From Rock Bottom to Recovery with Jared Klickstein

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…[email protected]

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