On this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest on the show, Jared Johnson. Jared is a former police officer turned drug dealer, who lived on Skid Row for years and lost a lot of his face to drugs. At one point in his life, he woke up in a bathtub and realized that he was missing his big toe and bottom lip.
00:00:00.840At one point in your life, you woke up in a bathtub and realized that you were missing your big toe and your bottom lip.
00:00:08.820Can you describe Skid Row for people who have never been there?
00:00:12.000Incredibly scary, incredibly violent. You know, you'd walk by, you'd see pools of blood sometimes, dead bodies occasionally.
00:00:18.860So it was really easy for me to stay sober in jail, but once I got out of jail, you know, they sort of just let you out at 2 o'clock in the morning right next to Skid Row.
00:00:25.580So eventually I pulled out a knife. I sort of lunged at him with a knife. So I got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and went to jail and was going to go to prison for a year and a half.
00:00:34.980Addicts will take the path of least resistance. The state currently in places like California are doing everything in their power to make it as easy as possible to keep getting high.
00:00:45.520Jared, you've got what is possibly the craziest life story of anyone we have ever had on the show. You lived on Skid Row for years.
00:00:53.320And your autobiography, which is great, is called Crooked Smile. And the reason it's called Crooked Smile is at one point in your life, you woke up in a bathtub and realized that you were missing your big toe and your bottom lip, which you then had to have reattached as part of like student training.
00:01:12.420How does that happen? How do you get to that point in your life? Tell us that.
00:01:17.320Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you for having me on. I'm honored. I'm honored to be here.
00:01:21.940How do you get to that point in your life? I mean, it's really like unadulterated addiction, you know, allowed to just kind of sprawl out and do whatever it wants for 10 years.
00:01:31.300I mean, nothing was really stopping me. And the logical end point of that is death.
00:01:36.360But if you're lucky enough to live, you might lose a body part. And I lost part of my face from, you know, doing copious amounts of methamphetamine and heroin and crack cocaine.
00:01:48.160And to my surprise, after waking up, I had done it to myself. Actually, I had munched a bit on it, I guess.
00:01:55.800And it was most of it was gone. Wow. Yeah. And tell us your life story, because when I say how do you get there, I imagine all of that shit starts in childhood, right?
00:02:05.380I'd imagine so. I mean, I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Both my parents were heroin addicts.
00:02:12.040Pretty stable childhood, but still there was the addiction in the household. There was, you know, I got to see a lot of terrible things, you know, no food in the refrigerator sometimes, you know, things like that.
00:02:22.880But I do think that contributed to the fact that I became a drug addict, possibly genetic as well. Both my parents are heroin addicts. I think it's a bit of both.
00:02:33.560Yeah. So you grew up in a household where, but were your parents using before you were born as well?
00:02:39.840My dad became addicted to heroin when he was about 12. You know, the Vietnam vets were coming back to America. A lot of them that my dad knew were addicted to heroin.
00:02:50.420They would pay him in heroin to do, you know, different tasks and things like that when he was a kid.
00:02:55.580So both my parents had a history of heroin use, but actually cleaned up before I was born and then got back into it when I was about three or four.
00:03:04.060Yeah. I mean, that I can only imagine how difficult that must have been, because for a child, there is nothing more terrifying than seeing your parents.
00:03:19.080I can't think of the word for it, but basically out of it on a drug, whether it's alcohol or heroin or something like that. It's it's incredibly traumatizing.
00:03:27.980Yeah, it was traumatizing. I didn't really understand what was happening. Some of it was fun. I mean, my parents would, you know, act, you know, they would act erratic and then maybe wake me up at two o'clock in the morning and take me to get pancakes and things like that.
00:03:41.080You know, there was those fun times. And then there was, you know, other times there was guns in the house. There was a lot of paranoia.
00:03:46.840There was a lot of waking me up and handing me a gun and telling me to cover them because the CIA was like outside, you know, doing a perimeter check on my dad for some reason.
