← Radio Atlantic
Loading summary
Transcript89 lines
- [00:03]
A
I'm Hanna Rosen, this is Radio Atlantic. Last year we published a series called no Easy Fix. If you haven't heard it, you should go back and listen. It's about San Francisco's attempts to address pockets of homelessness and addiction. It's also a close and unusually humane portrait of one man. His name is Evan. Living on the streets and barely managing his fentanyl addiction. Today we have an update on that series. When reporter Ethan Brooks met Evan, he was in bad shape.
- [00:38]
B
It's raining, I'm cold, I'm hungry. And I'm over it. I'm so over it.
- [00:49]
A
Years of addiction had left him with a leg that was so swollen and infected that he was at risk of losing it. On top of that, he couldn't keep food down and he didn't know why. His best friend Joe was worried.
- [01:01]
B
I mean, I expect Evan to die out there. I have seen no pieces of evidence that persisted beyond 72 hours of him heading in any other direction. And I've seen 10,000 pieces of evidence of him headed towards death.
- [01:16]
A
Evan ended up in the hospital and he agreed to enter an addiction treatment program in San Francisco. One that looked a lot like the rehabs where he had tried and failed to get clean before.
- [01:27]
B
I could feel like in my head I'm like, I'm gonna be successful this time, but like, I a little worried about having doubt. Like, what if I don't though?
- [01:36]
A
Ethan Brooks is going to take it from here.
- [01:44]
C
The last time I saw Evan, he was in a room in San Francisco General Hospital. Wanna rest for a little bit?
- [01:50]
B
Yeah, maybe a little bit.
- [01:51]
C
We spoke for a few hours and this is how the conversation ended. I mean, I'll be able to call you on the phone and stuff, but I just won't be able to get you in person for a while.
- [01:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, I'll definitely put you on like, the list of like, people I could talk to in treatment.
- [02:06]
C
Evan had been accepted to long term residential rehab in San Francisco. He wanted to finally get clean and give space and time for his leg to heal. And he wanted to reconnect with his son, who he hadn't seen in years. Joe, that's Evan's friend, bought him a cell phone, started a group chat, plugged in the phone next to Evan's bed, and flew home back to his family in Washington state. So Evan was once again on his own. A month passed and I didn't hear from him. And then he texted. He had 30 days clean. To celebrate, Joe sent videos from Cameo. That's the app where minor celebrities send personalized messages. In one, a group of burly dancers delivers Joe's message.
- [02:50]
B
Evan is good. Evan is good.
- [02:53]
C
Evan is good. Fentanyl is bad. 30 days sober. Congrats, bro.
- [03:00]
B
Yo, Evan, I heard you're 30 days sober off fentanyl. Hey, look.
- [03:05]
C
Another was from one of the twin TikTok stars in the Island Boys. I can't tell which one.
- [03:10]
B
It goes day by day, my boy. Keep doing your thing because that fetty ain't no joke, my boy.
- [03:23]
C
About two months later, there was a notification in the group chat, just under the videos, it said, evan has left the conversation. When I called to sell, there was nothing.
- [03:34]
A
I'm sorry.
- [03:34]
C
The person you are trying to reach.
- [03:36]
A
Has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet. Please try your call again later. Goodbye.
- [03:41]
C
It was the same at the rehab facility, so I don't know.
- [03:43]
B
I can't confirm or deny that the.
- [03:45]
A
Person is here, but I could take a message if you'd like to leave one.
- [03:48]
C
Okay. Okay, gotcha. And then on November 17, seven months since I'd last spoken to Evan, I got an email. The account photo was of a man in a pressed lavender button down shirt tucked into jeans with one hand on his hip, posing in front of a field. It was Evan. We set up a video call.
- [04:07]
B
I haven't had an Apple product in a long time, and this MacBook is pretty frustrating to like figure out how to use. All I wanted to do is scroll down on any page and I, like, haven't quite figured that out yet. So I click on something and then use the arrow keys because I can't find the fucking.
- [04:26]
C
Turns out this isn't so easy. If you've missed the last five years of technological advance. It's like two fingers is a scroll.
- [04:32]
B
Oh, I can't wait to try that.
- [04:36]
C
Just getting Evan on a call didn't guarantee much. Rehab is definitely better than living on the street, but it's not necessarily a place where you get clean. In 2023 and 2024, San Francisco's largest publicly funded rehab provider saw a string of overdose deaths inside their facilities. Evan says he's been in others where patients and staff were still using. I'd known where Evan was, but until this conversation, I didn't know how he was or what had happened in those seven months since we last spoke, if he had changed. All the way back in April, when Evan decided to try rehab in San Francisco, this was not the first time this scene had played out. Not Joe's first time flying down to find him. Not the first time he was hospitalized. There was a sort of script for what would happen next.
