"Shooting Up" - a powerful, gripping memoir of love and loss
An Interview with Jonathan Tepper, Author of Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction
We’re with a Rhodes Scholar today, but once you learn more about Jonathan Tepper, you’ll realize that his Rhodes honor is just one of many extraordinary details in a remarkable life story. To begin with, Jonathan’s parents were Christian missionaries who set their sights on rehabilitating heroin addicts in Spain in the early 1980s. And how did they go about doing that? By sending eight year old Jonathan and his three brothers to the roughest neighborhoods in Madrid to hand out pamphlets inviting anyone who looked strung out to join them for coffee and conversation at their family kitchen table. Then the AIDS epidemic hit and within a couple years their rehab project, Betel, was supporting 600 patients. Meanwhile, Jonathan was burying himself in hundreds of books on math, science, engineering, classical history, and literature—in addition to the Bible—even as he attended various public and private schools in Madrid.
We could also make mention of Jonathan’s Master of Letters research degree from Oxford, entrepreneurial startups, his CEO position at a large investment fund, or the handful of books he’s written or co-written on finance and investing.
So yes, not your ordinary life, but as you’ll discover in the interview below, Jonathan is about as down-to-earth as a guy can be. We were thrilled when he agreed to take a few questions from Foreword’s Matt Sutherland about his recently released memoir Shooting Up.
At the age of nine, your missionary family moved to San Blas, a neighborhood of Madrid, Spain, to minister to university students and then heroin addicts in the mid 1980s. Your parents and three brothers basically began by walking the city’s worst streets looking for down-and-out drug users—inviting them to your home for talk, fellowship, and coffee. Thus began Betel, a facility that now serves more than 2000 patients internationally. Yours was not an ordinary childhood, by any stretch. Were you all onboard for such an adventurous life? What parts of the US did you miss?
I begin the book with a quote from George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia about his time in Spain, “How natural it all seemed then, how remote and improbable now.” That is the way I feel about my early life in Spain. It seemed so normal to me at the time, and it only seems extraordinary and surreal looking back at it now.
My brothers and I simply took for granted that my parents decided where we’d move, where we’d live, and what we’d do. We did as we were told, handing out flyers to junkies, chatting with them, and learning about heroin, Gypsies, and life in San Blas. In retrospect, it seems dangerous, but we mainly thought of it as an adventure as four boys. It was all novel and tremendously exciting at the time.
It seems strange to say, but I didn’t really know the US well and because of that, I didn’t miss it much. My parents were missionaries and had been in Mexico before Spain, and the longest I had lived in the US that I remembered was a year for first grade. My ideas of the US came from newspapers, magazines, and movies. What I missed most about the US was candy or things like root beer or Dr Pepper, which I couldn’t get in Spain. Those were the preoccupations of a seven year old. I tried to capture this as best I could in the early chapters.
Your father was like an Old Testament figure, not quite fire-and-brimstone but a deeply religious man with a Harvard education and the zeal of a missionary. On the other hand, your mother, in her own way, was equally intriguing, coming from a privileged background but 100 percent onboard raising a family overseas. Of all the gifts they offered you, a love of reading may be the most important. Can you talk about the role of books in your life, beginning with the large library you always knew as a child?
Books and reading are a central theme in the book. While the book is a story of love and loss, it is also a love letter to family, friends, and even learning. Books inform and teach us, but much more importantly, shape us—and at their best, they make us more human and empathetic.
My father was a visionary and a strong personality who had an enormous influence, but my mother was equally important in her own quiet way. My mother didn’t really come from a privileged background, but she was so neat, prim, and proper about everything, I always thought she should have been a grand dame. She had a degree in English and a master’s in education and taught English and had been a guidance counselor before becoming a missionary. Like my father, she had a love of reading and learning, and she and my father transmitted that to us over breakfast and dinner devotionals and bedtime readings. They stacked books high everywhere in the house.
Our family relations were in many ways mediated through books. We rarely saw our grandparents in the US, but one way we felt close to them was through books they sent. My father’s father was a genius and first generation Jewish-American immigrant, and sent us countless books on math, engineering, and sciences. Children will always have their own interests or things that spark their imagination. I’m grateful to my parents and even grandparents for giving us the books and encouragement to read and learn.
You were just an early teen during the first years of the AIDS epidemic. As a relatively conservative Catholic country, how did Spain handle those difficult years when so little was known about the disease? Was there any support at all for the addicts and criminals that were part of the Betel community?
In the early days of AIDS people didn’t know how the virus spread, and fear might have been understandable. However, once scientists figured out how it was transmitted, fear was much more driven by willful ignorance and social stigma. Even family members often didn’t want to touch their own children who were addicts or were HIV+, and for the rest of society, people with AIDS were often treated like lepers, not just in Spain, but the US too.
