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- [00:00]
Corinne Vien
Blink is intended for mature audiences as it discusses topics that can be upsetting such as drug use, sexual assault, and emotional and physical violence. Content warnings for each episode are included in the Show Notes. Resources for drug addiction and domestic abuse can be found in the Show Notes and on our website blinkthepodcast.com the testimonies and opinions expressed by guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or affiliates of this podcast. Jake Handle has never told his full life story before. Many people meet Jake and they hear of his diagnosis and his recovery. He's really the poster child for perseverance, medical miracles. He has an unbreakable spirit. Jake's life is pretty different now that he's on the other side of this disease. He's relearning to speak, feed himself, walk, and many of the people that were in his life before on aren't anymore. But his life is certainly not lonely. Before knowing Jake, I noted how friendly and popular he was in our apartment complex. I vividly remember watching Jake stroll past me on his way to celebrate his birthday with a very large group of friends, all of them dressed in matching tracksuits. So an unbreakable spirit and an unbreakable sense of humor. Fast forward a few months and Jake and I are recording for this podcast. Our meetings and the podcast recordings were often interrupted by neighbors wandering by, waving to Jake, and actually one time as we were wrapping up, Jake was interrupted and asked on a date. So life has dealt Jake many horrible, horrible hands. But his exuberance and his dedication to being happy is what draws people to him. For many, his friendship is their drug. He's even dedicated much of his time to start a business called Ahoy, an app which allows users to discover how accessible businesses and other locations will be for them, allowing individuals with particular accessibility needs to access their cities with the confidence of knowing whether a place will actually work for them. But obviously I met Jake as he was recovering from surviving this deadly disease. And I'm still left with the question of how this seemingly cheerful and altruistic guy ended up in this heroin induced coma with relatives attempting to kill one another around him. And so I'm asking myself, who the hell is Jake Handle? This is Blink. I'm your host Corinne Vien.
- [02:30]
Jake Handle
I'm Jay Candle. This is my story. Prior to Jake's birth, we found out.
- [03:21]
Corinne Vien
That Jake's mom was pregnant with him. Varda figured out, oh my God, she's.
- [03:27]
Adrian
Going to be due around our wedding and she was a bridesmaid.
- [03:31]
Corinne Vien
This is Jake's aunt and uncle, Adam and Varda.
- [03:35]
Eli
She was going to be nine months.
- [03:36]
Adrian
At the time of our wedding.
- [03:38]
Corinne Vien
I was still so afraid that her.
- [03:40]
Eli
Water was going to break as she's.
- [03:41]
Jake Handle
Walking down the aisle, you know, Almost did.
- [03:44]
Corinne Vien
He was born eight hours after we got married. His father, Daron, remembers the day well.
- [03:50]
Eli
I wasn't the kind of person that thought babies were cute or beautiful, so I was just hoping he would be looking all right. But he was beautiful. He was a beautiful baby.
- [04:00]
Jake Handle
Such a cute baby and toddler.
- [04:03]
Eli
And he was so funny as a toddler already. I remember us saying he's going to end up being a stand up comic. And so now we say he's a sit down comic.
- [04:14]
Corinne Vien
This I completely agree with. Jake is fun. He's the life of the party. He has a knack for being able to talk to really anyone. And he always has some funny story up his sleeve.
- [04:25]
Jake Handle
I got a good wedgie story for you. I ever tell you about the fork in my nut? Another funny story real quick. Mormon's a meth.
- [04:34]
Corinne Vien
The fork in his nut story almost made me faint. But back to it. Jake was a funny kid as he grew up.
- [04:41]
Eli
Very gregarious and liked to have fun and was jovial. And then as he started to get a little older, he started developing anxiety.
- [04:54]
Adrian
He was such a happy kid until.
- [04:57]
Eli
His parents got divorced. He was, you know, basically depressed, I think clinically depressed, but he didn't want to deal with it. And so his mother and I had differing opinions on how to cope with it. Then his personality totally changed. He became depressed as a four year old because they got divorced when he was four. I know they got him therapy and everything, but still, I think that's when the downward spiral began.
- [05:29]
Jake Handle
Four or five years old. I remember my parents, my mother and father just fighting a lot, having these big blowouts and I would, I would really hate it. It would really upset me to the point where I would, I would start to run away or I clog my ears side of my room and I would start to run away and I would just like kind of take off my bike and like go chill in the woods or something and like wait for them to cool off and then come home. They would just fight a lot. We went to like some breakfast place in Framingham, Mass. And you know, they sat me down and they were like, we're gonna get a divorce. I shouldn't been that surprised. But for some reason I was. And I was like, no, no, like, don't do that. Like, what can I do too. Like, I don't wanna. I don't want us to be separate. When I was like, is it, is it my fault? You know? And they were like, no. And it was kind of like presented to me. Like, no, it's gonna be a good thing. Like, you're gonna have two homes and two birthday parties. Two reasons to celebrate, which, you know, I was kind of like, that wasn't important to me. But then both my parents remarried. Two people that already had children from the age of like 7. I had all these like step siblings and got along with them really well. And it was, it was exactly like it was presented.
- [07:13]
Corinne Vien
Jake got the two homes, the two birthday parties, and a lot of siblings to celebrate with his mom's new husband. Eli became a very big part of his life.
- [07:23]
Adam
I met Jake because I started dating his mom. I went to a party at their house and she catered it. The food was good and, you know, I thought she was pretty gorgeous. And so I asked her out. Well, it wasn't quite that easy. Somehow this mutual friend set me up with a different girlfriend of hers who was good friends with his mom. And I went out on a date with her, but I wasn't really into her. And so I told her that I was kind of into Marjorie. And so she was gracious and told Marjorie. And I guess Marjorie thought that be good to go out with me because she actually called me and said, so, like, so when you going to call, you know? And so. And so then we started going out and Jake was like 4 and I had two kids who were 6 and 4, and things moved along pretty quickly. And then we wound up moving in together and getting married and having another kid. She had a three bedroom house. There were two big bedrooms upstairs and a little bedroom downstairs. She had one big bedroom. Jake had the other big bedroom. And then my two kids got shared the little one. That's the way it goes, you know. And then we, you know, got married and bought a house and went from there.
- [08:41]
Corinne Vien
I asked Eli if Jake and his step siblings got along.
- [08:44]
Adam
I mean, it was really cute. They actually got along great, really well. As a matter of fact, they got along so well that we hardly saw them because they were just having such a good time. We had another child. His name was Max. Max was a wonderful, smart kid. A little bit kind of off the wall and hard to. Hard to handle, as it were. I think that also affected the family dynamics a bit because he wound up getting a lot of attention from me and Marjorie. That took away from. From the other kids. Max was with us all the time. It was right around Y2K, 1999. Jake would have been going on 10, not quite 10. And then, you know, they founded mammogram kind of thing.
- [09:27]
Corinne Vien
Jake's mom, Marjorie, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
- [09:31]
Adam
They found it in July. We were going down to the Jersey Shore, where we went many years to visit with my family. We had just found out before. We went down to the visit and was the usual radiation and chemo. And then she had surgery, like, right on New Year's. She spent New Year's Eve, Y2K in the hospital. That was huge, because it really took her out of the picture in a lot of ways. She was a fighter. She lived another almost 10 years. She was undergoing treatment all the time. And there were periods when she was pretty much down and out and other periods when, you know, she was pretty good. But it made the family dynamic really difficult. Max was particularly difficult to manage. Our house was kind of crazy. And Marjorie had a brother who came to live with us for a while. He was also a little crazy. And so we just had pretty much a lot of things working against the family dynamic. Marjorie had cancer. Max had some special needs. We were a blended family. Her brother came and went and did crazy stuff.
- [10:37]
Corinne Vien
More on this uncle.
- [10:40]
Adam
He was a sociopath. You know, the classic definition. And he came out of prison, and he came and stayed with us for quite a while. We were a very open family. We were very easygoing, you know, and he came and he helped out in a lot of ways. He was very capable. He could cook. He got a job as a chef. The chefing world is a world of drugs and alcohol. That was kind of a problem for him. The way he dealt with money was borderline criminal. You know, we are having a family Thanksgiving. And he went, he bought this amazing food and gigantic ribeyes for everybody. And then dinner was over, and he said to me, all right, I need $1,000 for the food. I'm like, what? We never talked about this. Long story short, he ran off with another brother's wife, and he untrained our dog. He was a very charming fellow, but a little crazy.
