(UPDATE: I’ve actually now been in touch with Jesse, and he’s been clean and sober for five years now. He’s also working on a new project that should go live in August, so we’ll update with details close to the date.)

If you’ll recall, back in 1998 MTV ran a “Wanna Be a VJ” contest, picking an unknown lucky young person to be the co-host of Total Request Live for an entire year. In what has now come to be known as the “Sanjaya effect,” audiences voted for Jesse Camp, a 19-year-old homeless kid with some kind of mental illness and/or drug problem, over finalist Dave Holmes.

No one has heard much from Jesse Camp over the past fifteen years, but last night he turned up at a “Free The Nipple” fundraiser hosted By Russell Simmons, and … Yeah. He’s 34, you guys.

I did some wiki research to find what he’s been up to since 1999, and his resume includes working at a Los Angeles feed and supply store in 2006, making telemarketing calls for a non-profit liberal organization in 2008, and being filmed by TMZ ordering eight-balls from a drug dealer outside of the TRL wrap party. Sounds about right.

Don’t do drugs, kids. Drugs are bad. (Except marijuana, weed is still fine.)

(Via Too Fab)