Lifestyle

'BREAKING THE CYCLE'

‘90s Music Legend Says Spiraling Shoplifting Addiction Nearly Destroyed Her

The singer said her “whole world really turned upside down” after her parents divorced.

Tamilore OshikanluContributor

PublishedJun 24, 2026, 4:03 PM EDT

UpdatedJun 24, 2026, 4:07 PM EDT

Updated Jun 24, 2026, 4:07 PM EDTPublished Jun 24, 2026, 4:03 PM EDT

Comments

One of the top musicians of the 1990s has revealed how her traumatic childhood spiraled into a shoplifting addiction years before she became a Grammy-nominated star.

Singer-songwriter Jewel Kilcher, typically referred to mononymously as Jewel, opened up last Tuesday in an episode of the No Magic Pill podcast about her journey from a homeless teenager stealing food in San Diego to a chart-topping artist determined to break the cycle of addiction that surrounded her growing up.

Kilcher, 52, said she was raised in a saddle barn in Alaska before her parents divorced when she was eight and her mother left. She was then raised mostly by her father, who she said became “physically abusive” and drank heavily.

“My whole world really turned upside down,” she said of the turbulent period in her life.

The “You Were Meant for Me” singer said she spent much of her childhood performing with her parents in bars, where she watched adults try to numb themselves in destructive ways.

“When I looked at all of these people in bars, I saw that everybody was trying to cover their pain,” Kilcher said. “And there were different ways to cover pain.”

Witnessing the toll addiction took on the adults around her convinced Kilcher to swear off drugs and alcohol at an early age.

“I think just cuz I had such an extreme front row seat to see what it did,” she said. “It didn’t look glamorous.”

But Kilcher said her own unhealthy coping mechanism emerged after she moved out at 15 and ended up living alone in her car in San Diego.

“My panic attacks were getting worse. My agoraphobia was getting worse,” she said. “I didn’t have food. I didn’t have water. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have gas for the car.”

Kilcher said her descent into shoplifting began with food as she struggled to get by.

“It started with carrots, which apparently are the gateway vegetable,” Kilcher quipped, explaining that she was trying to learn about “food as medicine” while dealing with kidney problems.

Play Video

But what began as a survival tactic slowly turned into something she said she could no longer control.

“It kind of just evolved into stealing things that weren’t food and things that I didn’t need,” she said. “Stealing for me really became a real addiction. It was compulsive. I couldn’t control it.”

Kilcher said one humiliating moment in a dressing room finally jolted her awake.

The singer, who also wrote about the incident in her memoir, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, recalled trying to shove a white dress she did not need down her pants.

Then she caught a glimpse of herself. “I saw my reflection in the mirror, and I was a statistic,” she said.

Kilcher said the moment forced her to confront the exact future she had been trying to avoid.

“I’m a homeless kid that is shoplifting, and I’m going to end up in jail or dead, you know, if this keeps going.”

The realization became a turning point for the singer, who would eventually grow to become a four-time Grammy nominee. Kilcher said she began retraining her mind by focusing on small, physical actions, including writing down everything she did with her hands over a two-week period.

“I haven’t had a panic attack in two weeks,” the singer remembered realizing.

“What I stumbled on was being radically present,” she said. “Journaling about my hands all day … I literally would watch my hands open a door. I’d watch my hands not shake a hand, or whatever it was.”

The practice, she said, helped her interrupt the panic and compulsive behavior that had begun to define her life.

Tamilore OshikanluContributor

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast.