I pulled the G-Wagon up to the Falcon 7X. We’d been upgraded from the Challenger 300 — my boss was now flying exclusively private. Our aviation team had already texted: On-time arrival. Thanks for another great trip, Nick.
My boss descended the stairs in Gucci sunglasses and upscale pajamas that somehow looked like business attire, Bose headphones draped around his neck. I moved toward the tarmac to grab his bags, but the crew waved me off. “We got it.”
I was in a new role now — more chief of staff than assistant. I collaborated. I anticipated. I was seen in a way I didn’t know was possible when I first said yes to this world.
Halfway down the steps, my boss caught my eye and motioned me over. I reached into my pocket for his car keys, but as I held them out, he extended an envelope toward me in return.
“Read this,” he said. “Tarantino’s attached, but I’m still not sure.”
This was happening more lately. He saw me as more than a scheduling monkey or coffee-fetcher. He understood where I came from — what it took to get here, sober and still standing.
And that’s when I felt it: the quiet twist in my gut.
Because once, I was the one they built the day around. The one they were betting on. I wasn’t always the one keeping the trains on track.
I was in my 20s and living in New York when I got the call from my theater agent — a call that had become a pattern. I’d made it to the final round for a principal role in a new Broadway show. Six callbacks deep. My agent said the casting director told him it was mine to lose. Then I lost it.
He called to break the news and said, “Nick, trust me — nobody wanted this for you more than I did.”
And all I could think was: You wanted a win. I wanted a reason to exist.
I scrolled in my contacts list to my dad’s number. No cell — just the landline back home in California. He picked up on the third ring. I could hear the surprise in his voice — the worry — the way he fished for details to piece together what my life actually looked like.
I was walking up Central Park West. 85th Street, then 86th. The sun was setting, golden light catching the brownstones. Trees in full bloom. A beautiful backdrop for total despair.
“I was so close,” I told him. Again. Another almost.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I couldn’t help but think of the little gay boy who couldn’t shut up in class, even after an ADHD diagnosis — back when just saying you couldn’t focus wasn’t enough to get a prescription. They gave me Ritalin, but I didn’t like the way that made me feel — buzzing but flat. I preferred being on stage. That was all the extra dopamine I needed.
My fourth-grade teacher told my parents, “I always know when Nick’s working. He’s present. He’s calm.”
That morning before school, my mom came in holding the newspaper, grinning like she’d won something. My sister and I were eating Honey Nut Cheerios at the kitchen table, the Costco-sized box between us like a barricade. She liked quiet and early. I liked chaos and being just late enough to make an entrance.
“Look!” my mom said, flipping the paper around. “Front page. Huge picture.”
This was routine by then. Every time I was in a play — “The Secret Garden,” “Oliver,” “The Sound of Music” — there’d be a big spread in the local papers. It was pretty exciting for a 10-year-old. Eventually, even that started to feel normal.
My sister rolled her eyes. “We’re gonna be late.”
She stomped off. My mom kissed me on the head and lingered. “I’ll be in the car.”
Those days, I spit my Ritalin into the sink before school, convinced I didn’t need to be medicated if I could be brilliant. Performance didn’t just help me focus — it helped me belong. It gave my ADHD brain an arena where the best parts of me weren’t wasted. And so I made it my whole personality.
That was my first high. And for more than 20 years, it worked better than any drug ever could.
But then I was in the big leagues. The casting rooms were smaller. The stakes were higher. Everyone in them was extraordinary. It wasn’t about potential anymore — it was about precision. One false note, one blink too long, and if they could smell the desperation, you were out.
I hadn’t fumbled yet — not irredeemably — but I could feel it coming. The mounting pressure. The silence after a take. The way casting directors thanked me too quickly. There wasn’t room for nerves anymore, let alone uncertainty.
So when opportunities to perform started slipping out of reach, I went looking for something else to fill the void. By then, Ritalin wouldn’t cut it. I needed everything.
That night after I lost that big role, I went to my shift at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, the Midtown tourist trap with the singing waiters where I wore a hologrammed bowling shirt and sang show tunes between mozzarella stick deliveries. I texted a coke dealer on my break, slipped out for a quick loop around the block in his car, and came back in just as it was my turn to sing.
The song was “Don’t Stop Believin’” — but it was becoming increasingly obvious that I had.
Later that night, still smelling like french fries and broken dreams, I got on Grindr. I found meth, GHB and a group of men who wouldn’t judge me for being obliterated. They’d celebrate it. Take advantage of it. There were more nights like that, until eventually, I admitted just enough to my parents to break the spell. I needed help.
