Hitting the Heroin and Hiding From Hitmen - Adam Johnson's Story (Part 1)

Adam is the son of former Muscogee County Sherriff Ralph Johnson.  Adam's family was hit with much hardship throughout his childhood, and Adam did not deal with it well.  As a teenager heard his dad talk about undercover work and drug gang life, which held a strong allure for Adam, so strong in fact that he dove headfirst into that world.  Adam shares his story, and it is intense, including a period of time when he had to get far away from Columbus because a hit had been taken out on his life.  I hope you enjoy Part 1 of Adam's story!

Transcript

Adam: 0:00

I would rob dope dealers and I would get so brazen that I would not even cover my face. Like I, I would tell people, I want'em to know who got'em, and so I did one and Columbus Police Department got in touch with my father, and they were like, we need to talk to your son. And of course he called me and said, you need to meet with these detectives. They want to talk to you. And I was at the time, so in the middle of the whole life that I was like, I can't meet them in po. I could die for that. And eventually I met them at Target on Bradley Park. And they said that a guy had turned hisself into jail in fear for his life because he knew that I had a hit out on me. And'cause of my father, he knew like that these guys were trying to kill me. The police officers described it as a crack cocaine hit. Whoever, like someone had it hit out on you. Yeah. So they were offering like people that were addicted to crack or whatever, whoever kills me first or get$50 worth crack or something. And they do that, they're in their addiction. So they're hitman for hire just for a little bit of crack. Just who, yeah.

Phil Shuler: 1:08

HellO, and welcome to Renew, Restore, Rejoice, the Safe House Ministries podcast, where we share stories of the power of God to change lives through Safe House Ministries. Safe House Ministries is based out of Columbus, Georgia, and we are a ministry that exists to love and serve people who have been affected by addiction, homelessness, and incarceration. I'm your host, Phil Shuler, the Director of Development for Safe House Ministries here in Columbus, Georgia. Safe House serves over 1, 100 people each month as they transition back into our community. Safe House provides an abundance of services including 213 beds for homeless individuals and families, case management for obtaining job skills and long term employment. Over 300 hot meals every day, free clothing, and so much more. One of the most incredible services that Safe House provides is our free 9 12 month intensive outpatient substance abuse program, which is state licensed, CARF accredited, and has no wait list. Almost 100 percent of individuals staying in our shelters who follow our three phase program become fully employed within a few months. And 68 percent of individuals who stay at least one night with us End up finding work and moving into their own home. Thank you for being with us today and listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoy this week's episode.

Phil: 2:20

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Safe House Ministries podcast. Today I have a sharp looking young man in front of me. First time I'd ever met him. Adam Johnson, right? Yes, sir. Okay. And I have heard that he also has a great, just a great story, a great testimony, and the Lord has done some great things and I'm excited to hear Adam, your story and just the things that the Lord has done and I'm excited to have you here. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you. So Adam, just to get started, I would love to ask you if there was one word that would best describe you. What do you think that one word might be?

Adam: 3:02

At this point? Spiritual.

Phil: 3:04

That's good, man. Yeah. What do you mean when

Adam: 3:07

you say

Phil: 3:07

that?

Adam: 3:07

So I don't necessarily follow a church, but I met my Lord Savior Jesus Christ. And so it's like a broad, like the whole, my whole life is spiritual and the way I look at life and the way I look at people is now different. Because of that spiritual awakening,

Phil: 3:28

Wow.

Adam: 3:29

Of, of the profound kind. That's awesome, man. It's

Phil: 3:33

wow. That's good. people who have not yet received Jesus as their savior. They have no understanding. When you say something like that, it's just like they don't get it. It's, It's miraculous. Um, But yeah it really is. That's awesome, man. I

Adam: 3:47

walked away from meeting Jesus. I was him meditation and when I, he came and sat on the bed next to me and I felt him. And when I tell you I know, like I've got life answers. I don't know what they are, but it's given me a peace and

Phil: 4:04

wow. Yeah.

