Force Of Habit: YOUNG AND RESTLESS Characters Who Battled Addiction

When Y&R introduced Katherine Chancellor (Jeanne Cooper) in 1973, she was a wealthy long-time citizen of Genoa City who was bored in an unhappy marriage, so she turned to booze and stable boys for recreation. Her exasperated husband, Phillip, fell in love with Jill and wanted to marry her. Kay got into Alcoholics Anonymous in 1975, but fell off the wagon when her husband, Phillip, asked for a divorce so he could marry Jill, who was carrying his child. After Phillip’s untimely death, Kay sobered up again, but she fell off the wagon multiple times. In 1984, she relapsed when Jill spiked her drink with booze after Kay threatened to expose Jill’s tryst with her then-stepson, Jack, and in 2004, Jill began tearing apart the Chancellor mansion in a redecorating frenzy, driving Katherine back to the bottle. After Katherine reclaimed her sobriety, she founded The Second Chance Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Center.

Troubled Phillip Chancellor III (Thom Bierdz, with Cooper), the product of Jill’s affair with the late Phillip II, came home from a Swiss boarding school in 1986 with a drinking problem and a seething resentment against his mother for shipping him abroad. With Katherine’s encouragement, he got his drinking in check. However, Phillip began dating Cricket, he turned to booze to bolster his confidence, leading to a car wreck while he was driving under the influence. Nina plied Phillip with alcohol and seduced him, resulting in a son, Phillip IV (aka Chance). Phillip married Nina, but the pressures of family life turned him back toward the bottle. In 1989, inebriated while driving home from a party, Phillip crashed his car and seemingly died (though this proved not to be true when, in 2009, Phillip turned up alive; it turned out, he had faked his death after the crash and fled the country).

Neil Winters (Kristoff St. John) was shattered when best friend Ryan McNeil was murdered in 2001 and he began drinking to cope. When his brother, Malcolm, was presumed dead the following year, Neil plunged deeper into alcohol dependency, and not even the return of ex-wife-Drucilla and their 14-year-old daughter, Lily, who had been living in Paris for the past two years, could stop his downward spiral. Eventually, he realized what he was doing to his family and dried out. However, Neil found himself at the bottom of the bottle again after Dru’s death in 2007, and climbed back on the wagon for the sake of his children. In 2014, Neil relapsed after discovering that his wife, Hilary, was having an affair with his son, Devon, and the boozing continued through his divorce. Neil got sober again and teamed up with Jack to form the Abbott Winters Foundation, which supported recovery centers nationwide. Neil was alcohol-free at the time of his death in 2019.

In 2012, Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman, with Michelle Stafford, Phyllis) was shot by his psychotic ex-wife, Patty, and underwent surgery to remove the bullet, which enabled him to walk again. However, Jack was in intense physical pain and began popping pills to relieve his agony. Before, he was hooked on opioids, and his out-of-character behavior alarmed his loved ones. After Adam and Phyllis both confronted him, Jack tried to quit cold turkey, but was soon trying to get his hands on a fresh supply of pills. Kyle, Billy, Phyllis and Neil staged an intervention — and Jack responded by firing them (and also Adam, when Adam implied his drug use made him unfit to lead Newman). Jack decided to detox at the Abbott cabin, and Phyllis stayed with him through the worst of his awful withdrawal. He stayed sober with the help of Neil, his sponsor.

Once a problem drinker in high school, Billy Abbott (Jason Thompson) returned to Genoa City in 2006 after going away to help out with Hurricane Katrina disaster relief but unbeknownst to his family, he had developed a gambling habit and owed serious money to unsavory bookies in Miami. After his mom, Jill and brother Jack paid off Billy’s debts, they sent him to work in Hong Kong so he could get a handle on his life. When Billy came back two years later, he appeared free of his addiction but in 2011, his marriage to Victoria was in trouble and a depressed Billy started betting on the horses. Next, he won a restaurant in a poker game, then started using money from the till to bankroll his gambling. Billy struggled with his addiction and fell into destructive old habits, particularly in 2018, when he embezzled from Jabot and lost the company’s yacht in a card game. He wound up in rehab and has successfully abstained from gambling ever since.

Devon’s (Bryton James) birth mother, Yolanda (Chene Lawson), was a drug addict, and he was removed from her custody as a young boy when Yolanda overdosed. In 2005, a teenaged Devon encountered his mom, strung-out and homeless in the park, and she turned down his offer of money, confessing that she would spend it on her habit. Devon kept coming back to visit Yolanda and each time, she seemed to be getting worse. Later, Devon found his mom unconscious from an overdose and she was rushed to the hospital. Finally realizing she had hit rock bottom, Yolanda got clean in rehab, moved in with the Winters family and was hired in the mailroom at Jabot. She moved away the following year but has made subsequent visits to Genoa City, and Yolanda (who now calls herself Harmony) has maintained her sobriety.

In 2007, Daniel Romalotti (Michael Graziadei) was introduced by troublemaker Amber Moore to a website where her risqué videos were posted. Although he was married to Lily, Daniel paid for a membership to the adults-only site, and he soon became obsessed with the endless X-rated content the Internet had to offer. Daniel was so distracted with his new hobby that his grades started slipping, he got caught peeking at smut while on the job, his bank account was wiped out when his credit card was stolen online. A horrified Lily got him into therapy, but Daniel lied to her about the progress he was making. Daniel wound up under arrest for solicitation at a strip club and tried to hide it from his wife, but she found out and ultimately served him with divorce papers. The end of his marriage inspired Daniel to face his problem, and he quit online porn cold turkey.