The joke goes something like this:

โ€œI used to be homeless. I lived in a wash near the Santa Cruz River. I know what youโ€™re thinking: Crack addict. It was heroin.โ€

Thatโ€™s how Tucson comedian Josiah Osego introduced himself at the inaugural Arizonaโ€™s Funniest Comedian contest at Laffs Comedy Caffe early last year.

He wasnโ€™t kidding.

He was homeless and for three years he battled a heroin addiction that nearly cost him his freedom.

When he emerged from the dark cloud that swallowed his late teens and erased the first couple years of his 20s, Osego, 29, found plenty to laugh about.

How To Became An Addict 101

Osegoโ€™s drug odyssey reads like a how-to-become-an-addict playbook. It started when he was 16 and left home after a conflict with his parents.

Before long he fell into the partying lifestyle โ€” mostly marijuana. He went to school, worked a part-time job and on weekends partied.

He bounced from friend to friend, ending up at one point staying at a friendโ€™s uncleโ€™s house near Redington Pass. The aunt and uncle were strict, but all bets were off when they werenโ€™t there.

โ€œI got drunk for the first time,โ€ Osego recalled. โ€œIf the party wasnโ€™t there it was at another girlโ€™s house. ... Iโ€™m like โ€˜This is where itโ€™s happening. This is cool.โ€™โ€

He was 18 and had barely graduated from a Tucson charter school โ€” โ€œMy GPA was 1.8; it wasnโ€™t even 2.0,โ€ he said โ€” when he got his own place, a room in a three-bedroom apartment. He had a job at a fast-food restaurant and started getting high with prescription drugs. He crushed and snorted them or just popped them whole.

โ€œI remember that I just felt so chill,โ€ he said. โ€œThis was something new that felt awesome. Itโ€™s like when a new toy comes out that everyone wants and you got it exclusively.โ€

But that was nothing compared to his next high, taking a hit off an opium pipe.

โ€œI hit it and I felt like the world,โ€ he said. โ€œFor me it was like your first morning cigarette that gets you lightheaded. But afterward comes this wavy feeling.โ€

Osego didnโ€™t realize he was smoking heroin. And when his friends clued him in and warned him that he was entering dangerous terrain, he ignored them.

Tough love and letting go

Jael Walker had helped pay her sonโ€™s living expenses since he left home. She would give money to the families who took him in and when he went out on his own, she helped out with the rent.

One day when he was 20, Walker got a call from her sonโ€™s landlord. The money she had been giving Osego to pay rent wasnโ€™t making it there; he was on the verge of getting evicted.

Any doubts she may have had that her son was in trouble with drugs were erased when she walked into his apartment.

โ€œHe just looked horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible,โ€ she said.

It was not the first time she had witnessed her sonโ€™s drug addiction. But it would be the last.

โ€œI went up to his apartment and he was so high, he had the belt around his arm. I had to see that to realize he needed help,โ€ she said. โ€œWhen that trust wasnโ€™t there anymore, I had to pull away. I couldnโ€™t be an enabler.โ€

Osego had lost count of the times he had been through detox, most initiated by minor drug-related run-ins with the law. Three or four days in a facility until he got over the sickness that comes when you stop using heroin cold turkey.

Once he was sprung he went back to cooking heroin and shooting up. He often stole credit cards or money orders to buy drugs; he and a buddy once contemplated robbing a store, but the buddy chickened out.

โ€œI was so glad he didnโ€™t go through with it,โ€ Osego said.

He could no longer hold a job. He lost his apartment and slept in a wash near West Silverlake and South Mission roads. Across the way was a trailer park with a vacant trailer that he and buddies would sneak into and get high.

โ€œOne time I showed up and the doors were locked so I broke a window,โ€ he said.

The property manager called the police and Osego, who was 23 then, was arrested. But the police didnโ€™t find his stash of cocaine and heroin. By that time he had graduated to speed-balling โ€” shooting heroin and cocaine in the same syringe. He served two weeks in jail and was fined $4,000 as part of violating a two-year-old probation.

When he got of jail, he returned to the trailer and quickly blew through the rest of his stash. With no more drugs and no money to get any, Osego said he checked himself into detox once again.

Salvation, at long last

Osego spent a month in detox and two weeks in a halfway house before taking the advice of a counselor to check into a Tucson rehab facility in 2012.

It was a tough and tortured journey that included close calls of being evicted โ€” he admits he consistently broke the rules including fraternizing with female patients and failing to do his chores โ€” and a sit-down confessional with his mother.

In the counselorโ€™s office that day, Walker looked at her son and delivered a blow that served as his epiphany: โ€œI donโ€™t know who you are,โ€ she told him.