To my brothers and me, the men and women in the drug rehab center were like older brothers and sisters to us. They were family, and it made no sense to avoid hugging them or giving them a kiss on the cheek. There was no danger to us, and we knew them and loved them. My parents and the leaders in Betel offered a place of love and care that was free to anyone who wanted to get off drugs and have a place to live. That is why the center grew so much.
In the 1980s, and even early 1990s, there was very little help for addicts in Madrid of any kind, and the help for those with AIDS was mainly present in the big hospitals. I recently reconnected with Dr. Luis Buzon, the head of the infectious diseases ward at the Ramon y Cajal hospital. While there wasn’t much help, there were also people who were heroic and helped countless patients with no recognition.
When AIDS caught fire in Spain, Betel grew from 200 heroin addict patients to 600. What made Betel, your father’s method of ministering, such a beacon for dying addicts?
Love is powerful and contagious. Addicts saw that in Betel, the drug rehab my parents started, they were welcomed with no questions asked, no judgement about what they had done, and treated with love and care. The center was free, and there were no waitlists. People knew they could get off drugs and find a place to live. My parents and the leaders of Betel treated every addict who entered like family members worthy of love, care, and dignity.
As a Christian drug rehab, there was certainly an element of radical transformation in the addicts lives as they had a religious experience, being “saved” or “born again,” and that was powerful too. The addicts like Raúl and Jambri wanted to share their experiences with others. I am certain that when addicts were facing the certainty of death from AIDS, having an eternal hope helped give them meaning and purpose too.
During one of your trips to the hospital to visit Raúl—one of the first Betel patients, who grew into a leadership role, and very dear friend of your family—he shared that you were difficult to teach because you were a “know-it-all.” He said it affectionately, but your precociousness as a reader, and your religious upbringing placed your knowledge far ahead of just about everyone—and you let them know. In the hospital that day, Raúl asked you to promise him that you would be humble like your mom and dad, and not “be a smart aleck.” A few minutes later, above the main doors of the hospital you were transfixed by a quote from Nobel-prize winning neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal: “Every man can be the sculptor of his own mind, if he sets himself the task.” Please talk about why that quote at that moment meant so much to you?
I remember the conversation with Raúl vividly. When I was young, I was a know-it-all and came across as cocky and self-confident. I did not have a lot of self-awareness either. As I got older, I became more self-aware and came to see how my behavior affected those around me. Learning was no longer about showing off or having all the right answers in Sunday school or even at school.
Raúl inspired me to be humble and wear learning lightly, and I remember being profoundly inspired by Santiago Ramon y Cajal’s quote. When I read the quote, I realized that learning was not a lot of facts and figures or quotes from the Bible or T.S. Eliot, it was much more about deciding who we wanted to be. I felt I had found my calling in life and a sense of purpose in becoming the sculptor of my own mind.
At that time there was no cure for AIDS and virtually all of the addicts you had known for many years at Betel were HIV+. What was it like as a coming-of-age teenager to know that all of these people, many of them close friends of yours, would soon die?
In the book I have a quote from my father. He wrote in his newsletter back to supporters in the US that, “AIDS breaks your heart. It makes you compassionate and softens you.” One thing Raúl said was that with AIDS you had to live a life of quality and not quantity. The virus made me realize that every day counted and we had to love people as much as possible. We really didn’t know how long they would survive, and we went to the hospitals as often as we could so they would know they were not alone. Death was never far, and it made life more vivid and more precious. I grew up very quickly and was mature beyond my years in some ways, and still immature in others.
While AIDS is a major part of the book, we didn’t obsess about the virus or AIDS, and almost everyone got on with life and helping others. The leaders in Betel didn’t want AIDS to define them. When the “cocktail” of drugs that stopped AIDS in its tracks appeared in 1995, everyone got on with their lives. What we had lived through only hit me years later at the 20th anniversary of Betel when they had a slideshow as a memorial of all the friends we had lost. Everyone was in tears as we remembered our friends, and I realized we had lived through something extraordinary we didn’t talk about enough. I wanted the book to be a memorial to all the friends we lost. I hope readers get to the end of the book and feel they know them and traveled with them on a journey.
You mention that your Rhodes Scholar interviews were reminiscent of dinnertime conversations around your family table, and that the interview experience was perhaps the first time you didn’t feel like an oddball out in society. Indeed, you finally felt “a lightness of spirit.” What was it about academia that was so comfortable for you?
