effect didn't go away for me like i'm just gonna let that sink in for a second i never stopped tripping i woke up the next day and was still experiencing a different reality you guys and i wasn't sure if it was the exact dose that i had taken or if it was my body having like a reaction i had no idea at the time and that is exactly what it was i took a psychoactive substance and it never went away i had fallen into drug induced psychosis which is essentially people that have a history of mental illness in their family this happens more often to them where if you are experimenting with drugs you can actually break your mind and the drug doesn't go away and your brain is stuck in a false state of reality where you're not living in the same world everyone else is living anymore and sometimes it never goes away we left this music festival early because i was having this terrible reaction and i still felt those suicidal feelings in my mind and they weren't in my control it felt like it was my thoughts but it was definitely the effects that i had experienced from the substance induced psychosis we went home and that was when i made the decision to stop doing any substances from that point i was coherent enough to make that decision for myself but everything else was different i was no longer having visual effects from the drugs i was having all of the mental effects from the experience like it didn't go away mentally not visually mentally i was still in the trip i i don't know the experience i can't really explain unless you've experienced it yourself you you can't even imagine it i never thought that it was something that could happen i'd never heard anyone on the internet or in youtube videos or any of my friends that was doing this [ __ ] with me i'd never heard them talk about this being a possibility of happening and while this was happening to me i was so like scared i wasn't sure what was going on i knew that it was my fault and i couldn't fix it i didn't know how to fix it i didn't even know if like this was just my new reality i was so messed up and around this exact time you guys might recognize this photo of me it was taken by anna right after that music festival and as you can see what i had done to my body and how my decisions were very quickly deteriorating me i didn't even see it for myself and when i asked her to take that photo it wasn't because i thought there was something wrong with me it was actually for a possible modeling gig at the time and that's the reason i have this photo but now it's so clear that something is wrong here and no one said anything i mean i was so out of my mind i no longer spoke to my mom or any of my previous friends when i was in this state so i had no one else to confide in other than you know the people that were at that house which was just me and anna and the occasional drug dealer and i should have been hospitalized probably during that state of time i was an extreme harm to myself with these thoughts that were you know a product of this effect and at one point i was genuinely so psychotic and isolated in my own home that i got in my car with intent to commit suicide yeah and thankfully i am still here today and i didn't go through with it because deep down you know i a piece of my soul or god or an angel or something prevented me from going through with it and i suffered in isolation in my own home as a prisoner of my own mind without the help that i needed and when i say that i was psychotic and out of my mind i mean like forgetting basic things like social cues and how to work my youtube camera and how to edit a video properly i couldn't make any more youtube videos and i became very angry this is not me trying to tell this story to make myself seem like this isn't my fault this is something that i did to myself and the decisions that i made i became a very angry person because i wasn't getting the help the mental help that i needed i was sick there was a time where anna and i got into an argument and i took a picture off of my bedroom wall i don't know if anyone's gonna remember this picture it used to be in my old youtube videos but i ripped it off of my wall and i was so angry and out of my mind i threw it at the wall and it shattered into a million pieces and that's like what the heck dude like that's scary that's scary behavior to be so out of your mind because you're whacked out that you're throwing and shattering things because you're not you're not getting the help that you need like i look back on myself and it's like i'm angry at myself i'm angry at the decisions that i made but i'm also angry that like no one helped me i'm i'm so confused about it all and all the meanwhile just continuing to battle these unwanted suicidal thoughts that i had no idea what to do with and i was you know not talking to anyone about it other than the people inside my house and when i would have these conversations it was like all of the people that i was in direct contact with you know they openly talked about suicide like it was you know not anything to be taken seriously like no one ever recommended anyone to get help it was just so insane that something so serious was like dealt like so lightly you know like i think about now if someone were to come to me and express that they are having terrible thoughts i would immediately tell them like please call get help do something but for some reason i never got that and unfortunately so many other people never get that and they're not as lucky as i am to be here today and i guess again that's why i'm like doing this whole fundraiser thing because i've never shared this experience with you guys before but after being clean or sober for a couple days after returning from that festival where i was going into this weird tale spin you know having weird psychosis seeing things that weren't there feeling things that weren't there i decided that i wanted to remove myself from the home to seek help with my family that i hadn't spoken to in a while and that was a really huge decision that i had to make and i'm really glad i made that decision despite having you know a false sense of reality at that time but i chose to break up with anna because i didn't think our relationship was helping me at all i needed help i was completely broken i was out of my mind i needed medical treatment so i broke everything off you know there was like a huge explosive incident that occurred and i am not going to share the details of that just for the privacy of anna i don't know if she's talked about that on her channel and i feel that that's more her you know story to tell which you guys know like there's two sides to every story i'm sure that she'll probably have her perspective to share so you're welcome to watch that on her channel if you want but this is my story and i personally don't think it's right for me to talk about that but it was later that night that anna left my house and went back to boston and here is where we merge into the watch me phase of this story if you have no idea what i'm talking about it's completely okay just to summarize after anna got back to boston she filmed a video because she's a very open person on her channel with you know private stuff which is