โ€œI really didnโ€™t know him,โ€ Walker said. โ€œHe had left since he was 16. When he was high, I thought he was doing A and he was doing B. I thought, this is not my child. Drugs change people and I didnโ€™t know him any more. And that really pierced his heart.โ€

โ€œI had bottled up so much I had fatigued myself,โ€ Osego said. โ€œThat honesty that almost broke me saved me.โ€

Osego spent six months in rehab and emerged determined to never go back. He got a job in a restaurant, signed up for AA meetings and settled into a life of sobriety.

A day job and night gig

Josiah Osego is funny. He always has been, says his mom.

But Osego never thought much about the quick barbs and funny tales he traded with coworkers in the kitchen of Frog & Firkin near the University of Arizona a few years ago.

One day a traveling comedian playing a show at Laffs Comedy Caffe overheard the jokes coming from the kitchen and planted the seed: โ€œYou should do open mic at Laffs. Youโ€™re pretty funny,โ€ Osego recalled.

Osego called Laffโ€™s talent booker Gary Hood to reserve his spot on that weekโ€™s lineup.

A day before the Thursday show, Osego chickened out and canceled.

The following week, he worked up the courage to sign up again, and then canceled.

By week three, Hood had heard enough and told Osego what he tells all reluctant comics: Just do it.

Osego went on stage that Thursday night and let loose with his tales of drug addiction and what itโ€™s like to work in a kitchen with the motley crew from Frog & Firkin.

โ€œThey were all in the audience,โ€ he said, so he had to give them a shout out.

The show was what you would expect from someone who had never before done standup.

โ€œIt was very raw,โ€ said Hood, a longtime professional standup who mentors young comedians at Laffs. โ€œHe had a lot of thoughts and a lot of things he wanted to do all at once, but he didnโ€™t have the skill set yet.โ€

Osego remembers that the audience laughed, and that was enough encouragement to bring him back to open mic night week after week, honing his delivery and material with each appearance.

Osego has never taken any comedy classes, but heโ€™s watched other comics in action, from his fellow Laffs open-micโ€™ers to big-name comics like Doug Stanhope.

He draws his comedy from his life, painting pictures of his drug addiction and recovery in colors that arenโ€™t too stark or scary. He also finds funny in everyday life.

He squeezes in writing sessions between school โ€” heโ€™s studying graphic design โ€” and his job as a full-time drug recovery support specialist. One of his regular writing partners is fellow Laffs comic Henry Barajas.

Barajas, who started doing standup at Laffs the same time as Osego three years ago, said Osego is equally dedicated to his comedy as his sobriety.

โ€œI think heโ€™s funny and he has this morbid, dark sense of humor. It starts off very depressing but somehow everybodyโ€™s laughing at the end,โ€ Barajas said. โ€œHe takes the audience on this journey thatโ€™s very truthful.โ€

Osego has taken his comedy from the one-liner โ€œI was on my way here and this happenedโ€ kind of jokes to narrative comedy, long-form stories drawn from his life and observations.

Like the story he tells of hooking up with a girl in the wash during his homeless heroin days and then running into her years later when he was clean.

โ€œItโ€™s this whole sad joke of him being this homeless guy. ... He goes up there and you feel his struggle but you feel his need to laugh at it,โ€ Barajas said. โ€œAside from that, he is one of the only African-American comedians (in Tucson) that do standup regularly. Heโ€™s like a guy thatโ€™s not afraid to tell the black jokes or tell the โ€˜I was the homeless heroin addictโ€™ jokes.โ€

Since that first Laffs show, Osego beat out other Laffs comics in a club contest and was a finalist in the 2014 Arizonaโ€™s Funniest Comedian contest. Heโ€™s also become a regular at the Wednesday night open mic at Mr. Headโ€™s Art Gallery & Bar and comedy clubs in Phoenix, performed in San Diego and Los Angeles, and opened for Stanhope, an international touring comic and former host of Comedy Centralโ€™s โ€œThe Man Showโ€ who lives in Bisbee.

This weekend, Osego will open for two national touring comics headlining Laffs.

โ€œI never planned on getting this far,โ€ he said, reflecting on a journey he never could have imagined when he was using heroin. โ€œI thought I would meet some people, probably get laid. But now itโ€™s more about where my comedy is going to take me.โ€

โ€œI am very proud of him of where heโ€™s at right now, what heโ€™s doing with his life,โ€ said his mother. โ€œI want him to succeed in wherever he wants to be and wherever he sees himself in the comedy world. I want him to reach that goal. I love comedy. I think he has the potential to do that.โ€

Barajas said the open mic comics are like rookies on a football team, trying to make the cut and join the roster.

โ€œThere are 16 to 18 comedians and one of us is going to make it, and Josiah is going to be that one,โ€ he said. โ€œHeโ€™s one of the guys who I know is going to do big things outside of Tucson.โ€


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Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com or 573-4642.