“Blood is thicker than water.” I am sure you have heard that term a million times. But does it really hold true? Many of the residents at Beit T’Shuvah aren’t blessed with strong, supportive families. Our addictions saw to that…or that saw to our addiction. I’ll leave that one up to the clinicians. Jake C. has spent his entire life jumping from home to home, some loving, some safe, some anything but. Jake grew up a mile from Beit T’Shuvah, yet it took him 21 years to get here—his own personal forty years in the desert.
In a one-bedroom apartment in Palms, it was just Jake and his mom. Both of his parents were addicts, but while his mom put down the drugs to raise her son, his father couldn’t stop. He vanished from Jake’s life before he could remember. Despite lacking a parental figure, Jake still describes his childhood as normal. “We were broke, but I didn’t feel poor. I had food. I had an Xbox. It was enough.”
By middle school, the normal childhood he knew started to crumble. His mom went back to using and eventually lost her job as a barber. Dealers were in and out of the house, stealing from a ten-year-old Jake. His mom would take him to score drugs on street corners. At the time, this just felt like a family errand.
One saving grace in his life was his neighbor, an addict in recovery. One night, he relapsed. Mistaking a loud conversation for an argument, he kicked in their door and beat Jake so badly his entire leg turned purple. “My mom just sat there. Frozen. I don’t think she knew what to do.” This would happen multiple times.
So, like any prepubescent kid seeking attention and the reclamation of power, he acted out. Fights, skipping school, kicking and screaming at any authority figure. Despite being a fairly good student, Jake was failing every class.
On New Year’s Day, 2012, a neighbor found a broken meth pipe by the trash and called Jake’s uncle. Jake was told to pack a bag, unaware of the severity of the situation. His uncle pulled him to the side of the house, shielding his eyes from watching his mom being taken away in handcuffs. She was charged with possession, child endangerment, and neglect. “For six months, I had to go to court. I was always happy for court. I would always miss school, and I would kind of have a brief moment where I could see my mom.”
At first, Jake stayed with his uncle. When this became too much, his uncle sat him down at a dinner with a family Jake had never met. That’s when the idea was proposed for him to stay with them. First for a weekend and then eventually forever.
So, here he was. Living with a strange upper-middle-class family in Tarzana. Suddenly, he was thrust into a situation where he had a brother and two stable, loving parents…and they loved him like their own. To this day, Jake refers to this as his family.
While his homelife had changed, his acting out had not. He would have waves of calm, mainly while playing baseball. “I always loved baseball but when I was with my mom, we never had the money for equipment or league fees.” But that rebellious streak in him still ran strong. By 12, he was smoking weed daily—fully adopting the stoner persona.
When a girl he was obsessed with offered him a line of mystery powder, he couldn’t refuse. This would be Jake’s first experience with meth. It would not be his last. Unlike most meth users, Jake didn’t party. By day, he was a stoner. By night, he was a tweaker. By himself, he did it all. Somehow, by the miracle of modern drugs, he managed to keep this double life going for some time—eventually graduating with honors.
At 16, just a few days before his birthday, Jake was at summer camp. Out of nowhere, he got called into a private room in the infirmary. His adopted parents stood there, pale-faced. They told him that his birth mom had died. She had a heart attack in her sleep. You see, her health had been declining for some time, whether it was from drugs or just biology—her body had given up on her. Suffice it to say, this shattered Jake. “I never really processed it.” That sort of work began once he got here.
After high school, he went to Sonoma State—but barely. He really just went to a frat and the adjoining parties. “I would be at the frat house drinking during the day, and then be throwing parties in my dorm at night. So there was just always drinking. When it came time to end the first semester at college, my highest grade was a 12%. I pride myself on that,” with a shameful thousand-yard stare into the hardwood, he corrects himself, “Not actually.”
Instead of spending that next semester on academic probation, he decided to drop out and join the Coast Guard. He always loved the military and was fascinated with joining it, but after going through basic training and excelling at his ASVAB military entrance exam, he was caught smoking weed and kicked out. Rejected from his newfound brotherhood, he found himself back in his old stomping grounds—directionless.
This is when his parents decided, “You messed up school, you messed up the military. You’re going to rehab.” So, he went to an IOP program and moved into a sober living. Once that was done, he was right back to smoking meth…and eventually shooting it. After a while, his family found Beit T’Shuvah and sent him here. He stayed at Beit T’Shuvah for a total of 13 months during the depths of the COVID pandemic. “I was a bad resident. I’d turn the Zoom meeting on and go back to sleep. I had no program.” He basically did everything Beit T’Shuvah tells residents not to do: didn’t engage in groups, got into relationships, and didn’t work any program outside of BTS. But it wasn’t all a waste of time. When he was here, he made long-lasting friendships and worked in the music studio until the late hours of the night.. But friends and studio sessions weren’t enough to keep him sober once he left. So, he relapsed.
Odd job after odd job landed Jake in a dark place. The only job that Jake ever found love for, one that he saw the promise of a career in, was fish tank maintenance. Before you judge (which you probably already have), this is actually a highly complicated job that involves chemicals, quick thinking, and a deep care for animals. In fact, in one position, Jake was doing this job, he was fired because he was spending too long caring for the animals. He dedicated himself to their care over “getting the job done quickly.” He wanted to do it right—for them.
Like most of us addicts, Jake fell into a toxic relationship and found himself suffering the consequences of that every day. His one lifeline, his dog. “I hated my life. I wasn’t talking to my family. The only thing that kept me from killing myself was my dog.” But eventually, when the life he was living had become too much, he decided that the dog might not be enough to save him.
[DISCLAIMER: I truly dislike writing about myself in anyone’s spotlight, but this time it is unavoidable.]
Broken. Battered. Beaten. Jake called every person he knew in recovery. “I was grasping for straws. I hadn’t talked to these people in years.” He reached out to so many people, but no one answered. “Then I called you and you picked up on the first ring.”
I knew why he was calling before he even said “Sup.” In that moment, he wasn’t the troublemaking resident anymore. He was a man who needed help. So, I gave him the number to admissions and told Lysa Harrison to expect his call. From that point, the rest was up to him.
Before long, he was safe in his bed at Beit T’Shuvah. “It was the best decision I ever made to call. I didn’t know if I’d be dead. When I got here, I didn’t know what to expect, but I was hit with so much gratitude. So, I immediately put my head down and got into the work. I found a sponsor right away and went to groups. If I were them, I would have never taken me back. I was a waste of a bed. I just wanted to prove to them that they made the right choice. I wanted to do better.” After a long, sorrowfully reflective pause, he continues, “I want to make something of my life.”
Today, Jake is excelling. No two ways about it. You can catch him every Friday Shabbat working his internship with Baked T’Shuvah—an opportunity he loves and does not take lightly. He is going back to school with the goal of becoming a therapist. “The best therapists are always the most fucked up in the head. So, I know I’ll be good.” Most importantly, Jake no longer feels the need to hide. Finally, for the first time in his life, he feels seen…by this chosen family who are trudging this path with him and a community who stands behind him. On top of it all, his relationship with his adopted parents and his brother only grows stronger by the day. They never left his side—even when he left theirs.
“Blood is thicker than water.” The funny thing about that phrase is that it’s incomplete. The real quote is, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” which means the exact opposite of what we usually say it does. Family is chosen. Jake has endured the blood of beatings and the water of tears and stood tall as a man in recovery. Jake’s story demonstrates how love is a gift, not an obligation. Loving Jake is a privilege that all of us at Beit T’Shuvah are lucky to have. Because, in the end, it is not who you come from that saves you. It is who comes back for you when you’re ready to be saved.