The joke goes something like this:
โI used to be homeless. I lived in a wash near the Santa Cruz River. I know what youโre thinking: Crack addict. It was heroin.โ
Thatโs how Tucson comedian Josiah Osego introduced himself at the inaugural Arizonaโs Funniest Comedian contest at Laffs Comedy Caffe early last year.
He wasnโt 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
Osegoโs 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 friendโs uncleโs house near Redington Pass. The aunt and uncle were strict, but all bets were off when they werenโt there.
โI got drunk for the first time,โ Osego recalled. โIf the party wasnโt there it was at another girlโs house. ... Iโm like โThis is where itโs happening. This is cool.โโ
He was 18 and had barely graduated from a Tucson charter school โ โMy GPA was 1.8; it wasnโt 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.
โI remember that I just felt so chill,โ he said. โThis was something new that felt awesome. Itโs 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.
โI hit it and I felt like the world,โ he said. โFor me it was like your first morning cigarette that gets you lightheaded. But afterward comes this wavy feeling.โ
Osego didnโt 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 sonโs 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 sonโs landlord. The money she had been giving Osego to pay rent wasnโt 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.
โHe just looked horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible,โ she said.
It was not the first time she had witnessed her sonโs drug addiction. But it would be the last.
โI 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. โWhen that trust wasnโt there anymore, I had to pull away. I couldnโt 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.
โI was so glad he didnโt 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.
โOne 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 didnโt 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 counselorโs office that day, Walker looked at her son and delivered a blow that served as his epiphany: โI donโt know who you are,โ she told him.
โI really didnโt know him,โ Walker said. โHe 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 didnโt know him any more. And that really pierced his heart.โ
โI had bottled up so much I had fatigued myself,โ Osego said. โThat 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: โYou should do open mic at Laffs. Youโre pretty funny,โ Osego recalled.
Osego called Laffโs talent booker Gary Hood to reserve his spot on that weekโs 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 itโs like to work in a kitchen with the motley crew from Frog & Firkin.
โThey 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.
โIt was very raw,โ said Hood, a longtime professional standup who mentors young comedians at Laffs. โHe had a lot of thoughts and a lot of things he wanted to do all at once, but he didnโt 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 heโs watched other comics in action, from his fellow Laffs open-micโers 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 arenโt too stark or scary. He also finds funny in everyday life.
He squeezes in writing sessions between school โ heโs 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.
โI think heโs funny and he has this morbid, dark sense of humor. It starts off very depressing but somehow everybodyโs laughing at the end,โ Barajas said. โHe takes the audience on this journey thatโs very truthful.โ
Osego has taken his comedy from the one-liner โI 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.
โItโs 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. โAside from that, he is one of the only African-American comedians (in Tucson) that do standup regularly. Heโs like a guy thatโs not afraid to tell the black jokes or tell the โI 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 Arizonaโs Funniest Comedian contest. Heโs also become a regular at the Wednesday night open mic at Mr. Headโs 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 Centralโs โThe Man Showโ who lives in Bisbee.
This weekend, Osego will open for two national touring comics headlining Laffs.
โI never planned on getting this far,โ he said, reflecting on a journey he never could have imagined when he was using heroin. โI thought I would meet some people, probably get laid. But now itโs more about where my comedy is going to take me.โ
โI am very proud of him of where heโs at right now, what heโs doing with his life,โ said his mother. โI 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.
โThere 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. โHeโs one of the guys who I know is going to do big things outside of Tucson.โ