Adam: 4:05

It's not that's good man. Life's not that serious, man. It's just live it,

Phil: 4:09

yeah. That's good. Seems, it seems like the Lord has got you in a really good place right now. I know it wasn't always that way. But share, if you would where life started for you. Like where did you grow up and what was life as a kid like for you in your home? So

Adam: 4:25

this might surprise you, but I grew up in Columbus, Georgia. My grandmother worked for WRBL, the switchboard for 56 years. Really? So you grew up

Phil: 4:34

with your

Adam: 4:35

grandmother? No my dad was Sheriff Ralph Johnson. Really? Yes. And I was raised good. I had a good childhood. My mother got sick when I was in second grade, and stayed in hospital for about three years. Oh, wow. A year here. A year there. Warm Springs St. Joseph's in Atlanta. And at the time my dad was chief Deputy the sheriff that was above him was getting ready to go and he filled the whole role and it was like grooming him to be sheriff. So he had a lot on his plate and he was spending half the time in Atlanta, and then every other weekend he'd come home with us. Wow. So we went and lived with my mother's parents duke and Lois Miller. Duke was higher up at Aflac for marketing. And they hadn't had kids in the home in 40 years or plus, and it was like a white carpet green Island house, and we, I was in second grade, my sister was in fourth grade. We were loved, but I think that, that was the early, now that I'm older, I see that, not that I felt abandoned, but just that loss of childhood. And like talking to my sister last night, she's changed her life and found God, she said, I felt that was a time in our life where we were supposed to be the attention, or like I just, it was impressionable. Like he, yeah. I had to leave sports. I couldn't do the things I was doing because that's what was going on. Yeah. And my dad did his best, you know what I mean? My dad drank a little bit and my grandmother, his mother drank, and I knew that I had a predisposition to this at an early age. Of course, I kinda said I'm not gonna drink alcohol. But then other substances were, it is real cunning. But then, so the allure, and this is what I figured out is that how did you decide to give up?'cause I could have had the world man, I could, my grandparents would've set me up. I could have went and worked for Alac or whatever. I could have been law enforcement. And I think being as a small child, my dad worked Metro Narcotics and the way it looked from the outside, because they portrayed the other side. That was their job. And it was exciting to me. Like him

Phil: 6:47

being on the law enforcement

Adam: 6:49

side. No, the opposite side. Like really? Yeah. They're out here. Trying to portray the guys in the streets and the gangsters and the drug dealers, and it's weird. It was like, it is just some excitement, yeah. And then the culture of that time, Scarface came out and these movies that like, glorified it and then I got a taste of it and it was so much excitement, you know what I mean? So growing up

Phil: 7:15

you saw that from a distance and it seemed exciting and adventurous and

Adam: 7:19

Yeah. Yeah. And, dad would share his stories about working the streets, and I was, it wasn't like, oh man, that's not what I wanna do. It seemed, it was weird. It seemed like enticing, wow. But,

Phil: 7:33

Anyway, so you mean as a so growing up as a teenager, did you start to take a few steps

Adam: 7:38

in that direction? Yeah. We left when my mother got sick, we left Brookstone and went into public schools and, it's a culture shock. You see the, you're sheltered and then all sudden, yeah. Man, this is exciting. And then I, I got in because my sister was older, she had friends and they had boyfriends and I got tied up with some of'em. And they would like, like I don't know how much detail we want to go into, but yeah. Yeah. As much yeah. As, I, the first illicit drug I remember was a guy rubbing cocaine on my teeth as a, as 12, 13 years old. You were hanging out with your sister and her older, her friends? Yeah, her friend had a house. Her friend's mother had a house, and I was friends with her younger brother, so I would stay the night over there and it was like a party house, the mom would be in the room with on back then online dating and stuff, like a OL days, yeah. Not nowadays, but she would be in the room all the time, so we'd have free reign at the house. And I started doing things like burglaries and stuff with these older guys that but it was that little taste, he just, wow. I didn't even get messed up off that cocaine on my teeth, but I thought I did, and it was like, it lit a fire, and you

Phil: 8:50

so that, that allure of what seemed exciting now, you felt like you were in it now. Yeah, and

Adam: 8:56

definitely. And, I threw myself wholeheartedly into it. And I've always been one that was, I'm real hard headed and like whatever happens. And of course it brought a lot of institutions and jails and I, it was not unmanageable at first. It was, the cocaine stuff and then the raves started like the club scene. And that filled that abandonment issue for me of being alone with all these people in this building that are like love, love, and I thought that's what I needed. And still wasn't unmanageable, it was like,

Phil: 9:31

yeah.

