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One week of fame was too much for overnight media sensation Ted Williams. The "man with the golden voice," a homeless former radio announcer who became an instant celebrity with a YouTube video, may now be entering rehab. Dr. Phil McGraw tells People that he convinced Williams to enter a treatment program after the recovering addict admitted his drinking problem on Dr. Phil Show.
"If Ted is ever going to get better, he's got to be honest with himself and admit he's addicted to drugs and alcohol,” says McGraw. "I've told him it's not going to be easy and it's going to take a lot of hard work. It might be a long journey for him, but this is a big step in the right direction."
Williams, 53, was candid from the start about the fact that alcohol and drugs were the cause of his homelessness. But the media soon dug up more troubling details about Williams' life: not only does he have a long rap sheet (including robbery and drug possession), but he's an estranged father to nine children and hadn't seen his mother in a decade before reuniting recently. Clearly, this was a man with a lot of demons.
But by the time these personal details started coming out, America had already fallen in love with the homeless man who sounded like a professional deejay. Williams went from begging on the side of an Ohio highway for money to being an in-demand talk-show guest and fielding high-profile job offers. (The Cleveland Cavaliers offered him an announcer contract and a house and he's already voiced a Kraft macaroni and cheese commercial.)
Unfortunately, you can't have a happy ending when you haven't reconciled with your own past. During the family reunion staged by Dr. Phil, Williams' ex-wife Patti said that Ted was a cheating drug addict who abandoned his children. One of Ted's daughters revealed that her dad was drinking heavily to deal with his fame -- "at least a bottle of Grey Goose a night" -- despite his claims of being clean. And Williams has told Entertainment Tonight that he got into an altercation where his daughter hit him.
As Dr. Phil has said: "Everyone is pulling for Ted, but his fifteen minutes are going to be over and then he'll be left to manage a life filled with temptation." We all want to think that fame is a kind of cure-all, but Ted Williams has a lot of hard work ahead for himself now. The good news is that fame has given Williams a second chance at a life that he almost destroyed the first time around. Now it's up to Ted to turn that chance into the happy ending we all want to see.
Do you think Ted Williams will be able to turn his life around? Chime in below!
