Nick is determined to bring Matt Clark (Roger Howarth) to justice on Young and Restless by any means necessary, but his quest has been seriously threatened by his growing drug addiction. Despite those around him beginning to notice the shift in his behavior, Nick continues to maintain that everything is under control. “It’s a very Nick thing, right?” portrayer Joshua Morrow notes to Soap Opera Digest. “He doesn’t ask for help. He thinks he can handle everything.”

Rising to the Challenge

The last time that Nick tried to take care of his nemesis on his own, Matt caused him to crash the car he was driving, leaving Nick with an injured leg that soon led to a dependency on painkillers. When those pills eventually proved ineffective, Nick leveled up to taking fentanyl, the very drug that Matt had been pushing.

Upon learning that this was going to be his character’s new storyline, Morrow found it quite a departure for Nick. “I remember when Josh [Griffith, Y&R’s head writer and executive producer] told me about this, I was like, ‘Damn,’” the actor recalls. “Like, my character’s barely even in the hospital! Nick is the hero. He’s not the guy that’s hurt. He’s not the guy who needs help. He’s the guy who’s solving stuff.” So I love that the show gave me this opportunity.”

Not only was he up for the challenge, but he embraced it. “I want to do my absolute best, and try to be as convincing and effective as possible,” Morrow declares of depicting Nick’s blossoming addiction. “It’s a really exhausting exercise at times, because with drugs, there’s so many different stages, right? There’s when you need it and then when you’re comfortably in it. Then there’s the comedown, and then the aftereffects. So I’m just trying to be as cognizant as I can of all the different stages.” The actor has even made it a point to check in before each scene to make sure he’s channeling the stage the directors have in mind for Nick. “It’s been challenging,” Morrow allows, adding, “I’ve loved taking this on. It gets pretty intense, too, so I hope [viewers] like it.”

Hiding the Pain: How much longer can Nick keep his addiction from his family, including (from l.) Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott), Noah (Lucas Adams), and Sharon (Sharon Case)?Howard Wise/jpistudios.com

A Matter of Life or Death

With over three decades under his belt at Y&R, Morrow knows his alter ego inside and out, but because drug addiction is a completely new experience for Nick to be going through, the actor had to do some preparation before tackling this storyline. “I researched drug use, and I’m sure that was, you know, flagged on my computer or whatever,” he says with a chuckle. “My sister’s a doctor, and I asked her, ‘ Have you seen people on fentanyl or when they need it?’ and she sort of explained some stuff to me.”

Beyond the challenge of portraying Nick’s worsening addiction effectively, Morrow was also acutely aware of how important and relevant the storyline is. “I know that fentanyl is obviously a massive, massive problem in our country,” he says. “So at first, I was a little scared of the story and being able to do it justice without it coming across as just sort of like, ‘Let’s just delve into this area for a little bit, then get out.’ I wanted to give it impact. I wanted it to be palpable. When you’re watching it, I was hoping people would feel something. I wanted them to see this character going on this journey and spiraling, and hopefully he’ll come out of it and maybe even be a better person.”

All in the Family

The Newman clan is no stranger to addiction, with Nick being very familiar with his mother, Nikki’s (Melody Thomas Scott), struggle with alcoholism. But according to Morrow, his alter ego doesn’t see those parallels. “I think it’s a little soon in the game,” he muses. “I don’t think he’s considered yet the ramifications of how serious this can be. I think there will be some way to make a correlation here with what his mother went through, obviously. But I just think that Nick is still in that mode of ‘I can handle anything and I’m not concerned about any of the ramifications from it.’”

Given Nick’s attitude, things will clearly have to get a lot worse before they get any better, and he’s still a ways away from admitting that he has a problem and needs help. “Right now, this is a very selfish gesture,” Morrow notes. “This is all about just finding some way to get to the next day, just so he can navigate it. But if, because of this addiction, he did something horrible, that somebody he loved got injured or somebody he really cared about paid for it, that would be rock bottom for him.”

Slippery Slope: Nick is clearly headed for a major fall.