Episode Details

My guest today is an extraordinary young man – his parents were both heroin addicts and he became an addict himself.  His rock bottom included jailtime, homelessness and self mutilation. 

In the episode

• Both of Jared’s parents were drug addicts but although life was chaotic they did manage to parent Jared until they got arrested when he was 12 years old
• Then he went to live with his aunt who “rescued” him as he put it
• Sadly his mother died of her heroin addiction when he was 14 years old which led to him using alcohol to cope with the pain of losing her
• Jared describes himself as a “functioning alcoholic” from the age of 15 years old
• At the age of 18 he started using Oxycontin as he was very against heroin due to his parents' experience
• He didn’t know what Oxycontin was but it was a pill made by a pharmaceutical company so he assumed it was safe
• He quickly became addicted and discovered that its very similar to heroin and in fact he switched to heroin 
• Whereas alcohol had helped him feel more confident and enable him to socialise heroin completely numbed his feelings
• As he says cocaine or acid can amplify emotions whereas with heroin he felt he was purchasing 12 hours of oblivion
• Jared continued to use heroin but as he puts it “ the effects diminished as the consequences increased”
• These consequences included selling his possessions to get heroin and by the age of 22 he was homeless and living on skid row
• Heroin was still effective in completely numbing him from reality – the reality that he was homeless, penniless and without a family member to turn to…
• However by the age of 25 reality was getting through so he began taking multiple drugs to block it out
• The consequences got more serious and he ended up spending time in jail and suffering serious health problems
• He would black out and wake up with injuries – once he lost a toe, another time he woke up with a serious facial injury
• That was when he finally decided to consider the idea of getting clean
• He managed to get sober via a state funded rehab where he lived for four months
• There are only four state funded rehabs in California and many more for profit rehabs
• On the subject of rehabs Jared gave us some shocking information about corruption in the rehab industry,
• Quote from one of Jareds article “the rehab industry has become nothing more than a glorified insurance scam with a terrible success rate… ..despite making billions upon billions of dollars
• Can you imagine paying $30,000 for something that doesn’t work 90% of the time?
• Yet new rehabs are popping up almost daily with no sign of slowing”
• When Jared got clean he longed for tangible things, he wanted a job and somewhere to live… he had no idea of the intangible benefits that would come his way – a sense of self worth, the ability to love himself and the joy that comes from helping others
• Apart from helping others to get clean Jared is influencing policy decisions and feels there is currently a political will to change the current situation
• People and companies are leaving California which is reducing tax income, forcing politicians to come up with solutions
• That’s why he feels that politicians are open to dialogue with someone like him… someone who understands addiction and homelessness from the inside
• Jared has plenty of ideas to bring about social change which he writes about in his book the Crooked Smile which will be published in 2024
• His articles can be read via Substack, he is on TW @jaredklickstein and his email is…jklickst@gmail.com
  
  
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