09-17-2023 GAR - Flipbook - Page 19
A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Sunday, September 17, 2023
“Due to my success at a young
age, I had little accountability with
my lifestyle,” Novak shares. “Most
people have a boss that they report
to who oversees them. My boss was
my skateboard team leader in Santa
Barbara, California, so my reporting
in involved me skating to the local
7-11, pumping three dollars’ worth of
quarters into a pay phone, and telling
him what tricks I was working on. So,
people believed I had my life figured
out.”
He shares that his father ran with
the Hell’s Angels, and as a child, he
would take Novak to various strip
joints so that he could conduct his
drug-dealing business in the back.
“He would sit me on a bar stool, and
the pretty girls dancing would pour a
shot of ginger ale in a glass for me.
I would shoot it back, and my father
would applaud, and the girls would
give me a hug,” he says.
“My life has been a series of events
that has allowed me to recognize
that life is lived forward and learned
backwards. Looking back, what I
know now is that I was genetically
predisposed for addiction. My father
was an addict, and his father was
an addict. My mother is a nuclear
physicist, and my brother is an
attorney who practices pensions and
benefits in the White House. My father
never held a job a day in his life. The
one thing he taught me was if or when
I go to prison how to conduct myself.”
Novak says that at an early age, he
started stealing marijuana from his
father and began drinking.
“I was not looking to escape reality
because I loved my reality. What
skateboarding did for me at a younger
age, drugs and alcohol did for me as
an adult. When I was a skateboarding
star and you’d put me in a room of
models, I was convinced that they
all wanted to marry me. Drugs and
alcohol would produce that same
delusional reality later in life,” says
Novak, who became addicted to
heroin as a teenager.
Eventually, he began using at a
higher rate and ended up in various
Baltimore emergency rooms –
including Mercy Hospital where his
mother served on the board – after
overdosing.
“My ‘family reunions’ would look
like this: on a good day, I would go
down to Lexington Market, buy 80
milligrams of methadone and five
Xanax bars, which was a recipe for
a guaranteed overdose. Then they
would take me to Mercy Hospital,
and they would wheel me in and say,
‘Pat’s son is back.’ Let’s call up to the
third floor in the nuclear medicine
department and let her know that her
son is back. That was a family reunion
for me.”
He was eventually fired from the
Powell-Peralta skateboarding team.
“Skateboarding for me was the true
love that got away. I could have
chosen a path in skateboarding but
instead decided to choose a path with
heroin. Skateboarding was the thing
that could have taken me places, and
I willingly gave it all away to pursue
heroin,” Novak says, the pain still
evident in his ocean blue eyes.
His best friend Bam Margera, a
fellow skateboarder who starred in
movies with Novak, offered help
and allowed Novak to move into his
palatial house in West Chester.
“I was given the keys to a castle
in terms of Bam’s house. I was a
household name thanks to MTV’s
19
Viva La Bam, and I was in SAG
(Screen Actors Guild), but I knew
that I was going to burn it all down
because all I could do was obsess
about getting back to Baltimore to get
more heroin. Eventually, Bam kicked
me out of his house, and I ended up
in a sober living house in Baltimore.
He gave me one more chance, and we
were all supposed to go to Australia
for the show. Instead, I got high the
night before, and he kicked me out for
the last time.”
Getting Clean and Helping Others
Many people – including me –
wonder what made the 13th attempt
at sobriety the lucky one for Novak?
“Eventually I had a spiritual
experience, which for me means a
psychic change. For me, that means
saying, ‘I, Brandon Novak, today no
longer look at things the same way
as when I was using or newly sober.’
I learned that it had to come from a
power greater than myself,” he says.
Novak notes that addicts routinely
will realize that they need help but
then by the next day, they will have
convinced themselves that they have
everything under control.
“The problem with addiction is that
you can reach that point, but then you
come across $10 and you buy a bag of
heroin because you convince yourself
it was an overreaction. You tell
yourself, ‘Tomorrow will be different,’
and you believe it with all your heart.
And then you wake up the next day
and repeat yesterday’s actions. For
me, it was like being caught up in
‘Groundhog’s Day’ for 22 [expletive]
years.”
Since Novak found sobriety, he has
dedicated his life to helping other
addicts find the path to recovery.
More than two years ago, he founded
Novak’s House, in Wilmington,
Delaware, with George Evagelou
whom he met in treatment. What
started as one sober house with 10
beds has grown to six houses with 65
beds for men transitioning from an
inpatient setting back into society.
“The problem is that once someone
finishes treatment, they have a hard
time completing the continuum of