Adam: 9:31

Weekends and stuff like that.

Phil: 9:32

So where was your dad at this time? Was he still, was he a part of your life in any

Adam: 9:38

yeah, he was definitely a part of my life. Dad was like so one night my sister and we, my dad would take in our friends that had, didn't have anywhere to go or their parents weren't doing the best. So you,

Phil: 9:49

were you still living with your grandparents at this time or had you

Adam: 9:52

no. I had, my mom was back home and okay, so

Phil: 9:54

now you're back with your mom and dad. Yeah. She was doing

Adam: 9:56

better. She never was able to walk again. She stayed in a wheelchair the remainder of her life. But. She was independent. She could move, she just couldn't walk. And so she had to, my dad was her caregiver. She had nurses that would come during the day. Still turbulent, and yeah. And so I don't know. I don't know what dad's logic was and like, not making me do better in school. And so he just

Phil: 10:19

let you do your thing essentially.

Adam: 10:21

Like

Phil: 10:22

he didn't ever try to crack down or? I don't remember

Adam: 10:23

a lot of repercussions. We had ba but he was drinking, so he had a lot on his plate. 450 employees. A wife that was handicapped. Yeah. When around I understand. And I don't know if they gave us a free pass because of our childhood, if they felt bad or whatever. I know years later he told me, he said, I know what y'all do. I've always known what y'all do. And we were vocal about it throughout my life, but he said, sometimes it's for me, I just don't want to deal with it. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Like, Like I say it, everything's okay for the most part, and it didn't get really bad until after he had passed. But methamphetamines came around. I framed houses left high school to build houses.

Phil: 11:05

So as a teenager you just dropped out and you just started Yeah. You just in the drug world, in the raves and started working, doing construction? Yeah. I made,

Adam: 11:13

400 bucks at summer, eighth grade a week. And I thought that was big money, but I was still living at mom's house, at some point, I was in and out of the house since about 14. I know that dad was at hype where we said we were gonna talk about whether we were gonna leave the house or not, wouldn't be. And my sister, we go outside and he locked the door. He said if you wanna talk about moving out, go and kinda like tough love, yeah. I think it backfired. Wow. So jails started happening pretty rapidly by 16, I was getting into a lot of trouble. And were you selling at the time as well? So they never actually got me for selling or, you know, I manufacture meth for quite a while. So you, you were part of a, like a meth lab creating and manufacturing it? Yeah. Pre 2008 before that. Wow. But they did catch me when I was 16 with five. What they called nick bag or five,$5 bags of pot. And that was just the way I bought it. And it was in separate bags and they got me, DUI stop, had a fake id, I've been drinking downtown. And they charged me with possession with, to distribute on those little, that$25 worth of pot. And I got, I think it was 10 to five, ended up with coming out of the jail with 10 years probation remaining.

Phil: 12:35

Wow. So how old were you at that time?

Adam: 12:37

16. So at 16 you went I, they tried me as an adult. Yeah. You went into jail? Yeah. And then you got sentenced? I got sentenced. I did my time.

Phil: 12:46

How now? How long were you in?

Adam: 12:47

So I had to go to Scott State Prison and do like a, I think they call'em like, they used to be called like a penitentiary bootcamp kind of thing. And as a teenager. As a teenager. But you were

Phil: 12:59

tried as an adult?

Adam: 13:01

Yeah, it was in adult prison.