- [05:34]
B
I would make this whole plan about going to treatment. As soon as I would be alone and be outside of the hospital, I would just get out.
- [05:42]
C
Evan would get his few days living inside. Joe would go home to his family. The hospital would arrange for Evan to travel to rehab via a taxi or a bus.
- [05:49]
B
And then as soon as I hit the tenderloin, it would just be gone instantly.
- [05:53]
C
In those 10 unsupervised minutes, Evan would disappear. He would get out of the taxi, go back to shoplifting, back to selling what he stole, back to fentanyl. That was Evan's choice. It's true that Evan is responsible for his own actions in those 10 minutes. It's also true that almost no one beats a fentanyl addiction like his through willpower alone. This time around, Evan's first cue, the part in the script where he would normally just disappear, came when the hospital wanted to discharge him. Hospital stays are expensive, so they wanted to send him to a shelter for the weekend before admissions to rehab opened up on Monday. But the hospital's addiction team knew that if he went to a shelter, he would relapse. They convinced the doctors to keep him for the weekend despite the expense. The first opportunity to disappear came and went. Then it was time to take a taxi from the hospital to rehab, which is called harbor light.
- [06:47]
B
And one of the addiction team nurses, after his shift, stayed in the cab with me and then rode there to harbor light, and then stayed there with me for an hour to make sure that I was, like, cool and, like, didn't have any second thoughts, and then left.
- [07:05]
C
So another opportunity to exit had come and gone because someone took the time to stay with him. Do you remember your first day or first days at harbor light?
- [07:15]
B
Yeah, I remember just sleeping so much. I would get up and just eat and pee, and they would just bring me my meals. So it was kind of like I was in the hospital again. The task of, like, showering again, like, having to unwrap my leg, get in the shower, like, do the whole. I was just like, ugh, I don't even care. Like, I'll just be smelly. And it was just my brain deciding what was important and what wasn't for so long, that wasn't important.
- [07:46]
C
Before Evan arrived at Harborlite, there were two things after five years of living on the street that had pushed him towards recovery. The first was his leg, which had this huge open wound. The other thing that brought him There was that he couldn't keep food down. At first, the doctors thought he might have celiac disease, gluten intolerance. But then they found out that his iron was dangerously low and he was anemic.
- [08:07]
B
At first they thought, like, me being anemic was a diet thing because of just eating nothing but candy and ice cream on the street for so long. I mean, even at the time, if somebody were to tell me, like, oh, if you keep doing fetty like that, you're going to end up becoming anemic, I would have been like, so my leg was falling off. So I didn't. It wasn't like, yeah, it's like, who.
- [08:29]
C
Cares about being anemic when your leg is falling off? Right?
- [08:32]
B
Right.
- [08:33]
C
When I first met Evan, he was living a life that, on the good days, felt like a type of freedom. He could fend for himself, wasn't responsible to anyone. But even just a few days into treatment, he was starting to see it more clearly. It wasn't freedom. It was dependence. In just about every sense of the word. Evan was living like a child, literally eating nothing but candy and ice cream.
- [08:55]
B
I remember being nervous because I was glad to kind of get my life going again. But at the same time, I had been enjoying not being a responsible adult for such a long time. I was nervous to be like, great. Not only do I gotta learn how to be an adult again, I gotta, like, figure out how I'm gonna deal with all the shame and guilt of not being one for so long.
- [09:19]
C
Harbor Light Evans Rehab is run by the Salvation Army. Apart from being known as a strict and rather intensive program, the basics will be familiar. Meetings, meditation, acknowledging a higher power, celebrating milestones.
- [09:32]
B
I feel like everybody's congratulating me for, like, learning how to, like, pee standing. Like, pee pee standing up. Like, good job, Evan. Like, you use the bathroom on your own. Like, no more diapers. That's how I would always be. Like, like, congratulations for catching up with.
- [09:45]
C
The rest of us.
- [09:46]
B
Like, even two months in talking about it with some of the counselors there, they're like, how much time do you have? And I was like, oh, I have two months. And people were clapping or whatever. And I'm just like, yeah, it's whatever. It's two months.
- [10:00]
C
In real terms, two months was definitely not whatever. For Evan, it's the longest he had been clean in a very long time. But the old temptations were still there to start. Evan was still in San Francisco. And just about every day he saw people he knew from his life before. And beyond that, even after two months clean, his leg just wasn't healing the way that he hoped it would.
- [10:21]
B
My leg was improved, and then it just stopped. And it was a really slow progression.
- [10:26]
C
Oh, really?
- [10:27]
B
I didn't know if I was doing something wrong, if it was, like, going to get worse again.
- [10:36]
C
It started to feel like his leg wasn't going to get better. If he stood a chance of losing it, what was the point?
- [10:41]
B
I was like, all right, just we'll do the six months, you know, show everybody that I can. I've tried, and then I'll go back out.
- [10:53]
C
After the break. Six months. In his years living on the street, Evan mostly managed to look after himself. But there were other people, important people, who he had overlooked. Evan has a son. They talked on the phone, sometimes through Evan's mom or sister. But as his kid got older, he didn't want to talk to Evan, and Evan didn't want to talk to anyone. That changed at Harbor Light. If Evan wanted any shot at reconnecting, he'd have to learn not only how to be an adult in the course of a few months, but also how to be a father.
- [11:33]
B
I had this in my head, like a game plan for how I was going to tackle talking to my family again. But my counselor there was like, nope, that's not how we're going to do it. Not definitely going to do it like that.
- [11:43]
C
What was the game plan and why was it rejected?
- [11:45]
B
Like, calling them, like, once a week and then calling my son and then talking to him. But he. My counselor decided that you can't use the phone at all. For the first 30 days, it's complete blackout. And then after that, you only get two 10 minute phone calls a day. Literally, when I would call my mom, one, by the time she answered, it would probably kill a whole minute. Two, she would spend like five minutes crying. So now I'm after. It's like four more minutes. And like, mom, you just like, what am I supposed to do? Like, you know, and then there's my whole phone call for the day, and then if I call somebody else and they don't answer, and that's it.
- [12:20]
C
So.
- [12:23]
B
And so he was like, you're gonna write letters. That way you can speak more to get it down. And honestly, it'll feel more heartfelt that you spent the time to write it, all your feelings and everything out on paper and mail it.
- [12:37]
C
So that's what Evan did. This was the beginning of what would become a relentless mailing campaign aimed at his son. It hasn't Been easy to get much out of him. Evan hadn't seen his son in eight years, and you wouldn't blame him for not wanting to talk. But over the months, Evan began to learn what he had missed. Everyone thinks his kid looks like Evan, but Evan thinks he looks like his mom. He's an adventurous eater like Evan, and has a sweet tooth, too. Also like Evan, there was a picture of him trying a chocolate covered cricket on a field trip to D.C. and he was a bit of a performer.
- [13:10]
B
For example, for his fifth grade graduation, he surprised everybody and dressed up as a banana and walked across the stage in a giant banana suit. He really likes the clarinet, actually. He's like first chair in his class and then he's like third chair all county or something. He's really into it.
- [13:34]
C
In October, six months into treatment, Evan's family flew out to visit him. His mom, his sister, and his son. Evan's friend Joe. And Joe's son Barrett came down too. The last time Evan saw his son, he had been five years old. Now he was 13 and was growing a mustache. They went to the arcade, did an escape room. Evan said they'd still be there if not for the kids. Barrett and Evan's son were fast friends.
- [13:59]
B
The first night we went out somewhere, they were throwing something. It was like candy or something, and something bounced off and then hit me. And then they like giggled and ran away. And my son was like, where'd it go? And then Barrett was like, it hit your dad. I hadn't been a dad for such a long time. It was a kind of surreal moment of like, oh, you know, he didn't even call me dad. It was somebody else calling me dad, but just. It was more of just a reminder of like, oh, yeah, I am.
- [14:34]
C
The same weekend his family visited, after six months of treatment, Evan graduated from Harbor Light.
- [14:39]
B
My mom.
- [14:43]
C
In the video, he's standing at a lectern wearing a yellow plaid shirt, trying not to cry.
- [14:48]
B
A wise woman once told me, the only thing that you have to change is everything. I look forward to being the best son, brother, and father and friend I can be. Thank you.
- [15:02]
C
After graduation, Joe and Barrett and Evan's mom and sister and son flew home. You guys are still writing letters here and there or no?
- [15:14]
B
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I just sent one. I mean, I send him letters. He doesn't really send me anything back. I don't know if the option was given to him. Kind of like, your dad wants your cell phone number. Do you want to give it to him or do you want to Just keep writing letters or like, what do you want to do? And I could just see him being on his phone, like, yeah, whatever, letters. And so I was like, oh, well, if that's what he wants to do, then I'm just going to bombard him with letters to where he's like, damn it, I should have did phone call. So he hasn't caved yet, but I definitely send him two or three a month.
