Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It (15 page)

CHAPTER SIX

COOL SPRINGS REHAB

I
WAS A
wreck during the recording of Backstreet’s
Unbreakable
album in 2006. I knew I was seriously mistreating my body and that I wasn’t living up to my true potential.

I was so depressed that I couldn’t contribute a lot to the songwriting process or do much else on the album aside from singing in the studio. I was in a steep downward spiral, dealing with problems clearly of my own making.

AS MUCH AS I LONGED TO MAKE A CHANGE, I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT LIFE WOULD BE LIKE
IF I GAVE UP
MY DEPENDENCIES.

I wanted to stop partying and getting wasted, but I was afraid to. As much as I longed to make a change, I didn’t know what life would be like if I gave up my dependencies. I was like a guy who freezes halfway up while climbing a wall. I knew I had to make a move, but I was afraid to let go long enough to reach higher.

Fear of the unknown can hold you back; so if you ever find yourself locked up like that, knowing that you need to make a change but afraid to pursue something better, ask yourself:
What’s the worst that could happen
? Then consider:
Is it better or worse than where you are now?
Sometimes we subconsciously equate change with death. We’re afraid that if we fail or fall short, something in us will die. But in most cases, when you let go to reach for something better, you actually improve your situation.

I was trapped in a self-destructive lifestyle. I knew I needed to break free. Thoughts of escape kept coming to me, though I felt more like I needed to run toward something better. Your life is the product of the decisions you make along the way, and my decisions had been consistently bad for a long stretch in my twenties.

I WAS LIKE A GUY WHO FREEZES HALFWAY UP WHILE
CLIMBING
A WALL.

Have you ever felt like you weren’t the person you wanted to be, or the person you were meant to be? In my case, things just seemed out of synch (no reference to that other boy band intended!). I was lucky to have my music and BSB because other than that, I was lost. My relationships with my family members weren’t going well and I hadn’t found a girlfriend yet who seemed interested in anything other than my celebrity status, which I never felt particularly comfortable with myself.

My therapist later taught me about the concepts of the
authentic self
and the
inner critic
. Basically, whether we know it or not, most of us have certain principles and values that make up the moral code by which we live. These values include ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, proper and improper. Most of these are based in common sense standards that society in general views as good for our shared quality of life. Few would argue, for example, that honesty is usually the best policy, that fairness is better than selfishness, and that it’s best to treat other people like you would want to be treated.

We live consciously and subconsciously according to the moral code that we’ve created for ourselves based on how we grew up and what we’ve learned along the way. If you were lucky enough to have parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, or other adults who guided you and worked to instill strong values within you, then you likely are very conscious of those values when you make decisions.

My parents weren’t big on instilling such values in us—at least not intentionally. They did provide us with some good examples of hard work, but they never talked about other values, principles or moral codes, as I mentioned earlier. Since my formal education ended at such a young age, I didn’t get much help in that department from teachers or coaches either.

Still, over the years, I did develop my own set of principles. I didn’t always live by them, but I used them to measure my own behavior and the behavior of people I met. I came to appreciate traits like honesty, excellence, continuous growth and trustworthiness.

INTERIOR WARNING SYSTEM

I sincerely wanted to live according to those values, but as I entered my mid-twenties, I sensed that I’d turned my back on many of them. It felt as though my life had come off the tracks. I didn’t much like or respect myself. If you ever have feelings like that, my advice is to pay attention to them. Our survival instincts are strong, but sometimes we tend to ignore them. We get busy or comfortable or scared. Change can be frightening, but when your instincts are screaming for you to save yourself, the prospect of not making a change can be the scariest thing of all.

IT FELT AS THOUGH MY LIFE HAD COME
OFF THE TRACKS
.