- [11:35]
Corinne Vien
One thing I'll say about Eli, he will tell a story about someone's wild behavior, but still find a way to compliment them and remind you of at least one of their good qualities. And I imagine that for Jake and for his half brother Max, this was a really good thing to have in a parental figure, especially as two kids who had their own set of unique challenges. And really likely had many people questioning their actions and their worth as they grew up. It was also quite interesting hearing Eli's memory of Marjorie's brother's behavior as an adult. Who was witness to this? Because later when I asked Jake about this time, Jake really just remembers that his uncle had promised to build them a treehouse and then abandoned the project and took off. So. So the ultimate betrayal for a child. But all of this points back to what Jake craved most. Interaction with family. A solid, consistent home. And while the dynamics within his family may have shifted a bit over the years, he found closeness with his aunts and uncles. Specifically, Jake was very close with his mom's sister, his aunt Nancy. But then she too became sick. A very sudden cancer diagnosis.
- [12:47]
Adam
Colon cancer, I guess. You know, they had told her it was irritable bowel syndrome, right? But then it was colon cancer. It was way advanced, and she didn't last very long.
- [12:57]
Jake Handle
I was always close with Nancy. The funeral was really hard and I was like flipping out because I was like, oh man. Like Nancy died like within a year almost. I'm like, now my mom's gonna die. Once this really happened, it kind of took a turn for self destructive maybe. I mean, from like 13, 14. I was angry, punching walls, putting holes in walls, didn't care about grades that much. I was just not too happy with life.
- [13:41]
Corinne Vien
The death of his aunt while dealing with his mother's cancer, it was just all really hard on Jake. It felt like everyone close to him was leaving him or at risk of leaving. His aunt passed just after his bar mitzvah. Another relative died on his birthday and his mom was battling breast cancer. And now he was seeing less and less of his step siblings. His dynamic with his half brother Max grew to be even more difficult.
- [14:07]
Jake Handle
One time, Jake was home alone with Max.
- [14:09]
Eli
Max was like five or six years old. Max went after Jake with a knife. And that's when they realized that Max had a terrible mental illness and had to be institutionalized.
- [14:21]
Corinne Vien
When I spoke to Eli, he also recounted a time that he had set Max and Jake up to live together in an apartment when they were both young adults. And when Jake was unable to come up with his half of the rent, Max was so angry that he beat up Jake. So previously hearing of this fist fight between Max and Jake's would be wife Ellen was unsurprising, but also made me a little bit scared for Ellen. But at this point in the story, Jake hasn't met Ellen yet. We will get there in a few minutes.
- [14:59]
Adrian
We all enjoy A little mystery Every other week, One Strange Thing presents forgotten stories from America's newspaper archives. They all have something in common, a single element that can't quite be explained. Join us on One Strange Thing and you'll hear about a man who was literally stricken with genius. A 21st century child who, who remembered piloting a World War II bomber. A mysterious, unidentifiable blob in Texas. And then there was the lizard man stalking through small town South Carolina. From cryptids and disappearances to modern day miracles, One Strange Thing brings you stories that are very real and just a little otherworldly. Subscribe now wherever you listen.
- [16:02]
Adam
Again. These splendid families are just remarkable. So Jacob's father had married another woman and she had a daughter named Katie. And then Katie was a couple years older than Jake. I just remember Jake coming home. I could smell alcohol on his breath. And he had been out with Katie and Margie called the police and we were telling the policeman, he's drunk. And so he, you know, the policeman go, all right, Jake, breathe on me. And Jake would like inhale. And the cop says, I don't smell anything like he's inhaling. What, do you know it? So I don't exactly remember what age he was. I mean, ninth grade or something. I had no idea the extent to which he was involved with stuff in high school. Marjorie and I used to say, he's the one who's going to take care of us when we're old. He's the one who's going to get rich, you know, because he just was always outgoing. He just had a natural charisma and a. Oh, he was able to get things done. Unfortunately, he was getting drug deals done, but he was able to get things done.
- [17:01]
Corinne Vien
The entrepreneurial spirit has really always been a part of Jake. Jake didn't start out dealing drugs. It all began in high school with a couple cans of soda. He saw a need for something, he worked to fill it. I guess we could say that Jake has always been the connect because these.
