It’s not the sunlight that wakes him up.
Jeremy Cross spent the night sleeping in the parking lot of the Vancouver Public Library and has no concept of what time of day it is.
Everything he's wearing and owns is damp.
The foot traffic and vehicles alert him that it's morning.
He wakes up and heads to St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver to pick up hydromorphone pills at the rapid access addiction clinic.
Cross has an addiction, but he won’t take these pills. Instead, he’ll make his way to the corner of Carrall and West Hastings streets to sell the pills for $25.
“It is a whole different world that you live off,” he recalls. “You have no sense of time or day. It’s cut-throat out there.”
All of his belongings will likely be stolen and he’ll have to start from scratch.
To survive, he will try to steal things from stores and sell them on the streets for drugs or money.
Cross continues to experience homelessness for four years, sleeping in buses and at times single-room-occupancy (SRO) shelters. He becomes addicted to fentanyl, crystal meth, GHB (known as the "date rape drug") and overdoses seven times.
“I lived off nothing and was in and out of jail,” he says. "I've been kidnapped before and held at gunpoint and forced to do fraud. I got raped because of this life I was living.”
But his story doesn’t end here.
“I got out and now I’m looking to help people," he says.
Now he's sober and in November, Cross published a 178-page book about his journey of addiction and recovery. He hopes his story will inspire others and help those who have loved ones going through addiction.
“It may seem hopeless, and so many people don’t get out alive, but it’s possible,” he says.
Fell in love with the wrong people
At 19 years old, Cross came out as gay and decided to make the move to Vancouver when he was 24.
He looks back on that time of his life and says he was a "normal kid" who worked Monday to Friday in a business management job.
Cross started dating and entered into a manipulative relationship where he started using drugs. The couple also began escorting.
“I fell in love with the wrong people,” he says. “I was super naive. It slowly started unravelling my whole life.”
Another relationship led to him losing all his belongings and ultimately being homeless at 28 years old.
“There was tons of violence, death and corruption,” he says.
His past partner introduced fraud into his life, he says, so he learned how to commit crimes. When he did get a room at an SRO, he was robbed and didn’t feel safe.
“The things that I saw, or the things that happened in Vancouver … you think it happens in the States,” he says.
Over the next few years, Cross was arrested for resisting or obstructing a peace officer, possession of stolen property and dealing with identity documents without lawful excuse.
On Jan. 17, 2024, he was arrested and sent to jail at the North Fraser Pretrial Centre in Port Coquitlam until May 28.
Started writing
Having to go to jail meant Cross was ripped from his environment and away from the people he surrounded himself with.
Jail was a wake-up call, he says.
“It forced me into detox,” he says. “I was so exhausted. It was a sense of defeat.”
When he got to jail, he decided he wanted to detox and be released sober. He describes getting sober as "extremely challenging," and remembers having four seizures in jail while coming off of benzodiazepines.
While in jail, his sister suggested he should write about what he had been through, in chronological order.
“I wrote like 200 pages in jail and then continued when I came out.”
A friend of his is a retired superintendent on Vancouver Island and offered to edit the first draft for free. His second draft was edited by his old high school history teacher.
Earlier this month, he finished the book and put it for sale on Amazon, Google Books, Chapters/Indigo, Kobo and Barnes and Noble.
He titled it, ‘Finding My Lost Life.’
“A year ago, I was homeless on the streets, addicted to drugs, and I never thought I would get out of this thing alive,” Cross says.
Since publishing the book, strangers have started reaching out to him.
"My book sales have gone through the roof and it's so rewarding to have mothers that have lost their sons or daughters to addiction message me,” he says.
The Langley resident wants people to know recovery is possible.
"I'm hoping I can bring awareness and education around it because there's not really any books out there that really give a front-row seat to the life of addiction on the streets,” Cross says.
When he was in jail, he had a peer support worker and a community transition team leader who were fundamental to his recovery. After leaving, he got certified so he could be a peer support worker to others.
“I am also going to start working within the community,” he says.
Cross joined the Run for Sobriety Association and is one of the chairmen. He's also part of other community initiatives that help people with their recovery.
Right now, he's working on a book signing in January.
“It’s a pretty rewarding feeling. It’s surreal,” he says. “I get butterflies."