00:03:55.840And, you know, of course, that didn't actually that that wasn't happening. But but that was like my version of catch, like playing catch with my dad was like doing a perimeter check around the house with a gun.
00:04:06.240And, you know, so there's that kind of stuff. But then there's also the, you know, the parents going to jail, the parents, you know, falling asleep while driving, you know, things like that.
00:04:16.040And, yeah, it was generally pretty traumatic.
00:04:19.060So when did your journey with drugs start? Because there's a lot of people I know who when they see their parents do that, they go, I'm never touching any of that.
00:04:28.500And then there seems to be the other camp, which is I'm going to do drugs just to cope.
00:04:32.880Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting how that happens. I definitely had an aversion to heroin specifically.
00:04:40.860I didn't really ever plan on messing with heroin, but I really liked alcohol in high school and marijuana and, you know, was it was like an alcoholic basically as a teenager.
00:04:50.720And when I got to college, I went to college at UC Santa Cruz. Everyone was doing heroin.
00:04:55.800And I was like the last of my friends to try college.
00:04:58.620Yeah. Yeah. In college, 2007, UC Santa Cruz, everyone was smoking heroin.
00:05:11.060Well, you know, and that's a good college.
00:05:13.560Well, I think it's, you know, a loser factory, but but yeah, but no, but but it is ranked well.
00:05:18.440And I think I was in the art dorm and I really think it was specific to my dorm.
00:05:22.840So I don't want to, you know, obviously college is probably a bad place to go, but but I don't think everyone's doing heroin at every single college.
00:05:29.760But but I was in the art dorm of a very artsy college where people were experimenting with drugs and and I experimented with drugs.
00:05:36.480But I was actually the one that was saying, hey, let's you know, you probably shouldn't smoke heroin.
00:05:41.500But but Oxycontin was around and I and I had no idea what that was.
00:05:46.240And I didn't know that it was an it's an opioid.
00:05:49.620I didn't know. So I started messing around with Oxycontin.
00:06:10.360That's a fully natural opiate, whereas oxycodone is a semi-synthetic.
00:06:17.080It still requires raw plant material, but it's it's it's more refined and actually through years of, you know, research, I guess, personal and just general research that people have done.
00:06:27.640It's it's it can be more physically addicting than heroin.
00:06:31.080And can I ask another question not to sidetrack this?
00:06:34.040But one thing we kind of skipped over is you grew up in a home where people are taking hard drugs, getting arrested, go, you know, giving guns, all of that crazy stuff you talked about.
00:07:26.920Well, I got wildly addicted immediately.
00:07:28.640I mean, it was like the greatest feeling I'd ever felt it allowed, you know, I was very ashamed of who I was, you know, growing up, you know, essentially thinking of myself as a crack baby and sort of the, you know, the offspring of undesirables, you know, in my head and was ashamed about who I was.
00:07:45.040And Oxycontin fixed that, you know, I could, you know, alcohol fixed that to some extent, but Oxycontin didn't have a hangover and it was just so much more easy.
00:07:53.760And it just really got to the point and it fully enveloped my entire life within, you know, a month or two probably.
00:08:00.920And I did some Googling and I found out that Oxycontin is actually pretty close to heroin.
00:08:05.260And once I was wildly addicted to Oxycontin, I realized that, well, you know, I might as well just do heroin.
00:08:55.680I did eventually go to a campus therapist and told them I was a heroin addict.
00:09:01.180And, you know, they prescribed me benzodiazepines, which, you know, I'm not a doctor, but that's, that, that's pretty dangerous to prescribe benzodiazepines to someone actively using heroin.
00:09:12.820I told my professors, they essentially gave me longer times to complete papers and stuff.
00:09:19.240So they gave me like a, a break scholastically, but they, no one really did anything.
00:09:24.240Not that it's really their place to do anything, but they certainly didn't, you know, they didn't do anything.
00:09:43.440Definitely on the path to, uh, getting kicked out or dropping out.
