Overcoming Addiction - Ryan Wickline

What happens when addiction takes everything… and God steps in?

In this powerful episode of The Roar of Judah with Dr. Mike, I sit down with Ryan Wickline, who spent nearly 18 years battling addiction to cocaine, meth, and alcohol. His life spiraled out of control—broken relationships, relapse after relapse, and moments where he felt completely hopeless.

But everything changed when he encountered the grace and power of God.

Ryan shares:

His darkest moments battling addiction
The breaking point that changed everything
How God transformed his mindset and gave him strength to fight
What finally led to lasting freedom after years of struggle
How he’s now helping others overcome through faith

This is more than a recovery story… it’s proof that no one is too far gone for God.

👉 If you or someone you love is struggling, this testimony could change everything.

🔥 Watch until the end—his turning point will hit you hard.

The Roar of Judah exists to share real stories of God at work today through powerful testimonies, inspiring interviews, and faith-filled conversations.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Roar of Judah. Our mission is to hear God's voice above the noise of this world. And now we're in our own Dr. Michael. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Roar of Judah. I'm your host, Dr. Michael. And in scripture, Hebrews 4.16 tells us uh let us approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy in our time of need. And uh, you know, we're we're living in a world where there's a huge time of need for so many people out there, so many people broken, so many people hurting. And unfortunately, a lot of times, you know, to uh cover up that hurt, to cover up that pain, you know, a lot of people will turn to drugs, a lot of people turn to alcohol. And uh, you know, as I was talking with our guest today, you know, the statistics and coming out of that are not real positive. But he was able to find a way through God's grace and through his mercy. And uh can't wait to hear his story. So I'm excited to introduce you to you today, our guest today, Ryan Wickline. Hi, Ryan. Hey Mike, how you doing? I'm doing good. So um I I know you're in Ohio weather pretty good there today.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Today it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yeah, yeah. It's probably confusing because these are like taped about a month before they go. But same in Pennsylvania, like about less than two weeks ago, we had like 71 degree day. And then last Monday school was canceled. Yeah, snow and ice. So I'm I'm I'm ready for April to roll around and actually when we view this video, it's gonna be April and hopefully it's back to 70-some degrees out there. Um I'd love to have you just share anything about your current life situation, where you're living, anything you want to share about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

So I live in a small town in Ohio called Wampacanada. So if no one's ever heard of it really, it's the home of deal Armstrong. There isn't much really to do there, but you know, about me living here in a small town to get ready to probably move to someplace warm.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Down down south somewhere, I assume. Yeah, probably maybe Texas or Georgia or Arizona.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Okay, yeah, at least you're avoiding the hurricanes in those places. Yeah, no more snow for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

I've done it enough.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, I guess Georgia probably gets some hurricanes, but not so much in Texas and Arizona.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So like I said, one of one of the big parts of this channel and podcast is people's story times. And you you know, we believe everybody has a story that declares God's glory. And I know you have a pretty powerful one, and uh so I'm just gonna turn it over to you and let you run with your story.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Awesome, thank you. So I was addicted to pretty much cocaine and methamphetamines. So my addiction to cocaine started probably when I was about 18 years old. I'm 44 now, and that addiction lasted almost probably 18 years. I struggled with a cocaine addiction, off on alcohol it mixed in there. When my dad died, I tried meth for the first time, and that grabbed a hold of me. And through that process, and I found God. Well, actually, God kind of found me because I was a mess. Like, I was coaching wrestling there and with my brothers, and they seen how bad I was. They they told me, like, if you don't go get help, we're not gonna let you help with these kids. We can't let you around them. Because I went from my weight was probably about 185. Normally walk around about 180. I'd lost 30 to 40 pounds in a month and a half being an active addiction to meth, and it really grabbed a hold of me. So I did like every other normal person would do. I went to a rehab center thinking I was going to have to get clean. Well, in that rehab center, there's one thing positive that came out of there. We do this program called Celberate Recovery. And going through the steps, and every time we read them steps, I can't explain it, but that was the only time my heart felt clean. Every other time, everything else they gave me, I thought I could do everything on my own, fight this addiction on my own. And look how bang of a job I've been doing for them 18 years, like 16 years trying to fight an active addiction. It wasn't going very well trying to do it on my own. Well, I end up coming back from that rehab center, and within a week I'd relapse. And I just started spiraling more and more out of control. But by the grace of God, he kinda led me back to him and helped me clean up my life. And today I can say I'm six years clean, almost close to seven, a little bit closer to seven. I think I'm about six and a half years clean and sober from alcohol, drugs, everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

