Jason Sarris, 53
"Drugs were an escape from feeling the pain I was feeling. And they cost me my time with my kids; I lost the last 10 years of their lives. That is still hard for me to come to terms with, but I have to. That truly is what I lost the most, what I regret the most, and that's what I feel guilty about the most."
I lived a good life growing up in Novato in a typical happy family in the 80s. But when I was 13, I started drinking and smoking pot. It was all about partying and having fun. And then, right after high school, I began to use meth off and on.
I worked various jobs, including for my father who worked in wholesale in Oakland. But he passed away from a brain tumor at age 51, right before I started dating my future wife.
When I was 20, I got engaged and stopped meth for many years. We got married when I was 30 and had two kids. Then came the divorce; I was 36. After that I worked with my mother in her business for a while, but the divorce had crushed me. I was angry and began dating, even though I wasn't ready to date. At that time, I had my kids four nights and was working six days a week. But it got increasingly more difficult for me to do that, and I stopped working, which was tough for my mom. For about three years I was still able to rent a place and see my kids, but eventually, at about 40, I hit rock-bottom, lost my place, and became homeless. I just couldn't handle my life; I crashed and bottomed out.
Unemployed and living outside, this really hit hard. That was when I began using meth again. I ended up living in my car and trucking on the streets for a couple of years, sometimes on people’s couches. But that only went so far, until I ended up living on the street full-time. I was no longer able to see my kids as much; I also didn't really want to pull them into my mess. Their mother was doing very well, and at least I knew that they were in a good place. Living on the streets is hard. It's a vicious cycle of moving every month or whenever you are told to.
When I turned 51, I didn't feel good physically nor mentally. I was at my wit's end. I looked at myself, all screwed up on drugs, being as old as my dad was when he died. But he was healthy and such a good man. All he wanted was to live, and I'm like, “What am I doing with my life? This is time for me to stop this nonsense and get on with it”. And that's what I did. I was out there for a total of 12 years, out there with the wolves, so to say, and using drugs every day. I was very tired of using meth, and I knew it was time to stop. And I just quit cold turkey, and I've been clean for over two years now.
Quitting was very hard physically the first few weeks; it was like a river running through my stomach. After that, it was a piece of cake. But what was the most difficult is everything that you've hidden and subdued while you're using, all the pain, all the guilt, once you quit, all that just comes right back at you.
Drugs were an escape from feeling the pain I was feeling. And they cost me my time with my kids; I lost the last 10 years of their lives. That is still hard for me to come to terms with, but I have to. That truly is what I lost the most, what I regret the most, and that's what I feel guilty about the most. Looking back, I could just kick myself, really kick myself hard for going down that route, and I knew better, and I should have known better.
These last couple of years I've reflected on my life quite a bit, and I've processed a lot and come to grips with it. I understand what I did, and it's something I have to live with for the rest of my life. But I'm alright with it. I just want to get back into my kid's life and start leading a productive life. I feel like I have another good run. But I know this is going to take time, and I have to take care of myself first. This is not something that happens overnight; I want to work on my health. I'm just not feeling the best physically right now. And I think the biggest challenge for me is just to get healthy. Living on the streets is not about the number of years, it's the mileage. I need to lose some weight, my ankles are swollen, and my blood pressure is elevated.
When I first quit, I started advocating for homelessness, because we got swept away at our park. The police department did not close the park the way they said they were. That was also around the time my dog died. I started meeting with Robbie Powelson to advocate with him. The city wanted us out of the park and made new capital ordinances that would criminalize homelessness.
But with Martin versus Boise, cities cannot criminalize homelessness if there are not enough shelter beds available. It was right when the pandemic hit, and we just dug in at Lee Gerner Park in Novato; and when they passed the ordinances, we got in touch with the California Homeless union and sued the city. And we just settled last week. What we have now is a beautiful camp in Novato. We had a preliminary injunction last year that led to an agreement with the city to build a fenced-in area with services coming to us. Since then, we have bathrooms, weekly showers, and janitorial services that help us clean. And we have case workers that have already helped six of us getting housed since this agreement happened, including myself. I moved out on July 14, 2022. We also settled in court for the camp to be extended for two more years. There's going to be an oversight committee that I will be part of. Overall, we have done some really great things with advocacy and activism in regards to homelessness.
Doing all that has been very therapeutic for me. It helped me focus and kept me motivated. But it was also very stressful. There was a lot of push-back with protests against our camp. People came in, taking pictures of us, and accusing us of messing up the creek, which we always kept clean, because we knew that was our greatest chance to be able to camp at a park. We camped right next to a public library out in the open and got crucified for that by some of the public. Homelessness brings out the best and the worst in the community. Either people are compassionate and they want to support us, or they like to get us out of there. Thankfully we had community support, people ran donations of food or clothes, you name it, they've helped sustain us for the last couple of years.
Living outside creates monumental hardship. You live to survive, and you have to do things that are totally different from a normal life. You don't have anywhere to power your phones, and don’t know where to use the bathroom. I've lived on hills where I've had to run down a hill to find a bathroom at two o'clock in the morning; you got Safeway or a couple gas stations. Or you have Pioneer Park or Miwok park, and that's pretty much it. There are no public bathrooms. Cities don't make it easy, that's why the park is so important. Novato has stepped up and is helping now. And that’s a good thing.
As a homeless person, you have nothing to hide behind. You see people for who they are, including yourself, and how you conduct yourself on the street as a person trying to survive. I was homeless, yes, but I was very good to people on the street. I collected blankets from Goodwill, I knew everybody's shoe size. When I got food, I fed everybody. I earned a lot of respect on the street for doing those things. But people can go the other way, too, and do the wrong things, like stealing from a homeless person. That's kind of the worst thing you could probably do to anybody, and that stuff goes on out there.
I was so done with doing drugs. By the time I quit, I had no cravings at all. And I have no craving whatsoever to go back to that kind of life. I don't ever want to do that again. When I quit meth, I did it very unconventionally: I drank beer until I passed out. It got me through for a few months. Alcohol was never my drug of choice, and now I can still have a drink in a social setting, like I had recently at my son's 21st birthday party, when I had a margarita.
Everyone has to find their own timing to quit. You have to just go do it. It has to come from you; it can't be forced. Being homeless does not offer one the chance to feel stable, a place where you can hang your hat and think about straightening out your life. I wouldn't have been able to quit when I started camping. The last two years were the longest I've ever slept at one spot in the last 10 years. It gave me a chance to say, “Okay, I don't have to move. I don't have to struggle. Maybe I can work on my life right now.” Getting homeless people into a stable environment with shelters and programs, where they can get back on their feet in their own time, is critical. It is extremely difficult to figure out one’s life, when people have no steady place to live.
I want to help people on the streets and get them in a position where they have some safety and security in their lives, such as creating section camps. Stability breeds hope. This is going to be their best chance, and that's what I'm about as a member of the homeless policy and steering committee. I want to help direct the county to helping the homeless in a way that only a homeless person would know. And I think I've already started to do that.
I don't think homelessness will ever be the same in Marin with the work we've done for the last two years, and I just see good things coming down the line and I want to be a part of that.