- [17:19]
Eli
Kids had so much cash in their pocket to spend. My son would figure out what they wanted and would supply it. So he would come to school with one can of Coca Cola, 12 ounce Coke, warm, but whatever. And he'd hold an auction at lunch. He says, I got $20 for it, one can of Coke. He goes, dad, how much does a can of coke cost? I said, well, let's see, how did you get that Coke? He said, well, I took it out of the refrigerator. Your house. I said, oh, so you took my Coke and told it made. Well, that's. That's called 100% profit. So, you know, I was teaching him about business, and I didn't see anything really wrong with it. Now he got in trouble for it at school, and he got in trouble with it for it with his mother. And. And I let him go. We went to, like, BJ's Wholesale Club, and he. He bought a case of soda. So it only, you know, cost him like 25 cents per can. And he said kids wind up smartening up some, but, you know, he was still able to sell them for a few dollars a piece at lunchtime if you need. Only bring one or two cans a day. So B's, like, who wants it the worst? That says that's how you create demands and you limit the supply. Very smart, Jake. And then he. The next thing he did was selling. This got him in bigger trouble. The selling cigarette lighters, all of a sudden, that was like a big no, no. I remember he got. He wound up getting in trouble like, freshman year, high school. He got caught and arrested in school because they found marijuana in his locker. Jake told me, since it wasn't my pot, it was in my locker, but it wasn't mine, it was a friend's. And he wouldn't give up the friend. They were going to let him go if he turned the guy in. So he wasn't a rat. He got arrested. I remember. We got him a lawyer. We were showing up. Nah, don't do it again. Slap on the wrist.
- [19:33]
Corinne Vien
So I asked Jake how he started selling, because how do you go from selling soda that your dad helps you buy to being a rather big dealer in the Boston area?
- [19:43]
Jake Handle
Okay, we're going back to, like, eighth grade real quick. That's when I first smoked weed for the first time with my good buddy Craig, who was a year older. And his older brother was, like, kind of a wild man back then. And I thought he was, like, the cool kid, you know? And I remember smoking weed with him once. It was like my first time. And it wasn't super popular with the kids in my grade yet. We were in eighth, he was in ninth. But it was, like, so popular with the ninth graders and above. And I just, you know, my. My business mind was kind of like, oh, shit, I should, like, get this and sell it. Little prelude to that. My parents got divorced and my mom moved to Sudbury. I was in Framingham public schools, middle class, working class. Sudbury was upper middle class and above. So when I got to these schools, I was like. I was a kid that wore different clothes. And, you know, I was kind of like, all these kids have so much fucking money. And, you know, I was like, well, I'm getting that brown bag for lunch. They're getting a hundred dollar bill to buy whatever they want in this nice cafeteria. And I was just kind of, like, amazed by the money. I was like, I wonder if I load up my backpack with a bunch of sodas, I could sell them for like two bucks, you know? And that started working. And I was like, making money to like, literally buy, like, cafeteria lunch. Then I was just. I remember I asked these kids, I was like, what else do you guys want? And they're like lighters and candy bars. I started, like, selling all these to these kids. And I mean, small money, but, like, shit was moving, you know? And that progressed into fireworks.
- [21:45]
Corinne Vien
And then one kid asked Jake if he could get him weed.
- [21:50]
Jake Handle
Got him, sold them, like, instantaneously. It was like the easiest thing I ever did.
- [21:57]
Corinne Vien
And so he started buying weed not just to smoke himself, but to sell to the other kids.
- [22:03]
Jake Handle
That was summer of eighth grade. You know, when you're in eighth grade, it was like you took the bus or your parents or your babysitter would pick you up. I was having these kind of wild seniors pick me up. By the start of freshman year, I was definitely a weed dealer. This high school was. It had groups. We had the under the stairs kids that would hang out under the stairs that were like the gothy death metal, the athletes, the hippies, the this, the that, you know? But it was interesting, is everyone kind of got along. And I think what bridged the gap between all these groups were the drugs. I was just like, hmm, I could, like, sell to every group, started getting pounds, and I would bring 208 of weed in my backpack to school.
- [23:05]
Corinne Vien
So maybe that weed that was in Jake's locker was his after all.
- [23:10]
Jake Handle
And I was kind of more focused on turning this 208 into $5,000 cash than my grades in one day at school. The motivation behind this was I kind of started thinking about, wonder if my mom dies, where would I go? I should be financially prepared the best I can to take care of myself. I kind of. In retrospect, I wish I was kind of like, you know, I want to focus on building a spaceship and like, you know, turned it into making a billion dollar company. But I guess I didn't have much faith that I could do that in a short time. So I was like, what's a vast money option? You know?
- [24:03]
Corinne Vien
Sophomore year, Jake hired a driver to drive him around to help him sell the weed. And now that he was mobile and he could sell outside of school, his connections into the drug world only grew. And soon he earned his own nickname, picked for him by a gunslingin brass knuckle wearing drug dealer named Skippy.
- [24:24]
Jake Handle
I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Friday with Ice Cube. There's this drug dealer that in the movie in Compton that has these, like, jerry curls and he's like gangster dude and sells drugs out of an ice cream truck. And he was known as Big Worm. Anyway, he started suv he started calling me Big Worm. And I thought it was really funny because he was huge and I was like, kind of tiny and he's like, fucking worm. Big worms. Once I started dealing with Scooby, I started making real money.
- [25:01]
Corinne Vien
Jake's parents thought that their child was just smoking weed. But meanwhile he was riding around in cars with older kids and adults who were carrying guns and huge quantities of drugs with them and getting into some kind of sticky situations. Jake told me about one really scary ride he took with one of his suppliers that kind of felt like a scene from the Sopranos. One where he wasn't really sure he would come out with all of his fingers or even their lives. And Jake also name dropped a lot of people. And when I suggested like, hey, perhaps we shouldn't do that, he said, don't worry, they're all dead or in jail now, but I'm not going to name names.
- [25:38]
Adam
We were pretty active in our synagogue and he had a bunch of friends that were from there or their parents were there. We would let him have parties at the house and he always had like a ton of people there. So it was clear that he had a good. A good social life. And they were, they were good kids. You could have an intelligent conversation with with them. And they were just nice people. I didn't know at the time that he was supplying them all with, with, you know, pot and oxycodone or whatever. But okay, you know, they seem to like him for himself.
- [26:10]
Corinne Vien
Here's one of those high school friends, Adrian, who you may remember from episode one. When Jake was released from the police station, he headed directly to her house to get more heroin.
- [26:22]
Adrian
I liked him right away pretty much. He was just a cool, funny, goofy kid. And Jake's mom was really sick at the time, so we were hanging out a lot. It was kind of back and forth, I think, for a little while while they were still together, slash kind of not together.
- [26:41]
Corinne Vien
She's Referring to Jake's ex girlfriend from high school, Emma. They'd met at summer camp, and Emma lived in New York City, and they dated throughout high school and a little bit in college, and they seemed to make the long distance work. They visited each other whenever they could. And as Eli puts it, he was.
- [26:57]
Adam
Very dedicated to her. She became a freshman. She was kind of getting into the college life, and Jake was. Was a chef, and he wasn't kind of doing the college thing. So they kind of drifted apart. And I think he was kind of heartbroken. I think he was really attached. And it made me realize that Jake likes to. He likes to have a steady. He likes that. That connection and that. That sort of permanence.
- [27:22]
Corinne Vien
Back to Adrien. The two met in high school as friends, but as things go in high school, you have different friend groups, and certain friendships tend to fade a bit over time. And that's kind of what happened to Adrian and Jake. They started to drift, but they did reconnect after graduating and in the beginning of their friendship striking up again. Jake was still dating his girlfriend, Emma.
- [27:42]
Adrian
And then eventually they were not together. I don't know, what else am I supposed to say.
- [27:50]
Corinne Vien
I'm giving you all a wink. If you can hear it over this audio recording, Jake's a relationship guy, and Adrian is a really sweet, steady, beautiful person. And she was there with him through the final months of his mom's suffering.
- [28:04]
Adrian
You know, I think it was difficult while his mom was alive too, because she was very sick. And that's really hard to see. I mean, he lost his mom. That's changes someone a lot. A lot.
- [28:15]
Eli
I think that's what kind of made him go towards drugs as a way to escape and to kind of alleviate anxiety. But the problem with doing drugs is that it takes you out of yourself so much. It numbs your senses to the point where you get apathetic. And I think he. Although, you know, he had spurts of enthusiasm for doing something, he decided, you know, like, he was interested in the culinary arts because I had a restaurant, and I said, if you want to do that, you know, great. Finally something that he wanted to do. So I let him go to cooking school while he was still in high school. He became a chef, and he was really good at it. But then his mother died, which brought on more depression and more anxiety. I didn't even realize the drugs he was taking. I thought he was a pot smoker. His drive and his interest seemed to be waning all the time. And I was hoping that, you know, he would really stay excited about something because he wasn't. He wasn't into school except for the social. Jake was always in trouble over not doing well in school. You couldn't stay angry with Jacob because he was always just a sweet kid. I didn't want him to have a kind of relationship that I had with my father because I was afraid of my father, you know? And I also knew, well, I gotta be his father, not just his friend. It was like, kind of both. I just wanted him to have great experiences and to try to get him to be exposed to everything that the world has to offer, unlike the way my parents used to be. Try to, like, guide me when we were, or tell me, why don't you do this? I just would let him ask if he needs something or help. But he. He didn't ask a whole lot. And if whatever. If he needed something, you know, I'd help him with it. But he. You know, he kept it all bottled up.
- [30:38]
Jake Handle
But I'm always in a rush because I'm trying to juggle dealing in personal life, visiting my mom. And I was, like, drinking Tequila Jose Cuervo out of a 750 out of the bottle while driving, hiding it under my seat, reaching for it all the time, smoking tinfoil chain, smoking cigarettes.
- [31:02]
Corinne Vien
Jake was finding his own way to cope with what was happening. And although we know what happened to his mom because it's been alluded to many times throughout this episode, at this point in the story, she hasn't yet passed, but she has been put on hospice.
- [31:15]
Jake Handle
A mile away from hospice. Take a few more shots. Smoke another cigarette. Take a hit. And I park. Pop like a breath mint. Get the bags in my blowout mattress. Because I. I like to sleep in my mom's hospice room. Walking in there and she's so sexy, you know? I'm like, hi, Mom. You okay? Probably some stuff I'm gonna put in the fridge for you. Let me know if you want anything. I'm gonna set up my bed. Talking a million miles a minute, and I'm, like, plugged in the air mattress. She's like, honey, come here. I remember she's moving her finger. Come closer.
- [32:08]
Adam
She's closer.
- [32:10]
Jake Handle
Lean over. She's like. She's like, you smell like alcohol and cigarettes. You disgust me. The smell is making me sick. You gotta leave.
- [32:25]
Adam
You gotta leave.
- [32:28]
Jake Handle
And I was like, fuck, fuck. And I understood. And I think she actually told me. You're making me nauseous. I know how fucked up it was that I'm such a drug addict. And mess that I can't even go to to stay with my mom because I smell too much like drugs and alcohol and cigarettes and what I do before I even leave the parking lot, I light up another cigarette and get in the car and drink more because I'm so fucking miserable. It's just like. But that's the level of, like, lost I was and drowning myself in substance. And it never got better. I really started dipping into my profits across all levels with my abuse, drug abuse. So Instead of making 400 bucks from Moxie, I was barely making 80 off everything I was selling because I was doing so much. I remember in the week before my mom's death, calling my dad and being like, dad, you gotta come here. You gotta come to Boston. My mom's, you know, she doesn't have lungs. He's like, all right, I'm coming. I was sleeping in my mom's bed. And I remember he came in and I probably had just fallen asleep. It was about 3 or 4am and it was like, I'm really sorry. I just seen my mom hours earlier. And he's like, your mom just passed away. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just broke down. I was crying and I just want to get fucked up right now by fucked up. Definitely pain pills is what I wanted, but I opened my mom's medicine cabinet. I never dipped into my mom's meds, like, ever, even being how I was. But, you know, I'm like, she's dead. She doesn't need these. Open up the cabinet. I don't even know what's in there. And I see a box of fentanyl patches and I'm like, holy shit. And I look at them and it says 30 day supply on it. You put this patch on and a dose goes into your body. One hour for 72 hours. And I'm like, sweet. And I start peeling them and sticking them on me. I put the whole box on. I had them all over me. I didn't have the intent to kill myself, but I definitely knew it was a big possibility because I did a 30 day dose of fentanyl in three days. So I was getting 10 times the dose of fentanyl for an hour for three days. I was like, might die? Yep. I start to feel it hit me. I just get kind of drowsy and tired, which normally I don't from these opiates. And I just remember getting into my mom's bed and kind of was like, yeah, like, maybe this is it for me. And kind of fell Asleep. And I just remember, next thing I know is I'm kind of being shaken like, Jake, wake up and patches are being ripped off me. And yeah, didn't die. Definitely didn't clean up my act either. But a few days after her death, I get a notice on my mom's door. Like, kind of like notice to vacate type thing. You gotta pack up your shit and leave. I was in no place to pack up on moom shit. And Adrian helped organize like 20 people, 20 high school kids to help pack all my mother's shit up while I was just besides myself. I remember going through my mom's closet, I would say in my mom's room alone for the most part. And I remember going through my mom's closet. I found this box with like a bunch of those black one subject old school notebooks. It was like poetry my mom had written over the last decade about the cancer and, like, how it felt.
