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Patricia Julia Brose was born on May 10, 1949, in New York City, the daughter of Laura and Bill Ballinger, a writer of mystery stories.
At age 12, Brose was placed in a foster home because of her mother’s barbiturate addiction.
She went to San Marcos Senior High high school in Santa Barbara, and Pepperdine University college in LA.
Julia began snorting cocaine at 18 while she was dancing at the famous Whiskey a Go Go in Los Angeles. It was there she met John Densmore, in 1967. He recalls: "This girl had LRP: Long Range Potential. Her name was Julia Brose, and her father ... was remarried to a bubbly blonde who su
Patricia Julia Brose was born on May 10, 1949, in New York City, the daughter of Laura and Bill Ballinger, a writer of mystery stories.
At age 12, Brose was placed in a foster home because of her mother’s barbiturate addiction.
She went to San Marcos Senior High high school in Santa Barbara, and Pepperdine University college in LA.
Julia began snorting cocaine at 18 while she was dancing at the famous Whiskey a Go Go in Los Angeles. It was there she met John Densmore, in 1967. He recalls: "This girl had LRP: Long Range Potential. Her name was Julia Brose, and her father ... was remarried to a bubbly blonde who supposedy looked like Julia's real mother. Apparently the real mother drank quite a bit... Julia and I consummated our brand-new relationship that night. There were no male blue balls in the sixties!"
In 1968 she was working in the A & R department of Liberty Records
By 1969 Julia got pregnant and John didn't know what to do, he recalls: "...on the way back to LA, Julia hit me with the news she was pregnant! Everything was great with us, and now she was pregnant! I didn't want to be a husband yet, let alone a father! I could tell by the look in Julia's eyes that she was hoping I'd say "Let's have it". I couldn't believe it – I was numb. I had asked now and then if Julia was using any kind of birth control, but in 1969, the assumption was that it was the girl's responsability, and we had little dialogue on the subject. Now we had a major problem. I was loaded with so much shame about sex, being raised a Catholic, I didn't inquire how it happened. Was it an accident? I didn't know. But I knew I was incensed. I didn't want a kid and I could tell she did." They didn't know what to do, and in the end John Densmore found a doctor and Julia agreed.
They went to Mexico where abortions could be done and it was a place where The Doors could play as well. The doctor and the nurse of the hospital were very nice, and they came in the room where abortions were practised. "There was one of those tables with the stirrups at the end to hold up the patient's legs. Julia must have noticed them, 'cause she started crying. Before we came to Mexico she'd agreed it was the best thing to do. Her tears were like daggers in my heart".
Some months later, John asked Julia to marry, and she agreed. In October 1970 they exchanged rings in hte Pacific Palidases. Robby and Lynn Krieger where the best man and bridesmaid. Jim Morrison sang “Bridal Chorus" at their wedding, but the marriage was short lived.
Her mother died of an overdose in 1972 aged 47.
After five years of marriage Negron left Densmore for Berry Oakley, the bassist for the Allman Brothers. When she was six months pregnant he died in a motorcycle accident on November 1972.
As a single mother in ther 20s, she turned to heroin to cope with the loss, and in 1976 married Chuck Negron, the singer for Three Dog Night. They both developed major heroin addictions. He blew through millions of dollars chasing the highs and she may have been worse. "When Chuck is asked if he ever knew anyone worse than him, he usually says me," admits Julia, a recovering drug addict. "But we had a great marriage because every drug we got was split 50-50." She overdosed twice in her life, waking up in a hospital bed feeling like she’d been run over by a fleet of trucks. She lived.
By 1977, the year Julia Brose and Chuck Negron had their son Charles, Negron devoted his life to being a junkie. She herself snorted heroin in the delivery room before Charle's birth, according to Mother Jones magazine, they both did it. To pay for his habits, Chuck eventually sold everything he owned, including all of his gold albums. "Bit by bit, everything eroded," says Julia. "We took loans against the house, and eventually our telephone and power lines were turned off." They were married 12 years.
Julia lost her sister Connie to an overdose in 1984, which prompted her to sober up and leave her husband in 1985, and she checked herself at Cedars hospital. Then she went to school and worked as a drug counselor for decades.
Julia is certified as an Addiction Specialist since 1990, supervising and training residential addiction treatment staff.
By the mid-2000s, she had become a prominent advocate of “harm reduction,” which emphasizes making illicit drug use safer so users may seek treatment.
On 2013 her youngest son was in life support because of an overdose, but luckily he went in recovery. As for 2013, she was a co-founder of “Moms United to end the War on Drugs” and a Board Member of “A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing”) and lived in Sarasota, FL.
On 2015 she moved to Venice, Los Angeles, where she is devoted to her advocacy work in what’s known as “harm reduction.’’
On July 2017, her son’s fiancé overdosed, leaving an 8-year-old without a mother.
In 2017 she made headlines when she took issue with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio at a town hall meeting in Manatee County on the opioid epidemic. She is an advocate for making illegal drug use safe in hopes that users will seek treatment. She runs the “Suncoast Harm Reduction Project,” which is a small group of volunteers who pass out Naloxone to addicts to counterattack opioid overdoses. Manatee County has the highest overdose rate in Florida. In 2014, according to Mother Jones magazine, there were 644 community programs in the nation that distributed free Naloxone and Florida had only one person doing it: Brose.
Julia finds herself driving to Manatee County too much as part of her group and says it is “ground zero’’ for drug overdoses, even worse than Los Angeles, where she used to live.
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