---

Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Add booze to the old hippy slogan and that pretty much summarizes Jesse T.´s life before he got sober.

Currently, he´s doing community service for a DUI conviction. "DUI," he hastens to point out, includes any mind-altering substance, not just alcohol. He´s been clean and sober since Dec. 12, 2000, but he recently had an MRI in which he was given a drug to control his claustrophobia.

"I thought I was okay, but as I was driving home from the hospital, a trooper stopped me. I was convicted of reckless endangerment and ordered to perform community service. The community service is what got me here to Intergroup. I´m doing cleanup and answering the phones."

Jesse, a survivor of the hard-living rock and roll culture of the ´60s and ´70s, was living in his van until a couple of weeks ago, when he caught on as an apartment manager and moved into one of the units.

Professionally, he is now fulfilling a dream of many years, writing and performing his own sacred music. But not just any sacred music. "Sacred yoga music, Hindu. I´ve toured with a band all over America doing sacred music. Nothing western. I lived in a beautiful sacred community in Encinatas (near San Diego) for three years before coming back here."

Sacred music is a major switch for Jesse. During his drinking and drugging days, Jesse worked his way into a job supporting the era´s major rock musicians. "These were the superstars. My dream was to join ´em, but the best I could do was a job supporting them. Whatever they needed-food, dressing rooms-I supplied. Crosby Stills and Nash, the Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Eric Clapton."

He blew it all doing a job for Clapton. The band was in Seattle rehearsing an album. " I´m with the rehearsal crew. The first day, I got drunk and got in a fight with the bass player. The next day, I showed up for work and the guy said I couldn´t come in. I didn´t remember what had happened."

Things were never easy for Jesse, and he didn´t bring it all on himself. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of a navy man, he was raised for awhile by his grandparents in Cleveland after booze and mental illness blew his family apart.

"I never knew my mom, never saw her between the ages of five and 40. My grandparents raised me and my three sisters ´til I was 12, when they said they couldn´t handle the situation anymore. I moved in with my oldest sister, who was getting married, I stayed with my dad a little while, but that didn´t work, so I came back to my sister´s, and that´s how I got to this area. She moved to Bremerton when I was 14."

Jesse enrolled at West High School there, where "I was heavy into crystal meth, shooting meth, taking acid. I tried to kill myself when I jumped from a two-story building and fractured my skull. I´d been having panic attacks since I was 12. When I was 15, I had a breakdown. The doctor gave me tranquilizers to go with the drugs and booze. I thought I was in hell."

Was that a turning point in his life?

"God, there are so many turning points, but I guess that was one of them. I moved to Seattle when I got out of the hospital, looking for some peace in my life. I was still panicky. At night, I was terrorized I would be abandoned. Our mother used to take us visiting and sometimes would lose us."

Jesse began thinking about suicide again. Then the Higher Power must have intervened. Five months after jumping from that second story window, he discovered the Church in Seattle. They invited him to come to a service, where he discovered "energy you could cut with a knife. I ended up with a reborn experience. Peace and comfort came to me almost instantly. Those people were beautiful-no ministers, called each other brother and sister. They saved my life."

He lived with one of the families. He had abandoned his Catholic faith when he was 13, . but he continued to pray for his family´s recovery and reunification. Unfortunately, it never happened.

Jesse was clean and sober and going to school in the six years he lived with church members. He married, had a son and helped found a branch in Indianapolis before returning to Seattle. But at 26, he blew it all. He went back to his old life, abandoned his wife and son and hit the road. The latter, he said, was prompted by an unpaid cocaine debt.

He wandered down to New Orleans, then to Atlanta, where he worked for a record production company until he threatened the owner and was fired. "When I got drunk, I was not a very sweet drunk," he explained. He made his way back to Seattle, where he said "I started getting a criminal record."

Court-ordered to A.A., he joined the Fremont Fellowship in 1980 and spent the next 20 years trying to find permanent sobriety. A hustler all the way, he formed a support company for rock bands that lasted two weeks, ran a jewelry store in New Orleans, managed the 915 E. Pine restaurant, owned an antique store and started what he calls a "hair shop" in Seattle. Nothing lasted. "There were several lapses and treatment periods."

Jesse had his last drink in 1995, but he wasn´t able to kick the heroin habit until 2000. That´s why he calls Dec. 12, 2000 his sobriety date.

Now 61, Jesse is following his lifetime dream of writing and performing his own music. "I´m a Musical Minister," he said, performing here and in California.

Meanwhile, he´s going to A.A. meetings faithfully and has reconciled with his son and ex-wife. He´s also enjoying his three grandchildren. It looks like he´s turned the corner to stay.

Interviewing and writing by Dick S.