Very few have reality TV crews following them around for the worst of it.Īs brutal and public a reckoning as it was, McGlashan credits it for pushing him to get sober and launching him on a new path as a very public example of what recovery can look like.Īfter being fired by Wichrowski, McGlashan said, he flew to Anchorage with $10,000 in cash and bought heroin. It's a strange situation: Lots of people in Alaska and all over the United States are struggling with opioid addictions, McGlashan said. "I lost the ability to work at sea because I forgot how to live on land." "All I ever wanted to do was be a fisherman, and I lost that," said McGlashan. When his captain learned of his stash of drugs in Dutch Harbor, McGlashan was fired, a moment also captured by the cameras. He could only hide that he was drug sick for so long. He was working on the crabbing boat Summer Bay for Bill "Wild Bill" Wichrowski, a captain who considered McGlashan "the best deck hand in Alaska." The "Deadliest Catch" film crew and everyone else noticed McGlashan at his worst: pale, slurring his words, coming down off drugs. "Nick was good at hiding it," said his father, Bruce Lanford, a veteran Alaska commercial fishing captain who now lives in Florida.īut by last fall, McGlashan couldn't hide it anymore. He'd managed to hang on to his job - and identity - as a Bering Sea crabber. Years of worsening alcohol and drug addiction had stripped away much of what had been good about the 29-year-old's life. As an adult, he's gained a measure of fame as a deck boss featured on the past four seasons of the Discovery Channel's popular, long-running reality TV show about Bering Sea crabbers. McGlashan, who spent his childhood between the remote Aleutian village of Akutan and the commercial fishing hub of Dutch Harbor, had been working on crab boats since he was 13. Nick McGlashan's lowest point as an addict came last fall, while the "Deadliest Catch" cameras were rolling. Photographed at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on May 12. Nick McGlashan, a crabber and cast member of “Deadliest Catch,” has been speaking publicly about his battle with heroin and alcohol addiction.
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