Chloe Chaos and Josh Frederiksen reveal battles from drug addiction to becoming boxing champions

Chloe Chaos and Josh Frederiksen have both faced their fair share of adversity, with the boxers surviving childhood trauma, jail time and drug addictions to find success in the ring.

Chloe Chaos has found both herself and redemption in the ring. Picture: Mat Brown

To this day, Chloe Chaos can remember the feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The moment her trust in the world disappeared, like the floor collapsing beneath her, after learning her best friend had been murdered in 2010.

At just 12 years old, Chaos had to grasp the unimaginable horror that her friend Asia Osborne was killed by her father Raj Osborne, who also murdered her younger siblings Jarius, 10, and Grace, 7, with a shotgun before Osborne took his own life in the north Melbourne suburb of Roxburgh Park.

“I just remember thinking, if someone that close to you and who loves you can do something like that, what can other people do?” Chaos said.

Chloe Chaos (right) with her childhood friend Asia Osborne, who was killed by her father. Picture: Supplied.

“She was shot by her dad, who I thought was really nice, and he also killed her brother and sister.

“I remember it all. It was the day before we went back to school for Year 7, and we got a phone call at home.

“We went straight up the road, me and my friends, there were news cameras and police everywhere. It looked like a movie scene. We just sat across the road watching, and the news was just telling the country this story about my friend.

“She came from New Zealand when she was in grade two, and we were inseparable since then. And then, she was gone.”

At the same time of Chaos’ unravelling following the tragic triple murder in Melbourne, Josh Frederiksen was sitting in a Brisbane jail cell well aware his own life was at a crossroad.

He’d been on the run from police for three months for a string of ice-fuelled violent crimes from Lismore to Ballina to Byron and Brisbane.

“When I was fully entrenched in drugs I had no home, I was awake five to six days at a time, I’d only sleep wherever I happened to be on a couch or bed, and then start again,” Frederiksen said.

“At that time I had no light in me, no soul.”

When the law finally caught up with him, a sense of relief flooded Frederiksen.

“I wanted jail, I knew that was going to come in the back of my mind and that it would be my ticket to get better,” he said.

For Chaos and Frederiksen, the common route to redemption was through boxing.

They occupied different worlds and experiences, but 14 years later, Chaos will fight on a card put together by Frederiksen’s trainer and mentor, Nick Midgley.

“I was a boxing promoter for years, before I went into rehab,” Midgley said.

Josh Frederiksen (right) with his trainer and mentor, Nick Midgley, after winning the ANBF super middleweight boxing title. Picture: Supplied.

“This is the first boxing promotion I’m doing in four years.

“I had 22 years of pretty regular heroin use, amongst other drugs and addictions.

“I had various modalities to get clean, and then I found a framework that worked; balancing my mental, spiritual and physical health. You’ve got to stay connected to yourself and the people around you, I look at spirituality like that.

“As long as those three needs are met, you can heal.”

Midgley set up Hope in Health, an addiction and PTSD rehabilitation facility in northern NSW two years ago and so far they’ve helped 70 people get clean.So he’s setting up another centre on the Gold Coast, and to mark its opening, Midgley is promoting a boxing show there on May 31.

Frederiksen, 33, would have been fighting on the card had he not badly sprained his ankle recently.

“I was very lucky Nick came into my life, we come from similar backgrounds and he had a really good understanding of who I was as a person and what I would have been dealing with,” Frederiksen said.

Josh Frederiksen has turned around a life of crime and drug addiction to become a boxing champion. Picture: Supplied.

“That really allowed me to be myself at the time in the gym, I really connected with him and talked to him about the weird temptations or weird thoughts I had about how I’m going to get through life.

“I can’t praise him enough for helping me make that transition, like an older brother. He’s definitely been a major part of my journey and growth as a person.”

Strangely enough, when the jail cell door clinked shut, it gave Frederiksen a sense of stability he’d craved his entire life.

“I guess when I was younger I was misunderstood, I didn’t get the attention I craved from my father, that caused me to start rebelling against him, my parents, school, started to get into trouble,” Frederiksen said.

“I was smoking weed, drinking alcohol, then I got consumed by harder drugs.

“I was addicted to methamphetamine, ice, for two-and-a-half years, and to feed my habit I was doing crime. I had a string of offences, violent crime against people, and I was on the run.

“When they finally caught me I didn’t even apply for bail. I was really sick of taking drugs, I didn’t have a stable home, and I didn’t want to bring that life of crime to other people who helped house me.

“I had tried to quit drugs a few times and I was irritated that I would always fall back.

“So jail really helped solidify my recovery.

“I’d known a guy that had gone to jail and started boxing, so when I went inside I found an inmate who was doing it and I started hitting pads.

“Quickly, it became my passion and my purpose. I had never had that in my life. When I was younger, I was athletic, but I threw it all away.

“Once I found boxing, I realised I had to commit to it fully. I found that willpower and discipline in jail and I used it to better myself.

“I won’t say it’s easy, especially when you’re coming off drugs. You will hurt, you’ll be knackered, there is no dopamine in your body from the years of abuse.

Boxer Josh Frederiksen is staying focused on his fighting career after overcoming drug addiction. Picture: Supplied.