- [37:36]
Corinne Vien
If you're looking for a podcast that combines morbid and tragic events with a love for the outdoors, check out National Park After Dark. People from all over the world are visiting national parks in record numbers and for good reason. These places are brimming with beauty and inspire reconnection with our wild world. But with more and more people entering our parks, more and more of them never leave. Join hosts Cassie and Danielle every Monday as they enter a new park to explore its beauty and its darkness. Our national parks hold tales of murder, animal attacks, fatal accidents, miraculous survivals, and other incredible stories that you need to hear to believe. Check out National Park After Dark to hear stories like the infamous night two people were mauled by grizzlies in Glacier. Or when US Air. Or when US Air Force Lieutenant David Steeves crash landed in Kings Canyon national park, surviving injured and alone for over a month before crawling his way out. But no one believed his story. Come contemplate stories like the disappearance of Trenny Gibson, who vanished while on a school trip in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And so much more. National Park After Dark was created for morbid outdoor enthusiasts in hopes that by sharing stories from these wild places, you'll be inspired to take your own adventure. Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts and remember to enjoy the view, but watch your back.
- [39:05]
Jake Handle
And I just remember reading like one passage, and I mean it. Oh, God, it was so sad. It was just like I feel this cancer in my bones. It's like eating away at me and I'm losing energy and I can't keep going, going. And maybe not poetry, more like journaling and just like, you know, my only regret is leaving my kids. And it just made me so sad, and I couldn't even keep reading it. And someone. Someone stole these from me. I think her best friend Lynn kind of took them because I think she was worried about me. And she was like, you don't need to read that. And I never got to read them. I don't think I'd want to anymore. Anyways. Funeral happens. I'm like, numb, numb, numb, numb, numb. And I need a place to live. My dad's like, you can come to Texas and live with me. And I'm like, no, I got friends. And also, the biggest thing was that kept me around was drugs, my ability to make money. I was like, you know, I can't leave here. Eli's like, you can come live with me, but no more drugs, man. So that was out. All right. So I got my mom's dog. Love this dog, Ravi. Me and Adrian had them for years. And I'm in my car with the dog, crying, drunk, fucking wondering where I'm gonna stay. I'm going around to hotels, and they won't rent me a room because I'm under 21. I'm like, fuck. I finally go the Best Western extended stay, one of the last ones on the Strip. And there was kind of a younger dude behind the counter. And I was like, dude, like, I'm a mess. I need a place to stay for a month. I got cash. And he's like, all right, you got an id? And I'm like, no, because I didn't want to give him my under 21. This guy kind of, like, felt bad. And he's like, all right, dude. Like, thousand bucks for the month. He's like, no one's here. He's like, occasionally we have a convention. And I'm like, I got a dog, by the way. And he's like. He's like, just don't bring in the lobby, okay? Okay. So at least I have a home base now. It was really a miserable time, actually. And shit just kept happening. Like, you know, I'm driving a bunch of weed down 85 in Marlborough, and blue light's going behind me. And I'm like, fuck. Probably drunk and high cop comes to the window, and he's like, this your car? And I'm like, yeah. He's like, okay, get out of the car. I'm like, what did I do? Out of the car. And I'm like, what the fuck? Get out of the car. He's like, you're driving in uninsured, stolen vehicle. And I'm like, what? And he's like, who's Marjorie Wiland? And I'm like, it's my mom. I'm like, my mom just died. He's like, didn't believe me. He's like, nice try, buddy. I'm coughing on the side of the road. They bring, like, extra police down there. They eventually find out, you know, my mom did die. And they're like, well, they're like, we're really sorry, but this isn't your car anymore. It's hers. Signed it over to her. She's dead. It's going to her estate. We have to take it. I was left on the side of the road with my dog, and they towed the car away, and I was like, okay, now I got no car.
- [43:20]
Corinne Vien
Everything felt like it was just crashing down on him. But there was one bright spot in Jake's life. Adrian.