- [15:44]
C
Evan is now in a sober living house. He works in a kitchen a few days a week, and on the other days he takes classes to become an addiction treatment peer counselor. That question of if it was possible for Evan to stay clean for this long, so far that's been answered. His leg isn't fully healed. Even after eight months. That wound is still there, but he can walk around fine and will have a surgery soon to help with the circulation. So now the question for Evan isn't so much if he'll live, but how. A few weeks ago, Evan was riding the bus home from a meeting when he ran into an old friend from when he was living on the street.
- [16:19]
B
And I talked to them the whole bus ride. And when I got off, I helped him carry his stuff off and hung out with him for a little bit. But when I had went to talk and hang out with him and invited him to sit next to me, it was just kind of like, here's this really dirty, gross looking homeless dude and I'm cleaned up enough to where people wouldn't suspect that of me of all and that I'm inviting him over to next to me. Like when he came up to talk to me before I noticed him, they were thinking, like, I'm probably gonna get pissed off. This homeless guy's coming to ask me for money or something. And it totally wasn't what they expected.
- [16:53]
C
Yeah, they see like a homeless guy approaching somebody who's just like a normal guy working a job in San Francisco. Exactly.
- [16:59]
B
Coming home from work late at night.
- [17:01]
C
And you kind of see an old friend.
- [17:04]
B
Right. Or me. And when I see somebody in that same position, it's kind of hard for me to like somebody with like a fucked up leg or like just like can't get up from somewhere. Cause they're so sick. It's like, fuck.
- [17:21]
C
This isn't the only time this has happened recently. Evan sees himself now all over the city. When cops and EMTs are trying to move someone along, there he is. When co workers at the kitchen complain about homeless and addicted people, he fantasizes about telling them about his past. Evan Lives just two blocks away from where he spent the last five years. But he might as well live in a different world still. The boundaries between old and new can be porous.
- [17:48]
B
This last couple nights, I've had to go to meetings because I've been bored. And I really kind of miss that excitement of, like, I gotta go boost from here and dodge the security guard and get on the bart and then dodge the Bart police and then steal from this store and then come back out and then just all that excitement bullshit. I kind of miss the chaos.
- [18:11]
C
He tries not to think too much about the future. A lot of his treatment at this point is still focused on the present. But he does have one idea for what he might do.
- [18:20]
B
My background permitting. I would like to be an armed security guard. I think that would be cool.
- [18:24]
C
Well, why?
- [18:26]
B
Because that's the kind of craziness that I would. I think I need. Not, like, with a gun armed, but, like, with baton or pepper spray or. I'm not saying that every day I'm gonna go to work that I'm gonna be, like, this douche security guard that, like, pepper sprays you.
- [18:42]
C
That's what's so funny. It's like, you're just, like, becoming your, like, worst enemy from, like, not long.
- [18:48]
B
Ago, in a way. Yeah. But I would also think I'd have. I think I could give back to Target from all the shit I stole by being a really good security guard and, like, just going back to that.
- [18:58]
C
Same target and going to work there.
- [19:00]
B
Right.
- [19:00]
C
Where was that? It was. It was Oakland. Right? It was Emeryville. There was a story Evan told me back before he started treatment to support his habit. He was going to the same target in Emeryville, outside of Oakland, day after day after day, stealing stuff and then selling it in the Mission District. He went to that same target in Emeryville so many days in a row, it began to feel absurd that he hadn't been caught yet. And you're like, I can't believe that this hasn't happened. It feels like Groundhog's Day.
- [19:27]
B
Oh, that's right. Yeah.
- [19:28]
C
He told himself that when they did catch him, that's when he'd get clean. But it never happened. Does that at all feel like an attempt to go back and stop your past self? That's fulfilling that wish you had for someone to catch you at that point, right?
- [19:42]
B
And just, like, give them that, like, oh, it's over finally. It rains here on Christmas for a week every year. And I always know it's coming, and I know it's gonna come this year, and this will be the first time where I will be inside, and I'm super grateful for that.
- [20:05]
C
Evan will stay in San Francisco for the time being, and in the spring he'll fly out to Washington to visit Joe. This episode was produced and reported by me, Ethan Brooks and Natalie Brennan. Edited by Jocelyn Frank and Hanna Rosen Engineering by Rob Smirciak Fact checking by Sam Fentress Claudine Abade is the executive producer of Atlantic Audio and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. If you enjoy the show, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic journalists when you subscribe to the Atlantic@theAtlantic.com Listene.