fine she filmed a video talking about our breakup publicly and didn't give too many details about my mental state and the i guess the real reason i i had to end the relationship and i know it's difficult when your two favorite youtubers separate it's not easy and you want to know the details of who broke up with who and what happened and when she made her video explaining her side of the story which she had every right to do i was not able to share my story because i was still not in my right mind and in a weird twisted attempt of me to talk to my youtube channel or share what i was thinking i made a video in response that i felt i needed to do because people were asking questions people were hating on me for ending this relationship because they you know it's not their fault they just had no idea that i was in psychosis and i wasn't capable of filming a normal video so i uploaded on my channel a video titled watch me which was something that i never really talk about and i never really like to talk about because when i see that video i see myself in a very vulnerable state and i see a version of myself that was trying to talk with my audience that just couldn't put thoughts together in reality and it just felt weird right for those of you that were around for that video it was weird and you could tell something was off with me i was just not making sense in that video and there were other youtubers that reacted to my watch me video asking if i was okay or like bullying me and hating on me because they had no idea that i was sick i was actually sick and i just can't help but look back and think to myself like oh my gosh that was so traumatizing for me to be in a terrible mental state and not be aware of it and upload a video on youtube for thousands of people to watch and question like imagine if that happened to you it was the most traumatizing thing of my entire life and that's why i never addressed it that's why i deleted that video that's why i never have talked about this story before because it was a wound that was so deep i just wanted to cover it up and protect myself so that i would never be hurt like that ever again and thankfully after i uploaded somehow managed to make that video and edit what a little of the video i did and upload it thankfully someone intervened and helped me get off of the internet and get the help that i needed hence why i took a year long break you guys i have mentioned before it was for mental health this is why because i was out of my mind i was tripping i was experiencing unwanted suicidal thoughts every day for a year straight and it took that entire year for those thoughts to finally start subsiding and i want everyone watching this video to hear this story as nothing other than my story this is my perspective of what happened to me my view through my own lens and not a comment on anyone else that i've mentioned in this video not a comment on anna or any of my other friends from trash this is my story of how i overcame terrible terrible decisions and friendships drug induced psychosis i mean thankfully i didn't even overdose on any of these substances overcame this terrible mental disease and also coming back to my channel a completely changed person fully aware of how my actions affect myself and other people and i made a pact okay that i was gonna build my audience to be something positive and not something that influences in a bad way and i was always gonna take these negative things that i had done and turn them into something that mattered and you guys always know like i say this in my videos and it's funny like now i'm getting emotional after all of that now i always take the negative and turn them into a positive because that's all we can do in life we can take our traumas and our terrible terrible stories and thankfully i have a platform where i can inspire people and maybe even change someone's life so you guys know that's why i'm here now sharing this story i have found a certain level of healing within myself i feel confident enough to talk about this with you so that way we can take the negative and make it positive and have an effect on people that are watching this video hopefully i'm also dedicated to helping the cause of drug addiction like i said this video should be a fundraiser i've never done one of these before but it should be linked down below if you do want to donate to the cause i am also like i said doing one-on-one meet-and-greets with you guys which i'm so excited to meet you and 100 of those proceeds are going towards preventing and spreading awareness of suicide with teens and young adults so if you're more interested in that then the link for those tickets are down in the description there are two ticket levels the first one is just a simple meet and greet like i said there's a photo booth where you can take a photo with me the second tier will also get the experience of meeting me and taking a photo virtually but you also get a special gift that i designed myself it's this bracelet that says i can listen and i designed this as a you know friendly reminder to all of our loved ones that if there's something they need to get off their chest or talk about we're always available to listen so whenever they see me wearing the bracelet they remember that if there's something on their mind i'm here and i'm always available so that is included in the vip ticket again the links for that are down in the description and with those two causes i also want to film this video to break the stigma of mental illness mental illness affects so many people in so many different ways and if you are a person that suffers it's not your fault it's not something you chose but it is something that you can learn to embrace and it won't affect your everyday life for the rest of your life and i feel that i've had some sort of you know calling to share this experience so that anyone else that suffers understands that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel but thank you guys so much for hearing my personal story of how i was a drug addict and my youtube channel literally had no idea no one knew i mean my own mother didn't even know like it was a big secret that i had for a long time and you know i know that this was so long ago too like so many of you guys are like whoa i had no idea that this was even a thing like i wasn't even around back then but the message is still there and sometimes it takes three years for someone to be ready to tell their story and that's fine so again thank you so much for always like growing with me and being here and listening to me i hope this video wasn't too long but i think it's important to share i am so proud of myself because like look how far i've come like that is the biggest flex for myself like i'm totally totally proud of myself and i can't even believe it i mean here we are so i love you guys so much thank you i hope you have a wonderful beautiful day god bless you guys bye

Channel: Natalia Taylor

Views: 2,592,512

Rating: 4.959096 out of 5

Keywords: natalia taylor, iwasadrugaddict, thetruthabouteverything, watchme, ashleytaylor, annacampbell

Id: voWpynv-TrM

Length: 38min 34sec (2314 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020