In this episode of Infinite Loops, we sit down with author Jonathan Tepper to discuss his extraordinary childhood.
In 1985, when Jonathan was seven, his missionary parents moved the family to San Blas — then the heroin capital of Europe — to start a drug rehabilitation center. Jonathan and his brothers grew up alongside former bank robbers, prison survivors, and people living through the AIDS epidemic. These recovering addicts became like older siblings to them. What began with one man in a small apartment grew into a global movement operating in 20 countries.
Jonathan's memoir, Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction, is out now and published in the US by Infinite Books and in the UK by Little, Brown Book Group.
Buy Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Addiction: https://www.infinitebooks.com/books/products/shooting-up
Read the first chapter for free: https://infiniteloops.substack.com/p/give-them-to-anyone-who-looks-like
Learn more about Jonathan here: https://jonathan-tepper.com/
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Growing Up in Europe’s Heroin Capital
07:15 Bringing Addicts Home at Seven Years Old
13:30 The AIDS Epidemic in 1985
20:45 From One Addict to a Global Rehab Movement
27:40 Losing His Brother Timothy
36:00 Writing Honestly and the “Bullshit Detector”
43:15 Publishers Aren’t Angel Investors
50:30 What Rehab Taught Him About Business and Investing
58:45 The Problem With Binary Thinking
1:08:30 Living by the Golden Rule