When we work in the recording studio, we put in long and often intense hours, but there’s also lots of time spent waiting for the studio engineers to perform their magic. Downtime was my downfall. In our free hours I was constantly partying, going out to clubs every night and often hitting the bars during the day. I was surrounded by an entourage of people addicted to the same party mentality. Our binges kept getting worse and worse, lasting until three or four in the morning when we’d end the night in the homes of strangers. We’d be obliterated to the point where we’d wake up the next morning not knowing where we were or how we’d gotten there.

The only time I felt good during that stretch was when we moved our recording sessions to Sound Kitchen Studios, just south of Nashville in an area known as Cool Springs. While the name Cool Springs might conjure images of a backwater town, that was not the case. There is a big Galleria mall there surrounded by shops and restaurants. Beyond those shops, in the town of Franklin, there are hilly, wooded neighborhoods with nice, comfortable homes.

The area reminded me of the times I spent with my Grandpa Carter, who was from Chattanooga—a beautiful part of Tennessee. He later moved to Jamestown, NY, and when we lived in Florida, we would drive from Tampa up through Tennessee on our way to visit him and my grandma. These trips provided some of my few cherished memories of childhood. Dad would pile all of us into a van, and for me the best part of the trek was driving through the mountains in Grandpa’s home state. I was fascinated by the Tennessee countryside, which was much more dramatic than anything I’d seen in Florida. I felt as though there was something healing about that part of the country.

It’s probably no coincidence that I was drawn to Tennessee and ended up buying a home there for myself when I got older. Since I’ve mostly lived in urban or heavy residential areas, I find it comforting to be in a more rural setting at times. I like the slower pace, the normalcy and the family feel of Cool Springs. For all of these reasons I felt better there, but my friends in the area were a major factor too.

We were staying at a hotel near the studio so I really didn’t explore the area much until I had an opportunity to hang out with Andrew Fromm, a great songwriter who had two songs on our
Millennium
album. We were working at Sound Kitchen Studios with him and Dan Muckala, another award-winning songwriter and producer, when Andrew invited me to the nearby house he’d just moved into after coming to the Nashville area.

Andrew is this Jewish guy from New Jersey who moved to Tennessee and discovered that he loves the country life. He drove me to his new place in Cool Springs, which spans two adjoining Nashville suburbs, Brentwood and Franklin. He was real proud of his home and excited about settling down in such a laid back area with so many creative and talented musicians. He is a very grounded, clean-living guy who doesn’t drink or do drugs. Back then, Andrew was single, but now he has a beautiful wife and son.

Being around such positive and healthy people was a big change for me. I felt like I could relax and breathe around them. Their idea of partying was nothing like the Hollywood crowd’s. We weren’t in Cool Springs that long, but I found myself thinking several times during our stay that it might be nice to have my own place there someday, just to get away from the craziness of life on the road or in L.A.

GOIN’ COUNTRY

Cool Springs came to mind again after I had my Night of the Zombies crash and burn. When I walked out of Promises rehab center in Los Angeles, I knew that I needed to get away from the whole 24/7 Hollywood party scene. I wanted to clean up my act, but it was evident there’d be no chance of doing that if I stayed around people who partied all the time.

I FELT LIKE
I COULD RELAX
AND BREATHE AROUND THEM.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of heading to Tennessee. Cool Springs and the town of Franklin seemed perfect because there’s a big music scene and my friends there were better influences on me. I knew they wouldn’t be pushing me to go out night after night. I envied their lives in many ways because they seemed so content and grounded. So, I headed to the hills of Tennessee to find the person I wanted to be.

Some of my L.A. friends saw it as moving
to the backwoods
and thought it was a random thing for me to do, but I had a plan. After hitting bottom in L.A., I went to the country and bought a place that I jokingly referred to as
my refuge in the middle of nowhere.
Honestly, mine is probably the ugliest house you can find in my very nice little neighborhood. You would never expect a celebrity to live there.

It’s a brick, two-story home that looks in some ways like the
Amityville Horror
house—as if it could be haunted, even though it was brand new when I moved in.

