Amber Hollingsworth (YouTuber) updates viewers on developments in the Murdaugh family case. She reports that Alex Murdaugh was grazed by a bullet while fixing a flat tire, has resigned from his law practice, and announced he is going to rehab amid investigations into the practice's finances. Amber analyzes the situation through the lens of opioid addiction—arguing opioids are expensive, can drive people (even wealthy, functional professionals) to steal, and often remain hidden for years—and reflects on how addiction can destroy families and lead to cascading bad choices.
Chapters
As some of you may already know, there is a shocking plot twist in the Murdoch family murders in South Carolina. Now, if you've been following this story, you already know there are a ton of twists and turns. And I'm not going to go over the whole story for you because I made a video several weeks back that talks about all the things that led up. But the very quick rundown is this. The Murdoch family is a very powerful legal family in South Carolina. For several generations, members of this family have held legal office, prosecutors, there are many attorneys in this family, and they've been working in the legal field for a long time. But the focus of this story is on Alex Murdaugh, who not very long ago found out that his wife and son Paul had been shot and murdered. Now, if you want to hear all about that, make sure you check out the first video that I made. Today's video is all about an update on that case. You see Alex Murdaugh, who's also a lawyer in the family law business. You see, it just came out this week that Alex Murdaugh was actually shot in the head while he was trying to fix a flat tire. Now, luckily, he was only grazed by the bullet and he's expected to make a full recovery. But not only do we have that shocking news, but just as that piece of information came out, it also came out that Alex Murdaugh was resigning from his law practice and headed to rehab. Now, he didn't say this specifically, but in addition to that news, the law practice that he was involved in came out and said that there were some investigation into the financial books. So clearly, we don't need a full fledged detective to come in here and put some of these dots together that Alex Murdaugh was stealing funds from the practice. And all of this information came out. Now, Mr. Murdoch did make a statement that he was on his way to rehab, and he alluded to the fact that he needed to get help for a problem that's been there for quite a long time, but had gotten a lot worse after the death of his wife and son. Now, the part that I really feel like I can help add, shed some light on in regards to this story is the part about addiction. And when I hear about this story, it really is rather heartbreaking. You have an entire family being destroyed. And as of right now, we don't really know if there's a connection between Mr. Murdoch's addiction and the murders of his son and wife. But obviously, you have a lot of conspiracy theories going on around about that. I Have nothing to say about that because I have no idea if there's a connection. But what we can speculate on is what's going on in this addiction. Now, a lot of you may think, how does someone have an addiction that severe and hide it for that long and be such a functional working person? Well, when my husband first told me about this breaking news, I said, oh my goodness, that's opiate addiction. And later I did hear someone else confirm that we are talking about opiate addiction. Now, the reason why I jumped to that conclusion is because of all the stolen money, because clearly this family has money. There was some wealth in this family. And you first thing I think is, why is this person stealing when it seems like that there's plenty of money in this family. So my brain immediately goes through, well, it's not alcohol, because he wouldn't have needed to steal to buy alcohol. It's not like a benzodiazepine. He would not have needed to steal to buy benzodiazepine. Immediately jumps into my head that it must be an opioid problem. Because typically that's how you first become aware that someone has an opioid problem. It usually shows itself in the money or the finances before you can really see it in the behavior. And the reason is, it's because opioids are so very expensive. And if you develop an addiction to opioids, which are like pain pills, your body just develops a dependency on it so quickly. And because they're so expensive, even if you have a lot of money, you are going to very quickly have a hard time keeping up with and affording a full fledged opioid addiction. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And when you get really into it, you need that kind of money just to avoid being sick. Which why so many people who have an addiction to pain pills end up stealing or doing other kinds of not so great things in order to afford the habit. The other thing about an opioid addiction is for the first bunch of years, it's very hard to tell by looking at someone and by their behavior that they have an opioid addiction. Unless you are specifically looking for it and you have some history and some knowledge about opioid addiction. Because for the most part, people, when they're on pain bills, they don't look intoxicated, they don't slur their speech, they don't feel fall down, they're able to work. In fact, for a while, they're able to function even better than they functioned before. It's not uncommon for someone who has recently developed a pain pill addiction to, you know, make better grades, to get a promotion at work. Because you see, a lot of times people abuse pain pills to be able to work long, crazy hours. Now, eventually, as your tolerance builds and builds, the pills become less and less effective. It costs you more and more money, and then you're trapped because you can't just stop because you're going to go into very severe withdrawal if you stop. And that's how you get trapped in the cycle of pain. Peeler opioid addiction. Now, obviously, I don't know what all has gone on in this Murdoch family. I don't know what all Alex Murdock has done, but I can tell you, whatever it was, he is paying a very huge price. He has lost his family, he has lost his job, he's lost his reputation. I don't know what kind of legal action is going to be taken by his law firm to recoup the money. We don't know how much money it was, but my guess is it's probably a good amount. And. And it's going on for quite a while now. Another thing that comes up when you talk about this particular situation is the idea of Alex Murdock saying, I'm gonna go to rehab. Now, some people may look at that and say, okay, he's just gonna go to rehab because he got in trouble or because he got busted. Or people sometimes will say, you know, why is it that, you know, famous people or rich people or stars, you know, they get in trouble and then they go to rehab? Well, what I would say to that is, even though those are the ones we see in the spotlight, that's usually the reason that most people go to rehab. And it doesn't. People won't get better. Typically, people don't go to inpatient residential rehab until they get backed into a corner. Now, I know it's easy when you look at this family, in this case, to get drawn in by the drama and the mystery and the plot twist and the turns. It seems like something you might watch on Netflix. And while all this is in the spotlight, and of course, there is a lot of drama and plot twists to it, it is not dislike any family who's struggling with an addiction. You see it on television shows, and we see it on movies. You know, like if you've watched Breaking Bad and you see how this regular guy got himself into a bad position, and maybe he didn't start out doing it for a bad reason, but he makes one bad choice, which leads to another bad choice, which forces him to make another bad choice, which forces him to have this lie and this other thing going on in his life. Just seems, like really far fetched out there. But what I'm here to tell you is it's really not that far fetched out there. Because every single day in our practice, we see people who have gotten themselves trapped in this cycle of addiction where they. They make one bad choice, which literally forces them to make another bad choice and another bad choice. And before you know it, you're so far into this pit of lies and secrecy and darkness, you feel like there's no way out. It's easy to villainize this family because they have all this money and power, and what did they do wrong? But to be honest, this family is still a family. These are still people. And now all those secrets and lies are surfacing. And as many of you know, I always tell you guys, addiction lives in secrecy and darkness. And the only way out is to turn the light on it. Now, if you want to see another story about how addiction can destroy good, healthy, happy families, I want you to check out this video next about the twisted case of Kyle Nevins.
