If you’d been told a few years ago that Ryan Edwards would end up having possibly the saddest, most disturbing story out of all the Teen Mom crew, would you have believed it?
Maybe, maybe not.
Ryan’s always been a jackass and a deadbeat dad, but unfortunately that’s not so uncommon when it comes to this show.
He’s rarely shown interest in his son Bentley, and Maci Bookout has always had a hard time trying to co-parent with him.
The whole cat-killing fiasco was definitely terrifying — remember, Ryan bragged about killing a bunch of feral cats after luring them onto his property back in 2016?
But last year when it was revealed that he’d developed a heroin addiction and that he’d been shooting up and driving around town, well …
Way to reach Jenelle levels of horrifying, Ryan.
He married Mackenzie Standifer last May, and as we saw on the show, he was nodding off while driving to the ceremony.
Shortly after the wedding he ended up in rehab, but he left early, and when he came back home, he seemed to replace heroin with booze.
He was so drunk at his second wedding that he was slurring his words, and he barely seemed like he understood what was going on.
Things became worse and worse as time went on, to the point where many fans suspect he was high during this week’s season finale.
It looked like he was nodding off again, and at times it looked like he was starting to go through withdrawals.
It’s all bad, it’s all terrible, and since last month he was arrested for violating his probation then received restraining orders from Maci and her family after threatening them, things have certainly gotten worse.
But, as Ryan explains to Dr. Drew in next week’s reunion special, he can’t get help for any of these issues.
“Why’s that?” you might be wondering. “Surely he can afford another go at rehab, or at least a therapist. If not, meetings are free!”
Those are valid things to wonder, but the thing is, Ryan is famous. And so he simply can’t do these things.
It doesn’t make any sense at all, but let’s just hear him out, all right?
In the sneak peek, Dr. Drew asks him how he’s doing, and he says he’s doing good, and the good doctor asks him about what he’s doing to stay clean.
“I still talk to my therapist that was in treatment with me,” Ryan says. “I’ll call him up every once in a while now, it used to be a lot more, now it’s every once in a while.”
“But I have Mackenzie and my mom and dad, you know?”
Dr. Drew isn’t having it, and he tells him that he’s sure he’s been advised to get more help than that.
“Yeah,” Ryan admits. “We went through that counseling, it’s honestly hard to find a counselor ‘cause of this TV show.”
Mackenzie backs him up, but again, Dr. Drew isn’t having it — maybe because he used to have a show that was completely centered on helping addicts on TV.
Ryan claims that therapists have told him that they wouldn’t see him “because I don’t think the TV show and you are a good idea.”
Drew tries to be nice about it and advises him to find someone else because “that’s a very strange move, at the very least you could commit to them, you wouldn’t bring cameras in.”
Because obviously the issue the counselor had was Ryan filming therapy, not him getting therapy at all.
But Mackenzie circled back, saying that it was “really hard” because “they just said addicts are selfish and Ryan is selfish and this show makes him selfish and so he couldn’t be a part of the group unless he quit his job, which, whatever.”
Yeah, that 100% never happened.
It really sounds like Ryan did try to go to therapy but was told that his sessions couldn’t be filmed and that it would be a good idea for his sobriety if he got off the show altogether, which is probably true.
And then, of course, he and Mackenzie are twisting it to make it sound like people on TV shows can’t get help, which is obviously very, very untrue.
As a sad little bonus, Dr. Drew suggests a 12-step program, to which Ryan replies “I just don’t, I mean, I …”
Drew tells him that it’s free and available everywhere, and he says “I guess it is.”
No, buddy, it definitely is.
At the end, Dr. Drew lays it out for him by saying that he personally knows tons and tons of people on TV shows and in movies that were able to get treatment.
But Ryan really is not interested.
It’s sad that he and Mackenzie are trying to say that he’s not able to get help when it’s so obviously not the case.
On Teen Mom OG, every single mom has gotten therapy at one point or another, and it’s even been filmed — Maci, Amber, Farrah, and Catelynn have all managed to find someone to work with them.
It’s a ridiculous excuse Ryan’s come up with here, and it really seems to suggest that he’s not sober and has no intentions of getting that way anytime soon.