Phil: 13:02

What was that experience like of going in as a teenager into prison essentially

Adam: 13:07

and hearing lies the problem with penitentiary and drugs as if you. There is no rehabilitation in the prison system right now. They have programs, but for the most part it's punishment. It's, it is a money thing to me. But, so this over and over, repetitive incarceration that I went through for years you get used to it. And I got used to it real quick, that first time I realized, okay, when I get incarcerated, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna break up with whoever I'm with, whatever girl I'm with. Because you learn things like that, that make it harder to do your time. Like I, I remember I dated this girl and I was, I would wait at that time you, they still wrote letters and you had to go do mail call. And I would stand at the bottom of the guard here and look up, they'd call names for the mail and your letter wouldn't come. And after five months, my sister's like, stop writing her. She's not with you. She's with this other guy. You know what I mean? So you learn little things like that to make your time better. I wouldn't communicate with anybody on the outside and at some point I gotta, where I could just do the time and it was just time I knew I was getting out, you know what I mean? you just became a little callous and you're like, just cut everybody off and just, yeah. And once you can, you can do that. Yeah. Then it's not that big a deal.

Phil: 14:27

When you were on the inside, were you connecting with everybody and still doing the drugs or still? Yeah. Yeah. I have,

Adam: 14:34

Pretty much every incarceration I've had, there's been whatever drug at that time was popular, it's in, it's in there. Unfortunately, but what it did, I had 10 years of felony intensive probation is what they called it, remaining when I got out. And how old were you at that point? Probably 19. Okay. That entailed back then a seven o'clock curfew and, you're reporting or whatever, once a month you had a surveillance officer that would come by and make sure you were there randomly. But I was 19 and I was cooking methamphetamine, so it wasn't, I never followed that. And I ended, it ended up turning into 15 years of felony probation with a lot of years in jail. Like I would get, and it grows, like the first one might be 30 days, but then it got to where I was doing two years at a time.

Phil: 15:24

Wow.

Adam: 15:25

A year and a half. So during that

Phil: 15:26

probation time, like if you messed up or they would birth, put you in prison for 30 days and then you get out and then they put you in for longer and that, that kind of a cycle.

Adam: 15:34

And I didn't, I was so gone. See the deception with the meth was I worked from sun up to sun up, almost take a shower, go back to work. Wow. Building houses, and didn't take but maybe like Easter off one day, one day a year. So I thought I'm working all the time. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. This is just helping me to do that. But the meth was like keeping you going essentially. Yeah. Yeah. So a decade of that. And, but now I realize, like the way that I would talk to the probation officer when she would come down there of course he'd be like two years in jail. You know what I mean? You were like a smart mouse. I just wasn't, I was awful. Oh wow. Like I was awful. And so year, fast forward years later,

Phil: 16:18

Do you remember a lot of the craziness during that time? Or were you like so strung out? Like Is it just kind of blackout periods and you don't really even know what happened half the time?

Adam: 16:27

There's a lot that I wouldn't have remembered unless somebody told me. Yeah, just because of the sleep deprivation. The days on, it's not necessarily the strength of what you're doing, it's with that, it's the lack of sleep. Know what I mean? Yeah. That really plays a toll on your mind. Wow. So what Plus nutrition, you're not eating it, right? Yeah.

Phil: 16:48

Wow. what were some of the craziest things that you remember of just during that time period that you did or that happened around you? Yeah. So

Adam: 16:59

There's a lot. I would rob dope dealers and I would get so brazen that I would not even cover my face. Like I, I would tell people, I want'em to know who got'em, and so I did one and Columbus Police Department got in touch with my father, and they were like, we need to talk to your son. And of course he called me and said, you need to meet with these detectives. They want to talk to you. And I was at the time, so in the middle of the whole life that I was like, I can't meet them in po. I could die for that. And eventually I met them at Target on Bradley Park. And they said that a guy had turned hisself into jail in fear for his life because he knew that I had a hit out on me. And'cause of my father, he knew like that these guys were trying to kill me. The police officers described it as a crack cocaine hit. Whoever, like someone had it hit out on you. Yeah. So they were offering like people that were addicted to crack or whatever, whoever kills me first or get$50 worth crack or something. And they do that, they're in their addiction. So they're hitman for hire just for a little bit of crack. Just who, yeah.

