Jacob Young has spoken publicly for the first time about a seven-year opioid addiction that began with a routine dental prescription and grew in secret, hidden even from his own wife.
THE General Hospital The 46-year-old actor made the revelation on Imperfectly perfect Podcast tracing the roots of his substance use back to a difficult childhood and describing how addiction eventually took over a significant part of his adult life.
“I spent seven years of my life wasted on opioids, always 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 entered 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.
Other than having his wisdom teeth extracted when he was a teenager, he had never taken opioids before. What followed were years of addiction that he kept entirely to himself.
Young’s history with substances began much earlier, however.
He began smoking marijuana around the age of 14, and it wasn’t until his mid-20s that he gained fame through his roles. All my children, General Hospital And The Bold and the Beautiful brought him into the orbit of New York nightlife, as alcohol and cocaine use entered the picture.
By the time he married, he had largely left them behind. For opioids, it was a different story.
He finally sat his wife down and told her the truth, a conversation he considers a turning point. From there, he sought counseling and medical support to overcome his addiction.
Looking back, Young connects his substance use to a childhood defined by instability.
His parents divorced and he was divided between them in a way that left him unsettled. The family relied on welfare and food stamps, and Young grew up alongside three older siblings in what he described as a humble upbringing.
During his adolescence, he went to live with his father, who felt stable, until his stepmother, who became like a second mother to him, committed suicide.
His relationship with his father subsequently broke down, and a difficult relationship with his mother at the time left him without a reliable parental figure during some of his most formative years.
“I was going through things that I didn’t realize I was ever going to go through, emotionally,” he said, quietly acknowledging how much had been buried, long before the prescriptions began.
