NEED TO KNOW
Dakota Mortensen is getting candid about his struggles with addiction.
Appearing on the Wednesday, June 4 episode of The Viall FIles, the 32-year-old reality star opened up about his life prior to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
While fans of the show have heard mention of Dakota’s previous addiction on the show, he takes it back to where it all began — when he was a 17-year-old basketball player looking for something to help him manage his knee pain.
“I had bad knees, and I remember I was at a practice once, and my knees were hurting super bad,” he explains to host Nick Viall. “I was in the gym, and a kid was in there for, working out or something. He was just one of my friends, kind of. I was complaining about my knees… and then he was like, ‘Oh, dude, I have some pain pills.'”
Dakota “had no idea” what the pills were, but he took them. “Then I went and practices, and I remember I had zero pain. It was the best thing in the world,” he recalled.
Dakota sought out more pills, finding out that they were prescription painkillers. He didn’t see what he was doing as problematic because, “It was a pill and I didn’t see, I think, the bad side of that in that way,” he explained.
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When he and his friend went to get more pills, their dealer told them snorting was more effective. Dakota eventually moved on to Oxycontin, recalling that a “buddy” eventually told him to smoke them “off of tin foil,” which created a huge shift in his addiction.
The then-teenager was working construction but found his habits cost more than he was bringing in. It was then that he turned to heroin. As his addiction took over, Dakota found himself stealing from his parents and doing return scams at big box stores with friends for extra cash.
Dakota was in a relationship with his high school sweetheart at the time, who wasn’t aware of the extent of his addiction before they got married. It was then that he started to realize the toll his addiction could take on others.
“She knew about [the addiction], but she didn’t understand it,” he said. “And nobody did. Nobody understood it. My family didn’t understand it … She had no idea that I was using heroin. She knew, [but] she had no idea how bad I really was as well.”
Dakota vowed to himself to stop using when they got married, but he admitted that he turned to drugs again on their wedding day.
“I remember when I was going to my wedding, it was gonna be my last hurrah before I stopped. And before I left, [some of my buddies] were like, ‘We should use one more time,'” he recalled. “So, I am in my suit, I’m getting ready to go do this… And I am trying to get drugs.”
“I remember I was supposed to be there at a certain time, and I was late,” he added. “Like, I wasn’t late to the wedding or anything, but, like, meaning I was late to where I should have been there a lot earlier… I showed up and yeah, I used there, and that was actually fentanyl that I used there.”
In the early days of his marriage, Dakota tried to get sober. He and his wife bought a home together and with her working nights as a CNA, Dakota “held off for a while,” he admitted.
When a friend reached out offering heroin, however, he began using again. “It was mostly just heroin, and then, like, the fentanyl patches are, we would get those from cancer patients, by the way. We would find people that were dying from cancer, and they would sell all their drugs to people to make money, which is really sad,” he says.
In the year and a half he was married, Dakota continued doing drugs with his wife’s limited knowledge. He felt the call to get sober after having “a very godly, spiritual experience.”
“I remember I was hurting so bad because I was still using and I just felt like such a crappy person. I just hated myself so much,” he said. “And I remember I said a prayer and at this time, I didn’t even know if I believed in God anymore… And I said a prayer and I was like, ‘If there’s anything you can do right now, just please, I need help so bad, and I need something to happen that will just change.'”
He continued, “Right after I said that, I had a cousin that I haven’t talked to since I was a little kid, and he was a junkie for 25, 30 years, and then he was sober. He ended up getting sober. He worked at a rehab place, and he randomly, out of the blue, shot me a text, right when I was done praying. He sent me a scripture and I thought that was kind of weird, but I remember texting him being like ‘Hey, I’m actually, I kinda feel like I need help right now.'”
Dakota didn’t follow through immediately, he admitted. However on the next day, Christmas Eve, things came to a head when his wife caught him using.
“She was in her bathroom and I went into the other bathroom and locked the door and I was getting ready to do it,” he explained. “And she grabbed the key, unlocked the door, and opened it with me using. It was, like, the most craziest experience because she was just broken.”
Dakota recalled feeling “numb” and hiding his drugs on his body and throwing the foil it came in in the toilet, convincing his wife he’d flushed the drugs in front of her.
“But I kept the drugs,” he said. “And then she called my family. My family came and picked me up. Then when I was driving home, even just driving home I remember I was, like, I was sitting on the door. I was just so out of it. And I was this close from just opening the door and just throwing myself out of the truck,” he admits.
“I got home and I was at my parents’ house for a while. The next day, she came over, essentially said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna get a divorce.’ And by the way, during this time, I was in rehab. So I checked myself in rehab. I did go to her and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m struggling. I gotta get help. I don’t know how to do it. And I managed to get help.'”
Knowing that rehab was too little, too late for his marriage put Dakota in a dark place.
“From there, I remember there was this point where I was like, this is where I was gonna kill myself,” he revealed. “And I went, I bought like a gram of heroin and I was just like, ‘I’m gonna just shoot up and I’m gonna just try to kill myself.’ This is where I’m so sick of this life. I don’t know how to stop, can’t stop. It felt like it was just… I could never stop. And when I did, that same cousin called me and he said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna come pick you up. I’m gonna get you into my rehab that I work at for free, and I’m gonna come grab you.'”
Dakota agreed but noted, “I was like, ‘I’ll try it one more time. This will be my last time. I was like, If this one doesn’t work, I’m done. I’m just gonna kill myself. I don’t like doing this anymore.'”
He admitted it was difficult to go through his divorce and get sober. After four months in rehab, he came home and packed up, deciding to move from Idaho to Utah for a fresh start.
“The crazy thing is, when I was in Utah, I actually was sober for close to 4½, 5 years. So I was actually doing great,” he said. “I was actually super happy. I was just loving life again. I never got to really enjoy life. It almost felt like I missed out on everything. I never got to do anything. I ended up having a relapse and it was fentanyl.”
Today, Dakota has been sober for over three years. He admitted, “What I actually did, it sounds weird, but I did it just for myself too, so that I could see, I actually documented a lot of that period of time for myself to watch what it did to how much it changes you. When I watch back on some of those videos, it would blow your mind. Like, your whole thought process changes, like, immediately.”
To get sober, he revealed that he got a hotel in Saint George and locked himself in a hotel for about five to six days where he went “through the gnarliest withdrawals.”
He explained, “I think it was the part that I knew, I could finally see, that I knew all of the beliefs in my head at that time were lies. It wasn’t real. It was just, like, I knew it was just the drugs. It was all the drugs changing how I’m thinking.”
Dakota changed his focus to working out and wellness as he tried to transition to a new stage of his life. It was about six months into that journey that Dakota met Taylor Frankie Paul. While it hasn’t always been smooth sailing between them, Taylor understood the boundaries of Dakota’s addictions.
Taylor makes mention of Dakota’s addiction after their Halloween party blowout during season 2, acknowledging it’s more important than any problem between them.
“I made sure he was okay because I do worry about him obviously,” she told Mayci Neeley and Mikayla Matthews during a lunch together. “When you have a past like that, that’s like life or death for people. So I checked up on him.”
Taylor Frankie Paul/ Instagram
In a confessional, she elaborates, explaining, “Since the Halloween party, Miranda and I are cordial. But Dakota and I are currently in a fight and things are just getting worse and worse. And honestly, I do worry about Dakota’s sobriety. With recovering addicts, you never know and so I think I’ll always worry about that. My heart is closed at this point, but there’s no question that I feel so strongly about him.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.
