Actor Jacob Young talks wellness and charity.

<div class="block">Actor Jacob Young joined &#39;beWell&#39; to talk about his experience with addiction and mental wellness, as well as his charitable work with the Boys Town organization.</div>

beWell

Be Well: Actor Jacob Young on Wellness and Boys Town Charity

We all know our first guest for his Emmy winning role as Lucky Spencer on General Hospital and as Jr Chandler on all my Children. Besides acting, singing and producing, he devotes much of his time helping Children with the organization Boystown. Welcome Jacob J to the show. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. It's so great to see you. So talk to us a little bit about spending so much time on soaps. I mean, when we were just talking about it, it's an astonishing. Yeah, it was an astonishing amount of time, a, a great career opener for me. I mean, I started in 1997. I ultimately did over 2000 episodes of soaps, you know, on all the major networks for the most part. And it was a great part of my life. You know, I learned a lot do people like, I wanna know what face cream he uses because I started when I was 17, people still come up to you calling you by your, you know, characters. Yeah, when, when you're in their home, five days a week, they get to know you as that character. So they do they call you by your character? And you and I unintentionally intentionally respond to it. I mean, it's just becomes a part of your life, right? Because you just answer to that name and I feel like you have such devoted fans. Right? Oh, yeah. I mean, so fans are the best fans. I mean, they'll literally follow you for the rest of your career if they've locked in, into you. I mean, they, they're all my social media. They've never left that. And you've been really uh open about your struggles through the good, the bad and everything in between because we've followed your journey for so many years. Three decades. Why have you chose to be so open with things like addiction and the darker times you've gone through? Well, I mean, it's, I think more than ever it's, it's, you know, it, the, the lid has been sort of been blown off of mental health and thank God, especially for a lot of men specifically are afraid to talk about their feelings. Um And, you know, I went through a traumatic childhood, not unlike, not like, unlike other people that have gone through that. But um you know, II I, when I was as a teenager, my step mom took her life. Um I was, grew up in a divorced family, grew up in poverty, welfare, food bank, the whole thing. And I vowed to myself that I was like, I'm gonna be better than that I'm gonna try to be better and I'm gonna go work harder. But ultimately, what that did is I was, I was dealing with so much mentally reeling that I started to self medicate, uh, and being in Hollywood at the age of 17 and suddenly everything is at your disposal. You know, I found myself addicted to prescription drugs and in, in, you know, uh, environments that weren't healthy and now you're a dad, you've got what? Three kids? I have three, I have three Children, a boy and two daughters. So how does that change you? Well, it, it does, I mean that, that's actually where I kind of had the awakening when my son was, you know, like was still incubating and, and uh and her and his mom, uh we basically, I started realizing I was thinking, I don't wanna repeat the sins of the father. I didn't wanna be like my dad and not be there. So I think that's really where that the addiction started happening. And I eventually just realized I said, you know what? I wanna be there. I wanna be alive and I wanna be well for my kids. And not only are you doing that, you're having a positive influence in their lives and all the things you guys do we see on Instagram having so much fun, especially with the Halloween costumes. You something recently you guys go all out. So first of all, why? And second of all, would you have any plans for this year? Yes, of course. Well, we go all out because it's, first of all, it's so much fun. The kids really enjoy it and it's become a tradition in our family. Um, you know, as an actor pictures. Oh, yeah. There's some of them wolf. I mean, that's a serious costume right there. Oh, look at that. We always, we always go all out. But, uh, this year we're doing Mary Poppins. So talk to me a little bit about some of the charity work that you're doing and how you got involved in all of this. Yeah. Well, I mean, first and foremost, uh healing myself, realized I made, I realized that I wanted to be able to give back. Um And one of the organizations that I worked, you know, consistently with his Boystown. Boystown has been around for over 100 years. The works of Father Flanagan uh are still going on to this very day. Uh The lives that get changed these boys and girls. Um Not to be confused, you know, a lot of people go, oh, it's just boys. No, it was back in the day. But now they've been, they've had girls and boys integrated in, into boys town since the seventies. But the work that they do, uh one of their mottos is teach love. And one of the things that they've discovered is they're actually healing the frontal lobe by just structuring more love in their lives just showing them that someone cares, someone is there for them. I know that's so important and impactful and you're also very involved in co founding next generation storytellers. Yeah. Yeah. Next generation storytellers. There you go for it. Yeah. Next generation storytellers, uh my partner Trent Garrett and I created it happened. It came about during COVID. Uh We basically, we created a 24 week virtual crash course to teach kids in unrepresented neighbor neighborhoods and different schools around the United States on how to make short films. Um And doing so they, they end up writing it, they end up directing it, they end up acting in it. And then we fly in through my sponsors Black Magic Design, Nan Lux lighting, uh Hawk anamorphic lenses, Sigma lenses and we make a Hollywood short film with the kids at the helm. And now you also have something that you're working on that you star in, but also produced. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, oh, I've got projects going on. Yeah. Yeah. For Bitcoin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we left before Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I did produce that. Um And that's, that's gonna be coming out shortly. Uh We're still looking at some distribution but you know, the strike and all the things that were going on kind of put a little bit of a damper on a few those things. Well, we're looking forward to all of that. Continued great work and we're looking forward to those Halloween costumes. I know. Yeah. And if anybody's interested in, in Boystown, please go to Boystown dot org so they can learn how to help donate to the boys and girls to Boytown. Alright. Thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it. Thank you.