- [43:29]
Adrian
He was still just as goofy and funny and always liked to be with people and have parties and do all sorts of things like that. But you could tell he was like. He was sad, depressed. And then the drinking and the drugs, like, really, really took off after that. It got pretty bad for a little while in there. Partying was always part of our life, whether it was like a Tuesday or a Saturday. We would work a lot, we would come home. We would probably start drinking and doing whatever else. Jake always cooked dinner, which was wonderful. He was an amazing chef. Still is an amazing chef. A day in the life is hard to remember. It's all crazy and blurry. Like, we had been smoking weed since high school. We did pretty much every other drug, too. Whether we were partying or having a party at his mom's house or something like that, there was always something more than weed there. I was selling pills for a little while. That's how Jake and I kind of started hanging out again after high school. At a point, Jake started selling pills. He used to sell the oxys. And then you got Perk. The perk. 30s.
- [44:43]
Corinne Vien
She's speaking directly to Jake here, who's sitting with us in one of the common spaces in our apartment complex. I actually recorded almost every interview from one of these rooms. And Jake and I would snicker at how salacious some of the recordings were and just how many curious neighbors would kind of post up with their coffee or their laptop right outside of the door, listening in as we recorded.
- [45:03]
Adrian
So I left for a little while, came home, started seeing Jake again, and he had been doing pills the whole time. And then I started doing Them when I would, like, go out to a concert on the weekends and stuff. And then there was a point that you just become physically dependent on it, and it goes from there. And then I think we ended up getting into heroin because the person we were getting pills from got arrested for, like, the 600th time, and we couldn't get them anymore. They were just kind of gone and very, very, very expensive. And heroin was not. We traveled a lot. We used to go down to Florida to see his uncle that lived down there. And of course, there was a lot of drinking and a lot of partying, and we always brought pills with us because we had to. Atlantic City was another place that we would go a lot for lots and lots of concerts. Those were always crazy. There was one time, I forget what birthday it was, but it was one of Jake's birthdays. And there was 14 of us that just took a limo down to Atlantic City. It was like a ridiculous car ride. We had a nitrous tank that was just, like, on the floor of the limo. There was so much alcohol, so many other party drugs. Like, the ride down was an entire party in and of itself. Got to the hotels, we invited the limo driver to come and party with us for the night. We tripped. And I remember, like, a rose gold bathroom that was all rose gold mirrors. And it was super crazy and a ton of fun. And then we took. Took the limo home, like, the next day or something like that. But it was just, like, consistent partying. It was definitely a great time, but super out of control at the same time.
- [46:41]
Corinne Vien
While their love grew, so did their dependence on drugs.
- [46:45]
Adrian
I think we were very good together, and I also think it was chaos because we were into drugs. And, like, that was. That's like a whole lifestyle in itself. It kind of controls everything that you do. But I think our relationship was really, really good. Drugs put a damper on things, but as a whole, I think our relationship was really great. We always had nice places, but we bounced around a lot. Sometimes it was money, sometimes it was a really crappy landlord that we had. And then towards the end, it was just like we were running out of money at the end, even. Even with, like, supplementing it with selling on the side. It's just. That takes over your. Your whole life. There's no. Unless you're like, a millionaire. You'll probably burn through that at some point too, though. You know, it's. It's an expensive lifestyle. You're almost in survival mode when you are addicted to drugs like that. So that was A way for me to make sure that I was all set was moving to Worcester. I went to Wooster for drugs pretty much because it was an easier way. It's out of necessity. That's when we broke up. Jake was really angry for a few months, which is totally understandable because I was a jerk at that point in my life. So I don't think we talked for like, I remember it being like three or four months. But then, yeah, we started talking again and we're friendly again after that.
- [48:08]
Corinne Vien
Jake's love for Adrian had shifted. It was platonic now, but his love for drugs, well, that was still a twisted and relentless pull. It consumed him, filling nearly every corner of his life almost. Because Jake was a relationship guy. And for the first time in a while, he had space in his heart. Space for something new, a romantic love. And soon he would meet the woman that he would marry. Someone who would stand by him in sickness and in health, or in Jake's case, through addiction and a slow creeping decline. Her name was Ellen, and she was about to step into his life, changing it forever.
- [48:50]
Adrian
I remember the very first time he told me that he was seeing someone. I remember him being like, yeah, she rides a motorcycle, she's cool, she wears a leather jacket. It seemed kind of like they were happy. It just kind of progressively got a little bit weirder. Something's off about this girl. Very two faced, very manipulative.
- [49:11]
Eli
Something not right, not right with her. She's, when it comes down to it, dangerous. She can wreak havoc real fast. So I be careful who you let in your house, Sa.