Phil: 18:08

Go kill this person. I'll give you some crack. Wow. That's, wow.

Adam: 18:11

And I was And that was, they were that someone had targeted you? Yeah. So the dude had overheard or whatever, he'd been offered to carry it out and he, I guess turned himself into the jail because he was fear for his life for what he knew. And of course I was still young, like 20, something like that. And so I told him, I said, I'm not worried about, I knew who it was. I knew who had the put the hit out, I said, I'm not worried about it. And the only reason I left was because they said, your mother's in a wheelchair at the house all day. They said They're gonna go, if they shoot your house up and shoot your mother, then you know, you've lost that. And I said, okay. I had some relatives, my aunt and uncle lived in Oakland, California, and I went out there Wow. For a little while to get away from just to let it die down.

Phil: 18:56

Yeah. And, did you immediately jump into the darkness and the bad life back there in Oakland

Adam: 19:03

too, or Not really. I kinda had a barber that cut my hair in the middle of downtown Oakland and he would smoke pot with me, which that was a whole different life. It wasn't legalized there yet, but we would just sit out there on the street, like in the middle of downtown like Broadway, and smoke pot. And that was crazy to me'cause I've come from Columbus where you can't do that, but that was short, I wasn't out there very long. A few months

Phil: 19:25

maybe. Yeah.

Adam: 19:26

And I came back home and I see the dude to this day and nothing. I don't know if he just, he got over it or whatever, but a lot of stuff like that. I was dealing with some guys in town that were buying quite a bit of methamphetamines and uh, I was fortunate that I had these gut feelings about things. And I would back out of a situation right before the hit thing, or excuse me, sorry. Wow. So you could just sense if something was about to Yeah, this is time for me to step back and, and fortunately because a lot of those guys ended up getting 30 years and feds and wow. It was like, I missed it by two weeks, had I not said, look, this is the guy, y'all can deal with him. I'm not dealing with it anymore. And just give him the connection, it was just a crazy time, every night was something and to the extreme, everything was to the extreme.

Phil: 20:18

Wow. You

Adam: 20:19

know what I mean? And I think it was just that adrenaline. Plus the, I had, I have emotional issues that I've covered up with narcotics for so long that, just like, how much more can I do? And and I was, I escaped a lot of the negative, like with the drug aspect, the negative side effects or issues from, so I thought I was, I mean, you know, uh, so this is important. I forgot about this. And ninth grade before I dropped out, summer, eighth grade, they found a brain tumor in my head. Wow. And it's a technical plate, glioma, it's in the middle of my brain, sits on the pituitary gland, controls judgment. Wow. Lots of things that we found. And at that point I was already. Going to raves taking ecstasy. And they went in and I went to Atlanta and they did I was getting these headaches from the spinal fluid from where it blocked the ventricles from the fluid draining. So they went in and they decided that it was too dangerous to touch the tumor because by my eyes, a lot of it's in a bad spot. And so they bypassed it and drilled a hole to drain the fluid off my brain. And that doctor told me, then he said, Adam, the drugs are gonna kill you before the brain tumor is.

Phil: 21:36

Wow.

Adam: 21:37

But I was I don't know what I would call it but I looked at it as a free pass because he was gonna MRI my brain every six months. So I thought if I'm doing any damage he'll let me know. You know what I mean? And'cause ecstasy was the thing back then. And that right there is what ended up really cranking up my addiction, which was later on in 2008, a lot of stuff happened that year. I met the woman I ended up marrying, having kids with but I did chemo that year to try and shrink the tumor.

Phil: 22:09

Yeah.

Adam: 22:10

And. It didn't work. I did it for a year and I got hooked on opiates and that was my introduction to pain pills, which then became heroin and fentanyl and wow. Yeah. Methamphetamines were not like the, they weren't enough at that point. The methamphetamines didn't even, there wasn't even in comparison to the damage that the heroin and the fentanyl really, the pain pills and then the heroin, fentanyl destroyed my life. Wow. And you were married at that point, or not yet? Yeah. Till me and my wife got married in 2008. Was she in

Phil: 22:44

that world too? Is that how y'all met, or?