The plan I’d had since fourth grade — scrawled in margins of Playbills and whispered into hairbrush microphones to be a star on stage, then volley between Broadway and Hollywood — wasn’t going to happen.
I could barely leave my apartment. Depression. Anxiety. Meds on top of meds. It would be a few years of circling the drain before I finally collapsed in Los Angeles. At that point, I was months into homelessness and paying for drugs with all I had left: my body.
The drugs stopped working — Adderall, Xanax, meth, anything that numbed me. The auditions dried up. I lost the thread. That’s how I ended up at the no-frills, government-run Van Ness Recovery House tucked beneath the Hollywood sign. So technically, part of my plan had worked. I just should’ve been more specific.
At Van Ness, Kathy — the no-nonsense, tough-as-nails program director — only allowed us a week’s worth of clothing. I’d arrived with nothing but the same clothes I’d worn into emergency detox days earlier, so everything else came from the donation bins in the attic — a treasure trove of designer pieces from former residents who’d made it out, or from dead stars whose closets outlived them. But I started hoarding outfits, hiding them in my room, convinced that if I could just look the part — like someone who didn’t belong here — I might start to believe it.
When Kathy discovered my stash — way more than the seven-day limit — she made me wear everything inside out as punishment.
“You’re so focused on your outsides, but it’s an inside job,” she’d say. It stripped away my armor, my sense of control, leaving me psychologically exposed. That humiliation cracked me open. I even tried to turn my rock bottom into a monologue during group: “a big house in the hills, blackout curtains, guys piled into bed …”
Kathy cut me off.
“It’s not a fucking Hollywood script, Nick,” she snapped. The room went silent. For the first time, someone demanded the raw version. That’s when I realized recovery meant learning how to live sober — honest, without all the ways I used to escape — and figuring out who I was without a script. It wasn’t easy or glamorous. But it was structured, safe and real.
Years passed. I wasn’t chasing dreams anymore — I was building a life. And that was the miracle. I wasn’t waiting to be discovered. I was learning how to show up, be useful, stay grounded.
Last week on the Universal lot, I stopped by to pick up a signed contract for one of our projects. I wasn’t planning to linger, but they were filming a scene for a feature, so I grabbed half a plain bagel from craft services and sat down to watch.
With nearly 10 years sober, in a life I didn’t know I wanted, I rarely pause long enough to take in what I gave up — or what I traded.
“Does it feel too big? Am I yelling?”
One of the lead actors was whispering to a clearly exhausted director. But I heard the anguish in their voice. I recognized it. This was someone deeply successful — far beyond anything I’d achieved — but I knew that feeling. Over-rehearsed. Over-conscious. So desperate to get it right, you hit your marks but forgot to be present.
On my way out, a studio tour group passed by. One of the kids — maybe 10, definitely theater kid energy — broke away from his family and asked, “Are you an actor?”
I paused. “Not anymore.” I waited for disappointment, but it never came.
“I work behind the camera now.”
His eyes lit up. “Cool!” And he meant it.
“Do you want to be an actor?” I asked.
“I want it more than anything,” he said, bouncing on his toes.
I didn’t tell him about the auditions, the headshots, the heartbreak. About what it felt like to fall short of something you wanted more than anything. I just smiled.
“Well, that’s exactly what it takes.”
He grinned and turned to go, practically skipping.
As he ran to catch up with his group, I caught my reflection in the office window and saw that kid too — the one who couldn’t sit still, who spit his Ritalin into the sink, who wanted it more than anything.
But instead of the old ache, what came was something quieter. A kind of tenderness — for both of us.
I didn’t get famous. But I got free.
I finally know how to live without needing to be the brightest thing in the room. I can hold still. Hold boundaries. Hear “no” without unraveling. I don’t have to shape-shift or earn my place by being impressive.
And when I think about that kid at the sink — spitting out little yellow pills, chasing the electricity I felt on stage — I don’t rush to explain him away. I don’t try to fold him into something more palatable or easier to understand. I just let him be. Let him stay. That kid who scribbled in the margins of his Playbill is still here. Turns out, he didn’t need fixing.
So I acknowledge him. I carry him with me. And I keep going.
Nick Dothée is a writer and former actor now working in Hollywood, adjacent to fame. His work on addiction, queer shame, and learning to live without escape has appeared in The Washington Post, The Cut, San Francisco Chronicle, Out, NBC and Business Insider. He has a memoir, “DOSE ME,” in progress.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.