Creativity has always been a huge part of what makes Beit T’Shuvah Beit T’Shuvah. Passion and Purpose are in the slogan for a reason. Nick Z. exemplifies this more than most. Some here paint, others sing, but Nick designs—not only a fashion brand, but a new way of living in recovery.
Raised in Norco, California—“That’s Norco…like the pain pill. I was born into this shit,” Nick jokes. A childhood much like any other: two younger sisters, parents who loved him, and a relationship with his father that would prove volatile and strained. “Growing up, the household on the outside looked great, but my dad was super hard on me…no matter what I did.” It made growing up difficult for him because they couldn’t see eye to eye, and it caused him to feel ostracized from the rest of his family. When his dad put his foot down, Nick always found himself under it.
Nick’s senior year of high school brought the opportunity to start an apparel business. Sitting in orientation at Cal-Poly Pomona, it suddenly dawned on Nick, “not my vibe.” As any teenager on the verge of adulthood might be inclined, he wanted to explore his passions: print shirts, drink, and do coke. He left that campus and never looked back, much to the chagrin of his parents. Looking back, he realizes he was never truly motivated to go to school so much as trying to win the approval of his family.
Around the age of 18, Nick and his friends opened their store. Nick’s love for the store was overshadowed by a new love that was hiding just inside the medicine cabinet—painkillers. Specifically Oxycontin. By the time he was twenty, he was admittedly out of control. Business partners and friends alike began to express concern for him. After nodding out in the shop, he almost set fire to the place, and despite his denial, he came face to face with a brand he’d wear for years to come: addict. The first time he heard this, he adamantly denied it. Addicts were the dirty, homeless, unhinged dregs of society. Nick began to worry that everyone was whispering that nasty word behind his back, from his partners to his friends to his entire social network. “I thought, ‘Everyone knows, everyone thinks I’m an addict, everyone hates me.’” He withdrew from his friends, unfazed. He had pills for that.
He found his addiction writing a new chapter in his life, and with the help of the skills he learned in the apparel industry, writing fake prescriptions. “I figured out how to make a perfect prescription. Identical to what a doctor would use.” For the next few years, he would utilize these to fill one prescription after the next. He became the perfect patient and learned how to shop for various doctors. Naturally, this would lead to stints in treatment centers and run-ins with the law, finding himself arrested time and time again. His Higher Power was looking out for him, though, keeping him out of prison. At one point, he even had a “trap house” in Woodland Hills that, after an argument with his landlord, was searched by the police. His counterfeiting lab, pills, and money—all gone. “I remember thinking ‘fuck, I’m fucking done for.’” However, the universe was looking out for him once again and his case was a DA reject.
Time to chill. He slowed down the prescription making. Life had other plans. He got pulled over after visiting a pharmacy and found himself once more facing charges—this time, felony. Trafficking, possession for sale, possession of counterfeit scripts. “I went to jail, and I was not getting out this time.” And yet, his girlfriend at the time came through and bailed him out. 26 and out on bail, another substance came into the mix. Methamphetamine. With a little combination of meth and Xanax, he soon found himself (once more) behind bars and getting bailed out a second time. “This was a big turning point, and I started to take sobriety pretty seriously.” Not only did the potential consequences frighten him, his once appealing lifestyle was starting to lose its allure. California had recently implemented its prescription monitoring system, and thus, he started getting dropped as a patient. The doctor shops were closed. The time for change had come.
Nick tried turning to drug court, but to no avail. So, he began reaching out to treatment centers. Something that, at the time, was a difficult process and involved long wait lists. But he didn’t give up and eventually got into a treatment center in Pasadena. At first, this did nothing to impress the courts—getting his bail revoked. He returned to the treatment center and started to do the best he could to make a solid impression on the judge. Eventually, he was sentenced to a year in treatment and five years on felony probation. A new canvas in his story was laid out: he completed treatment and started to work there as a caseworker. Life began to take on new color. “I still remember getting my first paycheck and feeling a sense of relief. I didn’t have to sell drugs anymore.” He felt like he could finally relax and start making better decisions for the first time in his life. He got into Glendale Community College to get his CDAC certification to become a drug and alcohol counselor. Life revolved around work, school, gym, and AA meetings.
Soon, the calling to do something more with life became too hard to resist. A year and a half sober, working for the treatment center, Nick started to feel the need to explore something creative. He called back to his days of fashion design and decided to start up a new brand. He filled his first order of shirts, giving them mainly to his co-workers—prime recipients. “I think I got a pretty instant feeling that people liked this and people want to buy them. That motivated me to do more.” Dividing his time at work between case management and brand development, he started to focus his energy on apparel. A familial connection to a shop in Hollywood presented itself. Doors began to open as he found himself surrounded by other creatives, and his dreams started to feel more tangible.
Early 2020, and COVID hit. Both work at the treatment center and at the apparel shop changed and slowed. Nick’s dream was only gaining momentum. He started to explore the idea of owning his own shop, and over the summer of 2020, he opened one. Apprehension hung heavy over his head: COVID, his life savings, the lack of support from his family. “Everything I would buy, I was saving the receipt. In case this thing flopped, I was sending it all back. I was sketched out about it for sure.” He even took a massive step and transitioned from full-time to part-time at the treatment center so that he could have more time and energy to focus on his shop. Soon, he had not only a shop but a communal space for people to come and hang out. He started to use this space as a place to hold 12-step meetings in a time when meetings, especially in-person, were scarce. Nick also started to allow other creative spirits to collaborate: making and selling merch for musicians; hanging paintings from various artists on the walls; and generally making it into the most community-centered operation he could. He even started to get the funding and grants to turn it all into a non-profit—including potentially opening his own sober living.
Between years three and four of his sobriety, certain things started to shift. Nick needed to find a new space for his shop. The financial burden started to take its toll. Resentments started to form towards friends he was doing business with. Top it off with a doctor who told Nick he was going to need open heart surgery (that doctor turned out to be very wrong), and the stress became too much. The small reservation he had been harboring in the back of his mind started to wiggle into the light. Justifications started to sound all too good. “Part of me rationalized it by saying, ‘If I’m gonna have this surgery and be on opiates when it’s done, I may as well be on opiates now.’” At four years and three months, he was on the dark web ordering pills. Soon, he was buying foil for the first time in years—fentanyl—an opiate he had not yet tried. “We just went right into it. 0 to 100, real quick.” His seams were unraveling.
Friends pulled multiple interventions, with one resulting in them calling the treatment center where he worked…resulting in him losing his job. He even went back to that treatment center to detox, and this only succeeded in compounding his guilt and shame. Thus, a new run began, born mostly out of trying to mask those very feelings. With those feelings came a different, though equally as detrimental, realization. “For the first time in my whole life, I was able to finally get high how I wanted to. I had a ton of money saved, I had the car, I had a shop. I thought I could just do whatever I wanted at that point.” It was great—at first. His use knew no real bounds, and he ingested whatever he could get his hands on. Then the money started to run out. Then he was relying on credit and loans. Then he was living in his car. Then someone’s couch. By the end of 2024 and his three-year run, he was staying in MacArthur Park.
Being at the park, put some things into perspective for Nick. “I remember being on a bus through MacArthur Park. I was in the back of the bus, and I remember looking at the people around me, and they just looked like shells of human beings. I looked in their eyes and they looked so empty. For the first time ever in my whole life, I related.” This shook him to his core, realizing he could end up with the same fate…wondering if he already had.
So, another treatment center. Another sober living. Back to another treatment center, and soon Nick got in touch with Beit T’Shuvah. A friend had gone through the program, giving Nick the hope this would be the place for him.
With the help of a former resident, he got accepted—walking up the steps in tattered clothes. Here, he found his community once again. He found the value in building relationships with everyone that he could. Reflecting on his relapse, he realizes that he placed the value of his sobriety in his finances and creative freedom. “My focus and the emphasis I was putting on my recovery were financial. It was my ability to finally do creative shit how I wanted…I started getting away from my community.” Beit T’Shuvah has allowed him to rebuild his community as well as offered him new opportunities. He ran in the LA Marathon, along with the whole team who sported the shirts he designed. He has an internship in the Career Center helping residents find housing and employment after treatment.
Today, you’d be hard-pressed to walk the halls without spotting someone wearing a shirt or hoodie that Nick designed. The joy that gives him is only outmatched by the joy it gives them. Not only is he a helping hand and an open ear for the newcomers, but he literally gives them the shirt off his back. Nick knows that staying focused on his recovery, his honesty, and himself must come before all. He wears his brand on his chest, but his heart on his sleeve. Not only does he bear his soul, but he wears it. Nick’s story is one we can all learn from—one of resilience—stitch by stitch.