Adam: 22:46

Yeah, she was she's found her own program now. But yeah, we were just high functioning addicts, like I said, I always carried a job. It was just a strange time and me being on chemo, she took care of me and, we're still married to this day. We've been separated for a few years now, but it's been 18 years, wow. And so what,

Phil: 23:07

So it got worse then with,

Adam: 23:08

Oh, it got a lot worse. When my daughter was born in 2009 and I left the life, but I didn't leave the dope. Okay. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So I would go get what I needed and I'd come to the house. I wasn't running the streets with the guys anymore. I wasn't doing crimes out there like that. You're,

Phil: 23:26

I, at least in your head, trying to be a dad and Yeah. Yeah. Leaving the life, but just couldn't Yeah. Quit the addiction

Adam: 23:32

and it was hidden for quite a while, lemme tell maybe 13 years old or something. My dad, he lost the election in 2000. I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna lie to you. When Obama was elected, he lost that election. Okay. To John Dar. And he bought a place in Tennessee and built a house up there, and it had cabins. And he decided he wanted the whole family up there almost like communal living. Yeah. Family communal living. So I went up there and like with your wife and your daughter? She was young. She was probably four years old. And it was good. It was good up there. Not, I was still using pain pills, but I got a good job running a guy's farm. And he was a great dude. I worked for him for six years up there. I was I hate it. Up there is what, I guess what I'm getting at. Yeah. It was kinda like a new start. Nobody knew me, but I definitely infiltrated the whole prescription drug ring up there.

Phil: 24:28

Wow. And it was it easy to do, like knowing how it works, it was pretty easy to just get access to all of that.

Adam: 24:34

It, you take what you can get at first and then you have to slowly figure out who's got what. But yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. If you want it bad enough, you'll find it. So

Phil: 24:45

how dark did things get? What did it, what did that look like?

Adam: 24:49

Towards the end, guess it started my mom was in a wheelchair, so my dad was her caregiver. So in Tennessee he got diagnosed with cancer and he, it was rapid. Wow. And so he couldn't take care of her anymore. My sister wasn't sober yet. She was like not at home. And so I was there like, to take care of him and my mother and your daughter, like my wife would take care of my sister's son and my daughter. And she would do the stuff with the kids and I'd take care of both parents. I ended up, I just built a restaurant. I was the dude's foreman that I worked for Yeah. In that town at a restaurant and nightclub. And he was like, I was gonna quit my job to take care of my parents. And he was like, why don't you work nights at the bar while they're sleeping? So I would do that. I'd go to work from eight, eight to 3:00 AM come home, sleep for a couple hours, take my dad to radiation. It was a small town, real small community. So like an hour to go anywhere. Yeah. But my dad and I, he knew about, my pain pill stuff and he was getting a tremendous amount of pain pills. And we had dealings'cause he, he was smoking pot at that point and we were For medical reasons or yeah. And we were, we had, I had guys in that community that I helped grow pot with and their dads would also be on pain pills. So we float other people with pain pills. So it all, that all came to a head when my sister came home. My mother caught it between when we had already loaned out pills and they were gonna come back and so she just thought, oh, they're gone. But nobody knew. My dad and I like back room dealings, like what we were doing. And so I left. And I regret that because I just packed the car up one night, wife and kids, and left. And I was it was a mistake. I shouldn't have left. Maybe I should have left, but not that way. And I didn't get to, I didn't get to talk to him again. He died. Wow. And I don't know. I, that was tough for me and that was the beginning of my, when he died, I had so much resentments towards myself and I was at, in like mental battle in my head with suicide, all kinds of things, just'cause I didn't know how to deal with that. And at the same time, my mother was so mad that I didn't, that I stepped out, that she didn't talk to me after he died. Years later we started talking again and I was able to talk to her before she passed. But it was like, I lost both of'em at that time. And so I, at that point I was back in Columbus already and the pain pills weren't in Columbus, so it was heroin. And then it escalated real quickly to, I wanted the fentanyl and it was like subconsciously I was trying to kill myself, I think,'cause I didn't know how to handle it. And I checked out with the family. My daughter's told me now that she saw like me check out. When my dad died, like you step back and it wasn't really that I stepped back. I was just like, I'd internalized everything and I was

Phil: 27:46

yeah.

Adam: 27:47

Like I was at war with my, with myself. Wow. How old was

Phil: 27:51

she at that time?

Adam: 27:52

Probably 13. Okay. When, okay. So she might have been younger than that. When he passed I went on for another year or two, then my mother passed. And then one day I just got tired and I left the house thinking that Columbus streets were the same as they were 30 years prior, or 20, 20 something years prior when I was on them. And they weren't, and my wife moved in with my in-laws in a little apartment in the back and I thought that they would let me come, like whenever I got whatever was outta my system, they would let me come back and they didn't, and I remember the first night being, having my car and sitting up at the gas station and thinking what am I gonna do now? I didn't think it through, you know what I mean? Yeah. So you just left, your family was gonna run the streets, but then. But I had a habit. It wasn't what you thought it was. Yeah. I had a drug habit. So there wasn't hotel money. What was your plan? You know what I mean? But I didn't think back then. And I spent three years homeless in the street, wow. And all over I've been homeless in, I, everywhere I would go, I'd end up homeless. It got so bad that the places that I would go, they call'em like shot houses where people sit in there, do their drugs, and they buy'em there and you can sit, it's like a junkie house basically. They wouldn't let me come over there anymore. Like really? I would get so messed up because you're just violent and crazy and not, it's I would just I don't even know what I'd do really.'cause I wouldn't remember any of it. But like I know one house, I, they said I, I hit whatever I was doing and then I went out and blocked the door so people couldn't get in to do the dealings. And that's the strange thing is you come to, and it feels like it's been seconds, but you might've been out or sitting in this bathroom at Waffle House smoking. At that point I was smoking fentanyl. And it's been hours that you've been in there. Wow. And it feels like you just hit it.'cause it's still in your hand when you wake up. Wow. It just, everything just pauses, so in 2023 I had, I said at the beginning of that year, I told my wife she would, like

Phil: 29:56

You were still communicating with her during the time that you were homeless? Yeah, she would sneak me in

Adam: 29:59

every once in a while without her parents knowing and let me sleep and Or have, was

Phil: 30:04

she pretty clean and sober and was she doing well or not? Not at that

Adam: 30:08

point, but she she definitely wasn't to the extent that I was. But it, but even in those that time, she would video me coming out the bathroom and I wouldn't remember it. And I would get mad and it was like I was a zombie I'd, and I don't recall it, so I would get mad because I knew that I was messed up. Like I knew that I had a problem. And so it was like it hurt to watch it. Yeah. So I would get mad at her because you're filming me. But it was really internal stuff. But I promised her that I would go to treatment sometime before the year was over. So that was like the first moment that I was like, maybe I can't do this. Yeah. Maybe I need some help.

30:49

And that is the end of part one of Adam's story. If you can imagine it, it actually does get worse from there. But next week Adam will share how it got worse, but then he'll share how God changed everything and brought him out of the darkness and transformed his life. And if you could see him now, he's doing so well. So you do not want to miss next week. Thanks for being here this week, and we look forward to seeing you again next week.

Phil Shuler: 31:16

We look forward to being with you again next week as we share another testimony about the power and the goodness of God to change lives through Safe House Ministries. if you are someone listening to this podcast that loves to hear these stories of the great things that God is doing in changing people's lives for the better, and if you would like to be a part of that work, please reach out to us You can reach us at 2101 Hamilton Road, Columbus, Georgia, 31,904. You can call us at seven oh six three two two. 3 7, 7 3, or you can email us at info@safehouse-ministries.com.

Microphone (Samson Q2U Microphone)-2: 31:54

Thank you so much for being with us this week for the renew restore and rejoice podcast of safe house ministries, we pray that God will bless you this week. And we look forward to having you back with us again next week for a new episode.