For James Carden, 35, his dark comedy sets in Reno have repeatedly been linked to heroin. Talking about heroin is part of his routine, and using was part of his “coping mechanism” until very recently. Now he’s resolute in turning the corner, and being serious about warning others and the community of disturbing trends, including more and more deadly fentanyl blended into the highly addictive drug.
Carden started using heroin as a teenager. “I would just kind of, you know, go through life, like kind of coasting, like I would have some accomplishments and then relapse and like hit rock bottom again.”
He had gotten clean for a while, but as he started to get success in his comedy career out west from his previous base in Montana, he got really nervous and relapsed.
In Reno, where he moved several years ago, he used to coordinate and host open mic nights, including at the Dead Ringer Analog Bar where he also bartended.
“I’ve just been pretty much all around here,” he told Our Town Reno during a recent interview. “It's really hard to get into like the Laugh Factory and stuff like that, but that would be an ultimate goal of mine to do that.”
But his heroin use, while he used it for material, ultimately got him fired and living on the streets, even before he was unemployed. Getting displaced and higher rents also led to his downward spiral.
“I was just floating around it. I was kind of sleeping at my job, you know, sleeping on the couches there, being a problem, sleeping in people's cars or like RVs and stuff. When I first moved here, I moved to Center Street and then they tore down my house.”
In Reno, he explained it’s also harder and harder to buy heroin which isn’t mixed in with fentanyl, making it much more dangerous. Fentanyl infused product, he explained, is easier and cheaper to come by, but with huge risks.
“Generally a lot of people smoke heroin cause you can't die from smoking. I don't wanna say you can't, but generally, like that's not something that you have to be worried about when you're smoking, you know, you're probably more likely to die in the car crash to go get it before smoking it. But now like with fentanyl, they take fentanyl and then they'll take whatever you would cut with heroin, and so it seems like heroin, but it's not, it's very nefarious and more addicting and scary. I know a couple dealers that will tell you if it's fentanyl or not fentanyl in the beginning, they would do that. And now it's just, everybody's being very sneaky. They're not being honest with the drugs. It's really starting to kill people and like, you can die from it.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid also used for pain treatment. Most fentanyl overdoses are believed to be from illegally made fentanyl. According to local law enforcement officials, and statistics they’ve recently released, more than 200 people died of drug overdoses in northern Nevada last year, with over 50 of them due to fentanyl.
To save himself, Carden says he recently went through detox at Well Care. He says he realized his path was getting out of control. “I started to just really lose everybody in my life and opportunities. I went from like, just like smoking to starting to inject, especially the fentanyl stuff. Like when you do that, you're gonna be dead. And I think, it just started to scare the people around me. I think if you're gonna have detox, you need to go somewhere like Well Care where you see how dark it is and what your future will hold if you continue.”
Along with being off heroin, his comedy career is now on the rebound, with an appearance coming up January 27th at Joe Comedy at the Polo Lounge. He’s off the streets, living with friends. “They've been helping me out because they can see the change that I'm making, as long as I'm just keeping my end of the bargain. I'm very lucky to have that.”
He would also like to give back and help make Reno’s comedy scene become more inclusive. “A lot of people are kind of nervous about comedy and we need to just be like, hey, this is fun. And like, this would be a fun place to go. I would like to see, more of everybody, right, all demographics and content wise, I've been to shows where it's very misogynistic and I can see why women are kind of like, ‘oh, this sucks, this is uncomfortable.’”
He likes Reno but wouldn’t mind people being more supportive of each other rather than so competitive and negative. “Real friends, here, you can count 'em on one hand. People really need to just stop talking behind people’s backs and just really be supportive. I think everybody in Reno has an addiction or we wouldn't still be here. I mean, it's a 24-hour gambling town and I think we project a lot of our insecurities onto other people that we feel like are lower than us and that we always need somebody to kind of be better than, and I think we need to just realize we're all one.”