I still go there for its serenity. It’s become sort of a cool getaway for my friends and me. The fact that it looks like a normal house is really appealing. Even when I’m away from Tennessee, I feel comforted just knowing that place is there. You might say that I take Cool Springs with me wherever I go. It’s not like I load up the house, but I do carry that sense of peace and contemplation with me. I’ve learned that you can make a home within yourself. No matter where I am, I can go to Cool Springs mentally whenever I need to relax, calm myself and heal.

Fate must have taken me to Cool Springs because my home there turned out to be the perfect place to escape what had become a very negative environment. There, I was able to focus on moving my life in a more positive direction. Sometimes change is good. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary. In so many ways my Tennessee home served as my rehab center.

MIND-OPENING GIFT

I knew deep down inside that if I kept running around with my partying friends, I was headed for a breakdown, prison, early grave, or something worse. The people I hung out with in Cool Springs were just more positive. Their interests were geared toward music, their families and their faith. They didn’t lecture me or try to convert me. They just inspired me by their basic goodness.

YOU MIGHT SAY THAT
I TAKE COOL SPRINGS
WITH ME WHEREVER I GO.

Looking back, I couldn’t say that Andrew Fromm and his crowd saved my life exactly, but they did introduce me to a much healthier lifestyle. They helped me to take the first steps toward changing my self-destructive patterns of behavior. The path they walk is just so much better for me. Isn’t it crazy how the choices we make can have such an impact on our lives? As much as I resisted change, my life became so much better when I finally moved out of a bad environment into a much better one. It’s as if I went from the darkness into the light.

The other majorly positive influence in my whole Cool Springs rehab experience was the book that Kevin Richardson had given me on my 21
^st
birthday. For several years it just sat on the shelves in different apartments or homes as I moved from place to place. I packed it up and took it wherever I lived, but I never read it. Then, after I’d moved to Cool Springs and had some time for introspection, my eyes wandered to that book on a shelf and, for the first time, I pulled it down and began reading it.

The book is
Why Some Positive Thinkers Get Powerful Results
written by Norman Vincent Peale, a minister and inspirational speaker. I know what you’re saying:
A self-help book? Right! C’mon Nick, are you 100 years old or what?
Tease me all you want, I can take it. This book changed my life because it helped me change my way of thinking. Its simple message—that a more positive attitude can lead to a better life—flipped a switch and turned on the lights.

I WAS WINGING LIFE, MORE OR LESS,
WITHOUT ANY
REAL DIRECTION, GOALS, OR PLANS.

I’m not saying this book is the secret to success, happiness and a life without worries. But as my first self-help book, it was an introduction to new ways of looking at things, and it inspired me to go deeper in my reading and reflections. Kevin’s gift really helped me move away from being a self-destructive
victim
.

Just as the Cool Springs house moved me physically to a healthier environment, Peale’s book moved me mentally into a healthier way of thinking. Because I was so young when BSB took off, I never spent any time planning or setting goals for my life. I didn’t have to. Once we had a hit record, I had more money than I’d ever dreamed of making. What I did each and every day was pretty much determined by the group’s schedule for writing, recording and performing. I just went with the flow. There wasn’t much down time, which was a good thing because that’s when I tended to get out of control with my partying as you now know.

I was winging life, more or less, without any real direction, goals, or plans. And because of the way I grew up, I had a lot of built-up anger, hurt and insecurity that I didn’t know how to unload. In his day, Norman Vincent Peale was like a combination of the Rev. Billy Graham and Dr. Phil. He was a minister and a master of self-help. His books sold millions and millions of copies, though he had his critics too. Most of his detractors said his message was too simple, but simple was what I needed at that point.

I devoured that book, which is basically a bunch of stories about people who’ve overcome problems and challenges, along with tips about setting goals and going after them, dealing with depression and negative thoughts, kicking bad habits and motivating yourself. It’s sort of an old-fashioned book, but it encouraged me to read more modern and more scientific books on things like
emotional intelligence
,
learned optimism
, and
life strategies
.