The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives fans know Dakota Mortensen through his messy relationship with Taylor Frankie Paul — but now, he is speaking out about a darker time in his life, including his addiction to heroin.
During the Wednesday, June 4, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast, Dakota, 32, detailed the personal issues he faced while still living in Idaho before making the move to Utah — and meeting Taylor, 30.
“For me, it started out when I was in high school. I was a big basketball player. I remember I was at a practice once and my knees were hurting super bad. I was in the gym and a kid was in there and he was like, ‘Oh dude, I have some pain pills, you want some?’” he recalled. “I had no idea. I didn’t even know what pain pills were. I didn’t really understand it.”
Dakota took the unprescribed medication and things spiraled: “I remember I had zero pain. It was the best thing in the world.”
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From there, Dakota moved on to using opioid medication, which led to heroin and fentanyl use. Following several attempts and concerns from his loved ones, Dakota got sober when he moved to Utah. He was sober for four years before he relapsed. (If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Hulu viewers know that Dakota’s addiction played a big role in his initial issues with Taylor. Their ups and downs were captured on season 1 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, during which they got into a fight that led to Taylor’s 2023 arrest for domestic violence. They have since expanded their family with son Ever, who was born in March 2024, but the duo are off-and-on in their relationship, often arguing about Dakota’s past infidelity.
“I know a lot of people from a viewer point of view [don’t understand that] having everything aired out to the world is a lot different than just going to a person you care about or your family and telling them something,” Dakota explained on Wednesday. “Like you want to talk about fear, that’s the scariest feeling in the world.”
He continued: “Then doing it with a show, you don’t have any control over it. If they’re missing something, it’s like that’s not how it was. That to me was really hard to grasp. That was hard to understand. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be torched to the world for it. I just want to have a moment with you where I can talk to you. I want a safe place to talk.’ But that’s not the case.”
Dakota confirmed during the podcast that he recently had a setback with Taylor amid a new revelation. Keep scrolling for Dakota’s biggest confessions about his addiction — and an update on where he stands with Taylor now:
The Early Stages of Addiction
“I was pouring handfuls of these pills in my pocket. Then that same friend was like, ‘I also hear that if you snort them, they work better.’ And from there it just progressed really fast,” Dakota recalled about his high school days. “Then some of the drug addict friends of mine bumped [me] to Oxycodone. …I had a buddy that eventually told me you could smoke them off of tin foil. That changed everything. It got to a point where they were selling them [to me] for $50 a pill. It’s a lot of money.”
Heroin
“It really was a blessing with my family because they caught me with pills really early on as well. So they knew almost from the start that, like, I was starting to dabble with some of these things,” he recalled. “Then from there I went to heroin because then Oxycodone [was] so expensive — heroin was a little cheaper and had similar highs. So you just transfer and a lot of people do this.”
Dakota recalled harrowing experiences walking into drug houses, saying, “What’s crazy is that the first time that I got heroin, I remember the people that I got from were shooting up and watching that was so scary to me.”
That made Dakota put down one single boundary when it came to using.
“I remember when I saw that I told myself, ‘If I ever shoot up, I’m gone.’ Like, I just knew that was the thing,” he continued. “I’ve heard when you go to needles, it’s 10 times harder to quit. So I always made that promise to myself to where I was like, ‘I’m never going to shoot up.’”
Paying for Drugs
In addition to working construction and other hard labor, Dakota told stories about breaking into cars — but not houses — and returning automotive tools to stores for a profit.
“Sometimes girls would be like drug dealers. When you’re really hurting and inventory is low, some girls would always offer that if I slept with them that they would give me drugs,” he revealed. “I said no. I never said yes to any of that.”
His Ex-Wife
At the height of his addiction, Dakota was engaged — and then married — to his high school sweetheart, who had no idea he was using drugs.