00:09:48.000Um, I eventually get a deal with the drug dealers who were cartel affiliated.
00:09:51.700They, they gave me a job and they, uh, I, I started driving, uh, heroin around, uh, Santa Cruz and delivering it.
00:09:58.720And, um, a requirement of this job was to, uh, smoke meth before every shift.
00:10:03.800So I wouldn't crash while I was driving because they, which is actually pretty smart, I guess, because, you know, heroin addicts crash cars because they fall asleep.
00:10:11.640So, um, as a result of that, I got really addicted to meth and, uh, immediately dropped out of college and, and, and, uh, got kicked out of my housing and, and my family didn't want to talk to me.
00:10:23.500They, they knew I was on meth and, um, my family sort of let me go.
00:10:27.320And, uh, from, you know, within a matter of months, I was homeless on Skid Row.
00:10:31.900And, uh, you mentioned committing small crimes and you mentioned your family letting you go.
00:10:37.720Was that something they were like, we just can't cope with someone who's an addict?
00:10:41.200Or had you done things by this point that they kind of like, they didn't know what to do?
00:10:46.460Maybe because you talk a lot about this, someone who's that addicted, they will do literally anything, right?
00:10:53.260So tell us not to like get all kind of, you know, uh, addict porn into it, but what, what kind of crimes were you committing and what is the nature of an addict's relationship with the people around and their family and so on?
00:11:05.020Um, the kinds of crimes that I was committing was petty theft, you know, stealing textbooks from campus and then selling them and maybe stealing things from CVS sometimes.
00:11:51.880I started doing some dark, darker things, you know, and, um, I don't know why meth, uh, entices people to do much darker crimes, but, um, it, it seems to always happen.
00:12:04.900Right. And you, you must have some pretty wild stories to tell about those days.
00:12:11.600Like I imagine breaking into houses in America is not the safest thing to do.
00:12:30.640Um, so I'd say it's a lot easier now, but, uh, and in fact,
00:12:34.740if someone were to shoot you in Oakland because you broke into their house, that they would go to prison and you probably, you know, get probation or something in a settlement of cash.
00:13:15.680I didn't know that. So when I found that out, I was, I stopped breaking into houses. I could make money other ways. I mean, it was very, um, you know, when I landed on Skid Row, I, I, I made a lot of money.
00:13:26.940You know, I, I made, eventually I started making more money than I'm, you know, I've, I've just in my life at 36 hit a financial point where I'm making as much money as I did when I was homeless on Skid Row.
00:13:38.020Pretty. How were you, how were you, what, how were you making money?
00:13:41.280Well, the first time I was on Skid Row, I was just begging for change at the train station. I'd make like $80 a day and, and, um, which is pretty good. But, uh, later on, once, uh, prop 47, sorry to get into policy, but basically once shoplifting is legalized, I was making, you know, three to $500 a day in cash, uh, shoplifting, which, uh, yeah, it's a lot of money.
00:14:02.620Three to $500 a day. So that's, that's insane.
00:14:06.660Our producers are looking around going, we're in the wrong job, mate.
00:14:08.940Yeah. So that's around about what, two and a half thousand dollars minimum. That's your base rate.
00:14:16.280Yeah. I think, you know, I made six figures probably, uh, untaxed, um, and usually went to sleep with $0.
00:14:25.740Yeah. Spend it all on drugs. And, and now that game has changed a lot. Now, obviously shoplifting is illegalized. I will just, you know, I know that's not the correct word, but it's essentially legalized.
00:14:51.140It's 1849, you know, and I was, you know, I was there and the gold was there and, and, um, and, you know, I don't want to sound braggadocious about it.
00:14:58.920I'm not like proud of this stuff, but, um, there was a code, you know, you know, we didn't attack anybody and, you know, we weren't, you know, we, there was some secrecy to it.
00:15:07.940You had to have some skill. You had to really act covertly.
00:15:10.840And, you know, there was, there was some pride in it at that point. Now it's really just run in and grab everything and leave.
