The renewed scrutiny has also revived a 2016 interview in which Nick spoke candidly about his long struggle with drug addiction and a period when he refused rehab and lived on the streets.
Nick said he entered his first rehab facility around his 15th birthday and had been through 17 treatment programs by age 22, experiences that later informed Being Charlie, the semi-autobiographical film he co-wrote and which his revered dad Rob directed.
“It’s not my life,” Nick said of the film, “but I went to a lot of these places, so I had a lot of these stories.”
In the same interview, Nick described rejecting further treatment. “If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” he said.
That choice led to months of instability across several states. “I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,” Nick recalled. “I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
He said the experience followed his refusal to return to rehab, cutting him off from family support and forcing him into shelters and onto the streets.
Despite the hardship, Nick said the period shaped him. “That made me who I am now, having to deal with that stuff,” he admitted. “I met crazy great people there, so out of my element.”
Nick added returning home later was difficult. “Now, I’ve been home for a really long time, and I’ve sort of gotten acclimated back to being in L.A. and being around my family,” he said. “But there was a lot of dark years there.”
Nick also reflected on the danger of that time.
“When I was out there, I could’ve died,” he said. “It’s all luck. You roll the dice, and you hope you make it.”
