Now that Ryan Edwards has completed a stint in rehab, Maci Bookout is opening up about her struggle with his well-documented addiction.
Specifically, with regard to co-parenting their son.
If you watch Teen Mom OG online, you were privy to one of the more surprising and disturbing storylines in recent memory this season.
Maci worried repeatedly about Ryan’s drug use, causing tension between herself, his fiance Mackenzie Standifer, and Edwards’ parents.
Then, on the finale, Ryan married Mackenzie in a makeshift, parking lot wedding attended only by its officiant and Ryan’s mom and dad.
Oh, and Ryan drove high to the wedding.
So high, in fact, that he appeared to nod off behind the wheel, resulting in widespread fan criticism of both Mackenzie and MTV itself.
A Teen Mom crew member defended this with an interesting explanation, but regardless, no one came away from this looking good.
Fortunately, the dust has settled a bit since.
Ryan is out of rehab, and while Mackenzie and Maci are still feuding over the finale, Bookout offered a positive update on his condition.
“Yeah I knew there was an issue in the past,” Bookout said after watching the disturbing scenes play out like the rest of us this summer.
“I didn’t know it was anything like it was.”
Also like the rest of us, when Maci learned that the father of her first-born child would be going to rehab, she felt a strong sense of relief.
“I felt like a completely different person right away,” she said, adding that he is “where he needs to be” these days after receiving treatment.
“I knew the cloud over me, and all of us, was big, dark and heavy, but I just didn’t know how big, dark and heavy it was until it was gone.”
Throughout the season, Bookout admits that she received advice from an addiction counselor who advised her to use Bentley as leverage.
Surely, she would prefer not to use those words, but if he refused to get help for his obvious drug problem, she felt she had zero choice.
As for whether she’s still playing that card?
“I’m going to do my best to not discourage him, but also keep my child safe,” Maci said, implying that she’s leaving all options on the table.
Clearly, there are unresolved issues between the ex-couple (and his current wife), as this isn’t a situation that can be swept under a rug.
On the Teen Mom OG reunion, Mackenzie came out swinging against Bookout, accusing her of being an exploitative enabler basically:
“Maci you told me to my face merely days after I had informed you that Ryan was seeking help that you have known about his problem.”
Not only did she know, Mackenzie said, but she knew “since November… that was 186 days he could’ve died and still you said nothing.”
“You let everyone know that you feared for his life while concurrently exploiting Ryan’s addiction on the show,” Standifer said pointedly.
She continued, “Helping Ryan doesn’t mean talking about all of his problems on national television, it means being supportive.”
A good partner or co-parent would refrain from “kicking someone down,” she says, and “respect the privacy we all so graciously deserve.”
Bookout called that “ridiculous” and told Standifer she shouldn’t have signed up for a reality show if she wanted more privacy than this.
Hopefully, cooler heads prevail going forward and Ryan sticks with his out-patient treatment, for Bentley’s sake and all of theirs as well.
