During a conversation over lunch, Hansen spoke openly about having been to hell and back. And as in his memoir, American Junkie (published in 2010 and reissued in 2017), he doesn’t romanticize or moralize about this journey or indulge in self-pity about what he has been through.

In a soft voice, Hansen spoke thoughtfully about writing the blisteringly honest memoir, which has been adapted by Book-It Repertory Theatre in a new stage version.

“Once I decided to write the book it almost became an investigation,” said the Edmonds native. “I was curious why I had chosen to self-destruct myself. I didn’t fit the story of junkies you often hear about as victims of child abuse and other traumas. But I always had this vague sense I was different from other people in a deep way.”

It wasn’t until after his fisherman father perished in an Alaska boating accident that Hansen discovered he was adopted. Later he learned his biological father was a prominent Seattle artist named Jack Stangle.

“It amazed me how much I turned out like him,” said Hansen, who from childhood displayed a talent for making visual art. “He was a self-destructive, alcoholic painter, and did a lot of the same crazy things I did.”

Hansen’s own substance abuse began with alcohol, and continued on to an escalating dependence on heroin while he played in various underground Seattle rock bands. “Everybody who takes it at first thinks, it’s not going to happen to me,” he noted wryly. “I’m not going to get strung out. I can quit when I want to. But paradoxically heroin makes you feel more alive. I’d walk around Capitol Hill with this great sense of wonder.”

To support his habit, Hansen sold drugs. And in the 1990s, during the “grunge” era, there was plenty of demand here for his product. The book details his experiences as a dealer peddling heroin to strippers and Seattle musicians, including Nirvana band member Kurt Cobain. “I got addicted to the selling, too," Hansen said. "For someone working class like me, to suddenly have thousands of dollars lying around was a big deal.”

Asked how many of the fellow heroin addicts he knew back then have survived, Hansen answered, “A ballpark guess? About half got clean, half died. There’s no in-between.”

American Junkie offers graphic, gritty account of what led up to the pivotal period in 1999 when Hansen hit bottom (“I was in some zombie, half-dead state”). He spent six months at Harborview Medical Center and Bailey-Boushay House being treated for serious physical ailments, as well as his addiction.

Turning the book into a 90-minute theater piece couldn’t have been easy, given that the lead character is laid up in a hospital bed for half the story. But this is the kind of challenge Book-It Co-Artistic Director Jane Jones (who is directing the piece and has co-adapted it with her husband and frequent collaborator, Kevin McKeon) has embraced over the years.

“Tom’s book is part memoir, part horror story,” said Jones. “You just can’t believe the candor with which he was able to recall and reflect on his descent down the rabbit hole [of addiction].”

Ian Bond as Tom Hansen in Book-It's American Junkie. (Photo by Studio 19 Photography)

The adaptation premieres at a time of renewed public alarm over drug abuse. At least 1.7 million Americans are currently dependent on prescription and outlawed opioids (from oxycodone to fentanyl to heroin). And more than 130 people die each day from overdoses.

Just as there was a spate of drug-fueled films and plays during a heroin epidemic in the 1950s, and another in the 1990s (i.e. Drugstore Cowboy, Lenny, Jesus’ Son), the past year has seen new takes on the subject in the movies Beautiful Boy, Six Balloons and Ben is Back, as well as Fire Season, a play by Aurin Squire premiering now at Seattle Public Theater.