“It takes a lot of self-belief. You can pray to people that have passed away. You can reach out to a higher power. You can seek the support of friends and family.

“But most of all, you’ve got to commit to yourself, look at the destruction you’re causing internally and externally and make the decision there can never be any more.

“I definitely caused damage to a lot of people.

“I committed to one day at a time. I’m now 12 years drug and alcohol free.”

When Frederiksen was released from jail, he still had a strict four-year parole period and knew one mistake would see him staring at the same four walls.

Instead, he dedicated his life to boxing – training multiple times and day and eating clean – and after some amateur fights turned professional in 2016.

He has claimed the Australian National Boxing Federation super-middleweight title with Midgley by his side, compiled a record of 12-5-2 (10KO) and is now campaigning at light heavyweight division with dreams of becoming a world champion.

Chaos, too, has climbed off life’s canvas to become a champion.

After losing her first professional bout in 2022, she’s gone undefeated in four ensuing fights and on the way collected the Victorian middleweight belt.

From the haze of marijuana smoke to the clarity of the mountain peak, 26-year-old Chaos can look down at her journey with immense pride.

Chloe Chaos in training for her fight on May 31 on the Gold Coast. Photo by Mat Brown.

This couldn’t have even been a glancing thought 14 years ago.

Struggling to cope with her grief after the loss of Asia, the expressive young girl talked openly about the incident at school, but was shut down by teachers who presumably did not want other students to be traumatised.

“The teachers brushed me off, and I wanted to talk about, had to talk about it, that was my coping mechanism,” Chaos said.

“And I knew then that this wasn’t for me.

“I had left school after Year 9.”

Chaos, born Chloe Tarczon, fell into a spiral of partying and smoking marijuana, and even tried harder drugs.

“I shaved my head, everyone thought I was tough, I was just hiding how vulnerable I was.” Chaos said.

“I had punched on since I was little, I did taekwondo from five to when I was 12, I won the Victorian championship nine times.

“Then when I got to high school I didn’t want to do it anymore.

“My dad was a boxer, it is me and my brother and he would always tell me when I was younger that I should have been the boy.

“He had a work accident, and needed a full knee reconstruction. He went from a very active man to someone who wasn’t mobile, and it really affected him.

“It was me looking after him at home, and things just weren’t good.

“Nobody looking at me could have guessed how broken our home was behind closed doors.

“I feel like kids are born into ways of life. You can either repeat the cycle, or change it.”

Chloe Chaos has survived horrific childhood trauma to become a professional boxer. Picture: Supplied.

At first, Chaos began to descend into the environment she saw around her.

“Growing up where I did, we were exposed to a lot of things you shouldn’t see at such a young age,” she said.

“I began smoking weed.

“I did ice, but then I’d go home and I’d study, and I’d see my friends the next weekend and they’d be doing the same thing, doing it again. And I knew that you can dabble in something a little too much and then you lose control of it quickly, so I stopped.

“Marijuana was really my big addiction.

“But I was functional, so I didn’t see it as a problem. I could smoke, go to work, hide it. But deep down, I was a mess.

“As I watched my Dad deteriorate, that’s when my mental health really came into play.”

She walked into Stevie Kelly’s boxing gym in Melbourne aged 17, expecting to fight in between drug sessions.

“I would do the boxing training, then right myself off with smoking,” Chaos said.

“I used to suffer from severe panic attacks and anxiety.

“Stevie told me, ‘You’re not going to fight’.

“Once I understood that if I was going to become a boxer, it required continual training and discipline, I found structure and purpose.

“The thing about boxing is, you can have so many people around you, but when you step into the ring, it’s just you and her.”

Chaos also made the decision to leave home and change her name.

“I haven’t spoken to my dad in years, I didn’t want to live under my last name, I didn’t want any connection with my dad anymore,” she said.

“It was part of the rehabilitation for me.

“As a Tarzcon growing up, I was a lost person.

“I am Chaos. I have tattoos on my face. Not that I am crazy, everything is just chaotic and I have a lot of energy, so I chose Chaos as my surname, and now everyone in boxing knows me as Chloe Chaos.”

Chloe Chaos has turned her life around from drug addiction to become a boxing champion. Photo by Mat Brown.

When Covid struck and Melbourne was locked down, Chaos was forced to train for two years in her garage.

Her partner was based in Perth and eventually she decided to relocate to Western Australia where she now calls home.

Not only is Chaos a professional boxer, but she is also a support worker and juggles that with a coffee van business.

“I need to be busy, the stillness is what gets to me,” Chaos said.

“At the moment I am a support worker for a 14-year-old boy, he is a non-verbal autistic, but he can find joy in the world in so many little things, like staring at cars at a roundabout.

“I can feel like I’ve had a shit day, or a shit life, and then I look at him and think, ‘What the hell am I complaining about?’ There is so much in this world to be grateful for.

“Boxing for me is an outlet, my career is just starting.”

Chaos, like Frederiksen, is now wise enough to know this won’t be smooth sailing.

They’ll get hurt, they’ll be knocked down.

But they both made a decision a while ago. When all seems lost, climb to your feet, put your fists up, and walk towards the fire.

* For more information on the Hope in Health organisation visit hopeinhealth.com.au