“It was one of those things where I thought just by getting married that maybe that would stop [my addiction]. I remember when I was going to my wedding, it was going to be my last hurrah before I stopped,” he detailed. “So I used there and that was actually fentanyl that I used on my wedding day.”
Dakota continued to use fentanyl after tying the knot.
“I was doing fentanyl patches at the time,” he shared. “We would get those from cancer patients by the way. Like, we would find people that were dying from cancer and they would sell all their drugs to people to make money.”
According to Dakota, he was married for “a year and a half” and was “abusing drugs the whole marriage.” He made attempts to get clean in rehab — and his wife even caught him using in their home — but it was never successful for long.
“I remember there was this point where I was going to kill myself. I bought, like, a gram of heroin,” he recalled. “I was just like, ‘I’m gonna just shoot up and I’m gonna just try to kill myself.’ This is where I was so sick of this life. I don’t know how to stop.”
Getting Clean
Dakota made multiple attempts to quit using “cold turkey.” He credited his cousin, who was sober, for guiding him through, but he ultimately had a relapse four years later.
“I ended up having a relapse and it was fentanyl. And then I started using fentanyl [again],” Dakota said before he made another effort clean.
“I got a hotel in St. George —It was, like, a nine-hour drive [from where I was in Idaho during the pandemic] — I drove all the way to St. George and locked myself in a hotel for five to six days. I just went through the gnarliest withdrawals. I was just in bed shaking, sweating and throwing up.”
While reflecting on his sobriety, Dakota noted that not all of his friends were able to get sober adding, “Almost everybody that I was dealing with at that time, they’re all dead. Most of them are all dead.”
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Meeting Taylor
According to Dakota, he met Taylor when he was “six months” sober.
“How I am as a person, it’s really hard for me to feel like I like someone enough to give someone myself,” he admitted. “It’s hard for me to find somebody where I really am like, ‘Yes, I want to be with you.’ With Taylor when I met her, that’s where I kind of felt really scared. It scared me more than anything.”
Dakota recalled immediately feeling a strong connection.
“Pretty early on I was like, ‘What are we?’ Because I just don’t know. And I could tell something inside of me liked her. I knew it and it scared me really bad. So there was also that part where I didn’t want her to hurt me,” he explained. “That’s the sad part — I was [the] one that hurt her. I think part of that was maybe me sabotaging it. I was so afraid of how much I liked Taylor and how afraid I was of her and knowing that I didn’t know, really, what she wanted or like if this could even be a thing.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Dakota claimed Taylor was “still talking to the man she had an affair with” during her soft swinging scandal with now-ex-husband Tate Paul. He noted the fallout from the swinging scandal and her arrest were among their initial issues.
The Night of the Arrest
Following a heated fight with Dakota in February 2023, Taylor was arrested for domestic violence. She was charged with aggravated assault, two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse with injury and criminal mischief after the incident. Taylor pleaded guilty six months later to aggravated assault, while the other four charges were dismissed with prejudice. She reached a plea deal the following month.
“That was a really scary thing that night. You want to talk about being, like, in a position of ‘What do you do?’ That’s how that’s how it felt,” he recalled. “I did take a video because I didn’t know what was going to happen. My truck was in the garage. I could not leave. I tried to leave. It just was so bad.”
Dakota recalled Taylor being “absolutely hammered,” adding, “The second we walked into the house, essentially it just turned into the most craziest thing ever.”
Taylor, for her part, has acknowledged her responsibility in the dispute — with the aftermath airing on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The reality star, who also shares daughter Indy, 7, and son Ocean, 4, with her ex-husband, denied her actions causing any harm to her kids.
Where They Stand Now
Host Nick Viall revealed on Wednesday’s episode that Taylor was meant to appear on his podcast last month but pulled out last second because of issues in her personal life. Dakota confirmed that something happened between him and Taylor that they are working through, but wouldn’t go into specifics. (The twosome are currently filming season 3.) He explained he was taking it day by day as they try to coparent but he remained hopeful they could potential reconcile in the future as a couple.
