Jax Taylor is 18 months into sobriety and not pretending it’s a clean finish line.
Spotted at LAX in a brief exchange with TMZ, the former Jax Taylor kept his focus off reality TV headlines and instead on the routine of recovery. The message was blunt: he’s sober, but still actively in treatment.
“I needed a lot of help,” he said. “And I still need help. Addiction is serious. Mental health, men’s mental health—it’s a big deal. It’s constant work.”
Therapy, he added, is the anchor. Not a fix, not a milestone, just maintenance. “Lots of therapy,” as he put it.
Taylor also spoke briefly about co-parenting with his estranged wife, Brittany Cartwright. He described the dynamic as difficult but improving, with both working toward stability for their son, Cruz, who is five.
Away from family logistics, he acknowledged the wider noise of reality TV culture—especially comparisons being drawn between recent storylines on Summer House and the “Scandoval” fallout involving Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix. He declined to position himself as an authority on any of it.
“Not the guy you want advice from,” he said, effectively stepping out of the discourse.
What he did return to, repeatedly, was recovery as a daily practice rather than a narrative arc. That includes therapy, structure, and distance from the chaos that defined much of his public life.
In that same orbit of old relationships and reality TV history sits Stassi Schroeder, another former cast member from his earlier years in the franchise ecosystem—part of a network of personal and televised histories that still shadow his name, even as he tries to move forward.
For Taylor, the pitch is simple now: stay sober, stay in treatment, stay present. Everything else is background noise.
Last modified: May 17, 2026