00:15:18.300Um, but yeah, that was by 2014, 15, I was making with my partner about three to $500 a day.
00:15:34.640Can you describe Skid Row for people who have never been there? What, what is it?
00:15:38.520Yeah, sure. Um, well, it's different now, but I'd say, you know, I landed there in 2011 for the first time and, and, um, it seemed like there was thousands of people just, you know, out and about, uh, really in a zombie stage.
00:15:52.100Uh, you know, a lot of them really not, I wouldn't call them conscious. I mean, a lot of them just on methamphetamine and sort of in a different realm, uh, a lot of screaming, a lot of, uh, you know, mental illness shrieking into the, into the, you know, atmosphere and all that.
00:16:07.600And incredibly scary, uh, incredibly violent, blood, blood on the sidewalk. You know, you'd walk by, you see pools of blood sometimes, dead, dead bodies occasionally, um, mostly from overdoses.
00:16:19.840And, um, you know, I didn't, I had just gotten out of college. I'm 36 now and I look pretty young. I mean, I looked like a child and, um, you know, a lot of people didn't, didn't look like me.
00:16:30.740You know, I, I was, you know, the racially, it was, it was primarily, uh, African-American, some Hispanic, uh, not a lot of, uh, white people.
00:16:40.100Um, so when I showed up, they assumed I was like some rich kid that got addicted to heroin and was just down there to score drugs.
00:16:47.800And, you know, people messed with me and all that. But once they realized I lived there, uh, they, they respected me and, and I was treated pretty well.
00:16:55.480So what you're describing is a community.
00:16:59.000Well, kind of. Yeah. I mean, everything is based on, you know, can you help me? If you can help me, you're protected in some way.
00:17:05.280If I can get something from you, you're protected. No, one's like selflessly acting out and helping anybody, you know, it's all everything.
00:17:12.640It's a very, it's a free market of, you know, getting over on one another, or, or at least I'll help you as long as you are useful to me in some capacity.
00:17:21.380So what percentage of the people there, Jared, do you think were, had severely meant, were severely mentally ill, as in they were unable to cope?
00:17:30.460How many people could, do you think could be helped?
00:17:33.440And because there's also this narrative, and I would like you to talk about this as well.
00:17:38.140People like, well, it's a choice people make, you know, people choose to live like that.
00:17:41.620They don't want to, they don't want to live in the real world.
00:17:43.980They don't want a proper job. They just want to hang out, score drugs, smoke, shoot up and abdicate adult responsibility for want of a better term.
00:17:52.900I'd say, now Skid Row specifically, I'd say, now I never met someone down there that like lost a job and ended up on Skid Row.
00:18:02.460That's not to say that people don't lose jobs and find economic hardships and end up homeless.
00:18:07.700I mean, Skid Row is not for the faint of heart.
00:18:09.820You know, it's, you just wouldn't go down there if, unless you are either mentally ill or on drugs.
00:18:15.060So I'd say close to 100% of people were either mentally ill or addicted to drugs or both.
00:18:20.480I'd say roughly 25% were probably just purely mentally ill.
00:18:24.640Now that can be mental illness that resulted from a past addiction to drugs.
00:18:29.920Or they could just be mentally ill and can't really, you know, they get dropped off there by an ambulance or a police car or something like that.
00:19:14.460So a lot of those people, if sort of, you know, if they dried out for a few days, we'd really be able to determine, oh, this person is totally capable of self-sufficiency and leading a life of purpose.
00:19:26.960It's going to be very difficult to, it would require a lot of money and a lot of policy changes, but I think a good portion of them can be helped.
00:19:33.040And I was going to say, because Skid Row has expanded hugely over the years.
00:19:39.940And I was going to, I was going to ask, number one, why do you think that happens?
00:19:43.260And number two, is it, how much of an influence is fentanyl playing?
00:19:48.300Because fentanyl was a very new player on the scene, isn't it really?