For years I felt like I had little connection to other “normal” people, given my odd background, and in college I didn’t know much about popular culture or even American culture. I didn’t really know how to relate to other students, and my professors had become my friends. At the Rhodes interviews, I felt that somehow I had found a tribe where I wasn’t such an oddball and conversations reminded me of our conversations around the dinner table. Meeting professors, writers, and accomplished figures made me think that learning and reading wasn’t simply a matter of getting degrees but a key part of who we are as people and being a well-rounded person. It was refreshing to meet so many interesting people, and I strangely felt at home.
And then you are elected as a Rhodes Scholar. That night, sharing a beer with your brother, you experienced a genuine feeling of accomplishment and freedom, a sense that your outrageously unique life up to that point had, indeed, prepared you for something. But with that sense, you also understood that you didn’t, couldn’t have done it alone. That you received much help along the way. For all of your talents and successes, please talk about the type of support you needed at certain times in your early life to help you be the person you are.
My parents often read the parable of the talents from Matthew 25 to us. In life, some people are fortunate to be born in better circumstances, whether it is with more educated parents, more money, or a better school system. Some of us are born with a headstart, while others start with significant handicaps. None of us pick our starting point. Yet we can all do the best with what we have. We have to use our talents to the best of our ability. Ramon y Cajal’s quote inspired me to do the most with what I had.
I was immensely fortunate, despite my odd childhood. I would not have been the same person if I hadn’t had parents who taught me to love reading and learning. I was immensely fortunate to have highly literate parents and many books, but I could have easily done nothing with it. My older brother sent me all his college textbooks, so I arrived with a few years of reading and credits under my belt.
I had great friends who encouraged me to read, and Jambri gave me a love for the Italian language and culture. Professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill adopted me and allowed me to do independent research projects with them and supported me in all fellowships. Years after getting the Rhodes, almost all my professors had passed away, and I was able to read the letters they had written about me. I was blown away by their kindness. I owed so much to them for nurturing me and supporting me.
None of us get where we are without the love and support of those around us.
There is a boyish enthusiasm to your writing, as if you found a way to channel that twelve year old Jonathan onto the page after twenty+ years. Your book is an inspiration. Please talk about who you had in mind as your ideal reader as you were writing?
I wrote the book as a tribute to family and friends but also as an exploration of love and loss. To those who are suffering, I hope they can read Shooting Up and know they are not alone. To those who have lost loved ones, I hope they feel seen in their grief. I hope the book is a universal book that leads to more love and empathy.
The book is universal and should be accessible to readers of any age. The writing is simple, and deceptively so. (Hemingway wrote at an eighth-grade level and The Old Man and the Sea is an easy read on the surface, but it is a true feat of writing that was worth the Nobel in literature.) I wanted to write in a literary voice that grew and matured as the story progressed. There are many great books that show you a child’s view of the world, and it allows the narrator to contrast innocence with harsh realities. J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird come to mind. Angela’s Ashes, a more recent memoir, is told with a young child’s perspective. I can only hope that Shooting Up could find as wide an audience as those books.
Heroin addiction is being thought of differently, in certain circles. (By Dr. Gabor Maté, co-author of The Myth of Normal, for example.) With more compassion, yes, but also with the understanding that the specific blissful high that users seek is a response to unresolved childhood trauma. As someone who has known hundreds of heroin addicts, many of them very closely, can you share your thoughts on drug treatment. What would you do differently if you were in charge of the war on drugs, treatment, punishment?
In the book Stuart: A Life Backwards, about a British homeless man, the main character Stuart says, “Homelessness—it’s not about not having a home. It’s about something being seriously f*cking wrong.” I think this is true for addiction as well. Addiction is a symptom, not a cause.
Some people become addicts because they experiment with heroin and it is physically addictive, like smoking, but I think most people stay addicted because heroin is a means of escape from something else, a way to fill a hole people have inside. Often it is trauma that leads people to become addicts, and this can be specific life incidents, it can be lack of parental love, substance abuse by a family member (I remember many addicts told me their fathers were alcoholics), etc. There is no one cause, but it should lead to greater empathy.
Please tell us about your life now? Can we look forward to another book?
Shooting Up was a labor of love and a memorial to friends and family. It was unique, and I don’t have another memoir in me. My day job is running an investment fund named Prevatt Capital, which is my mother’s maiden name. I spend my time with my two-year-old son and wife and visiting friends. I occasionally write investing books because some topics are of particular interest, and writing is a way of researching them and thinking about them deeply. In 2018 I wrote The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition. That came from my research on the rise of industrial concentration and monopolies in the American economy.
One book I’m working on with a friend who is a humanities professor and avid investor is an introduction to personal investing. We hope it will be useful for laymen and professionals. We both agreed that there was no one book we’d give to someone wanting to learn about how they should start investing. There were half a dozen books, each one with its own angle. But we wanted to write a great book that could be of use to a sophisticated wealthy person and a young college person starting their personal journey. Wiley will publish it.
Matt Sutherland
