Jewel Opens Up About Teenage Addiction That Would Have Landed Her in ‘Jail or Dead’

Singer Jewel has been open about her difficult childhood with an abusive father and an absent mother. Despite efforts to break the cycle, however, Jewel, 52, ended up homeless with an addiction of her own.

“I grew up in Alaska which was incredible… My parents were musicians and I sang with them in hotels for tourists,” she shared during her June 16 appearance on the No Magic Pill podcast. “When I was about eight, my parents got divorced. My mom left. My dad took over raising us… He started becoming physically abusive and my whole world really turned upside down.”

After leaving home at 15, the “Standing Still” artist graduated high school and moved to San Diego to take care of her ill mother.

“I made a promise really young not to do drugs or drink. I think just because I had such an extreme front row seat to seeing what it did,” she explained. “It didn’t look glamorous, you know, it didn’t look sexy.”

The teenager lost her job and her apartment after her boss made an unwanted pass at her, leaving Jewel to live in her car as her mother moved back to Alaska.

“My panic attacks were getting worse. My agoraphobia was getting worse. I didn’t have food. I didn’t have water. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have gas for the car,” she recalled. “I started shoplifting. It started with carrots, which apparently are the gateway vegetable.”

She went on to say that shoplifting became “a real addiction.”

“It was compulsive. I couldn’t control it,” Jewel said, explaining that seeing her reflection while stealing a dress was her turning point. “I was a statistic… I’m a homeless kid that is shoplifting and I’m going to end up in jail or dead if this keeps going.”

The mom to son Kase, 14, was able to turn her life around and became a Grammy Award-nominated artist by the end of the 1990s.