James Lowe hadn’t drawn in more than 25 years when he picked up the pencil.

He’d been trying to quit drinking and doing drugs, and his mom had just died. He needed an outlet for his restless, destructive energy.

And so, “A Tenderloin Tale” was born.

Lowe’s first published graphic novel is a semi-autobiographical story about a man living in the grittiest of San Francisco’s neighborhoods while struggling with drug addiction. His interests and life experiences, including his battles with substance abuse and living on the street, have since influenced seven more graphic novels, all of which he sells at a few independent bookstores in the city.

Born in Memphis, Lowe, 58, said he fell in love with San Francisco when his family moved here for a few years in 1965.

“San Francisco has an aura; it’s incredibly enticing,” he said. “It gives you the feeling that all you have to do is be yourself.”

After stints in Milwaukee, Chicago and Memphis, Lowe settled in San Francisco in the early 1990s and soon fell into a spiral of addiction. His cocktail of choice: cocaine and alcohol. During one bender, Lowe was living with a friend at the single-room occupancy Golden Eagle Hotel in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, where he would down beers for breakfast.

“He’d say, ‘This is corn flakes. Hops is a form of corn.’ I said ‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’” Lowe recalled. “I wanted to believe that, so I did. It’s just like corn flakes.”

He picked up odd jobs to make ends meet but mostly lived off government assistance. At one point, Lowe spent months living in a tent on the street, which he referred to as “forced camping.”

Lowe didn’t get out from under the grip of addiction until after his mom died in 2010. Shortly before she moved into hospice care in Memphis, she was cleaning out her house when she came across one of Lowe’s old works, a graphic novel he created in 1985 called “Baby Face Nelson.” Lowe’s mom mailed him the story about the Depression-era gangster, along with a note of encouragement.

“She said some of the most remarkable words of praise that I’ve gotten when it came to my work,” Lowe said. “She’s like, ‘This is a wonderful story. You can really make something happen with this.’”

Losing his mom made Lowe reflect on his drug use. He had no money left. He was constantly paranoid. And he questioned whether he even really enjoyed it anymore.

“At some point you have to ask yourself, ‘What the hell am I doing?’” he said. “That’s what got me to come out of the rain, so to speak. Being rained on by drug abuse and addiction.”

As a child, Lowe enjoyed drawing and artwork, but he abandoned the hobbies as a young adult because he didn’t have much support for nurturing his gift. Encouraged by his mom’s dying words and with time to spare, Lowe picked up the hobby again and spent six months crafting “A Tenderloin Tale,” infusing tidbits of his own life experiences into the story.

Since then, he has written and drawn seven more graphic novels, on topics from government conspiracies to biographies of famous celebrities. The novels are on sale at Bound Together Books, City Lights and Dog Eared Books, all in San Francisco.

“Serial Girl,” his most recent work, published in 2018, concerns a girl who becomes a serial killer after she’s assaulted as a child. “The Lucifer Effect,” another title, focuses on a secret government weapon that uses virtual reality to fight terrorism.

Lowe writes his novels in his one-bedroom apartment, where posters of Marilyn Monroe, Ray Charles and Uncle Sam adorn the walls. Dozens of DVDs and VHS tapes are stacked in front of his television. When he gets an idea, Lowe first writes out profiles for each character in the novel: “where they were born, how old they are, what they do for a living, their habits, all kinds of things like that,” he said. “It makes me happy when I do it, ’cause I get to tap into my creative juices.”

After spending hours on the profiles, Lowe takes a few months to complete a graphic novel, getting inspiration from movies and other topics of interest. Right now, he’s working on a story about homelessness.

Lowe keeps the original copies of each of his published works in a black portfolio, which spills out pages filled with black-and-white panel drawings. He had no intention of formally publishing “A Tenderloin Tale,” but after getting positive feedback from his friends, he decided to print multiple copies and sell them.

Nine years later, his graphic novels remain a way for him to focus his creative energy, as well as keep up a connection with his mom.

“I’m not looking to get rich or famous from it,” Lowe said. “I know she’s watching. I know she knows.”

Ashley McBride is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ashley.mcbride@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ashleynmcb