Jacob Young has spoken publicly for the first time about a seven-year opioid addiction that began with a routine dental prescription and escalated in secret, hidden even from his own wife.
He general hospital The actor, 46, made the revelation in the Imperfectly perfect Podcast, which traces the roots of his substance use to a difficult childhood and describes how addiction eventually took over a significant part of his adult life.
“I spent seven years of my life wasted on opioids, still trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but I didn’t know,” he said.
“I just needed to numb myself… It was the only thing that made me feel normal.”
Opioids came into his life in an unexpected way.
After he and his wife Christen Steward bought a house and moved in together, Young underwent dental surgery and was prescribed Vicodin.
Aside from having his wisdom teeth removed as a teenager, he had never taken opioids before. What followed were years of dependency that he kept entirely to himself.
However, Young’s history with substances had begun much earlier.
He began smoking marijuana around age 14, and it wasn’t until his mid-20s, when the fame of his roles in all my children, general hospital and The bold and the beautiful It brought him into the orbit of New York City nightlife, where alcohol and cocaine use came into the picture.
By the time he married, he had largely left them behind. Opioids were a different story.
He finally sat his wife down and told her the truth, a conversation he considers the turning point. From there, he sought medical advice and support to overcome his dependency.
Looking back, Young connects his substance use to a childhood defined by instability.
His parents divorced and he was dragged between them in a way that left him unsettled. The family relied on welfare and food stamps, and Young grew up with three older brothers in what he described as a humble upbringing.
In his adolescence he went to live with his father, where he felt stable, until his stepmother, who had become a second mother to him, committed suicide.
His relationship with his father broke down afterwards, and a difficult relationship with his mother at the time left him without a reliable father figure during some of his most formative years.
“I was going through things I didn’t know I was ever going to go through emotionally,” he said, in a quiet acknowledgment of how much he had buried himself, long before the prescriptions began.
