Did brutal custody destroy Aaron Carter? Star was ‘savable’, but fight for baby son derailed rehab plan
LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA: Aaron Carter denied a complete recovery program organized by his manager in the final weeks of his life as per a Daily Mail exclusive. As Carter started to stray from the path of sobriety, his manager Taylor Helgeson, according to the singer's publicists, offered him a challenging and specially designed treatment program. Regrettably, an expert claimed that Carter was "savable."
Prior to entering treatment, the pop artist wanted to settle the custody dispute over his children, according to an interview with Daily Mail with his public relations assistant Holly Davidson. “I want to be better and I am trying to be better, but I cannot do it now,” he told Davidson, of ITC PR. “He set his priorities as trying to deal with the courts over his son, the new music and life,” the aide told Daily Mail. “Then he wanted to go to rehab.” The mother of Carter's 11-month-old son Prince, Melanie Martin, with whom he had an on-again, off-again relationship, had been the subject of a protracted custody dispute. On Tuesday, November 8, three days after Carter's body had been discovered, Martin started packing up her items and leaving the house.
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Brenden Borrowman, an addiction specialist and the co-founder of the Utah drug treatment facility ReBoot, helped create the rehab program. ReBoot uses "time-proven military behavioral science," according to its website, to promote positive behavior and self-worth. Aaron was "savable," according to Borrowman. “I truly believe that,” he informed Daily Mail. Carter would completely cut himself off from technology, including phones, the Internet and pals. He would also have his brain health evaluated by top neurologists before working one-on-one with a "no bulls*** life coach," according to Borrowman. When they learned of Carter's passing, Davidson and her coworker Kelly Springer, who were both good friends with him, said they were "devastated." He was discovered unconscious in a bathtub at his Lancaster residence.
Davidson and Springer said they are now speaking up in the hopes that others facing similar challenges to Carter will seek help. “We lost our breath when we heard the news through a phone call,” Springer told Daily Mail. "It’s something we had all tried to avoid. This hits close to home for us.” Even though he agreed to the treatment plan, Carter, who Springer claimed was "white-knuckling" his addictions, missed multiple opportunities to speak with trauma specialist Borrowman. The rapper admitted he required professional assistance to avoid relapsing after five years of sobriety and spent a month in the outpatient program at Los Angeles-based Lionrock Recovery in September. “The last few weeks were hard,” Springer said. “He had been white-knuckling his diseases. He was doing the best job. It wasn’t his fault at all. The thing about this rehab is that you have to be isolated with no phones at a facility. That is where we had to come up with something creative where Aaron would be able to deal with that scenario and be successful with it.”
Davidson added: “Aaron was misunderstood. Not many people knew the real Aaron, because people often painted him out to be a villain or bad guy. When you talked to him on a daily basis, Aaron was filled with love, appreciation and goodness and wanted the best for everybody. He was so charismatic, sweet, kind and loving. Addicts are really good at covering it up. If you are someone like me, who has not been involved with drug addicts, with Aaron when I talked to him he seemed 100 percent fine. But when we saw something alarming on Instagram he would not answer my calls.” According to his fans, the 35-year-old was seen on Instagram live puffing on computer dust and smoking marijuana after forcefully claiming he had stopped using the drug. “That is their behavior pattern I understand. He was prescribed medicine and when you talked to him he was like ‘it’s prescribed medicine – not drugs,’”’ Davidson said. Carter's addiction was "not a choice, but a mental illness" brought on by "physiological damage to the brain," according to Borrowman, who has had great success with his other high-profile cases.