And uh when you look back on your own story and you know the struggles that you've had with drugs and alcohol, what what kind of impact did that have on your family as you were going through that?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

I mean, my relationship with a lot of my family members was kind of non-existent at the time because I was chasing chasing drugs and alcohol. I mean, but now that I look back at it, it was more to mask my own pain. So there was a lot of, you know, I didn't want to be around them because I was kind of embarrassed and tried to hide everything. You know, trying to hide that I was all on drugs and alcohol, just all messed up all the time. But they knew, you know, and then they confront me about it, and I oh you're you don't know what you're talking about, lie about it. You know, like everybody does, but and I just tried to kind of hide behind this mask. But like it was just hiding my pain that I felt because when I was 18 it started really down that path. I was going to Ohio State University on a full academic scholarship, and I my grandma was diagnosed with cancer. And lost her, well, started spiraling out of control, didn't know how to fight anything, just wanted to cover up my pain, didn't know how to deal with it, wasn't it? Give him the tools growing up because I was a child of divorce. Like my dad really wasn't around, so there was that hole in my heart, you know. And there was no really love around me. You know, my mom loved me, but I had two older brothers, but we didn't know. We were from a broken home, and back then in the 80s, that was kind of taboo to be growing up in a divorced family.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yeah, yeah. And how how did you repair the relationships with your family after you got clean?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Uh my mom was always there. You know, she was always there in my corner. Um, I would have never been able to make it out without her because at one point I told her to hold me accountable. Said, you gotta make sure I go to these meetings. I'd lost my license and everything. I was like, hey, I need you to take me to these meetings. Take me to these recovery meetings here, and I need you to just force me to go. And she did. That was one positive. Like, my other family members, like, I stayed away from a lot of them for a while until I got strong enough on my own. And then just started repairing it by apologizing and showing that I was trying to do better. Because there was a lot of doubt. You know, there was so much doubt on a lot of people's parts. People saying, Oh, he's not clean, he's not trying to get sober, he can't do it. He's tried so many times. What's different now this time? You know, you know, everybody talking behind your back to whispers, and I just didn't let anything bother me, and just kinda trusted in God's plan, and when he felt it was right to bring people back into my life, I allowed it.

unknown 9:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

And I know, you know, working in counseling, you know, when, you know, I get a lot of family members that are anxious or depressed because they have a son or a daughter that's got mixed up with drugs, and you know, they're always asking, like, you know, what do they need to do to make the light bulb come on for that person that they need to like change and they need to change now? And I know you kind of mentioned like you were coaching wrestling, and you, you know, your brothers said like you're gonna have to step aside till something changed. Like, was that your light bulb moment? Or when when did you come to the point where I can't live like this anymore?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

So my light bulb moment was a little bit of that, but I'll tell you, I at one point, me and my girlfriend at the time got evicted from my house. Evicted from a house. I kind of left my job because I was a mess. I was a mess, and I usually always work even when I was in my active addiction, but at this point I was a mess. And we went and stayed at a friend's house on their couch, uh one of my friends' houses on a couch, and I went to my mom's house, and my little nephew was there. And when I came there, he said, Uncle Ryan, you came home to me. Uncle Ryan, you came home, and I felt like this big. I felt like a pile of, you know what? You know? That's what I felt like. Like, oh my god, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing to this young kid who looks up to me? What am I doing for all those other kids? The wrestling kids that look up to me. How I try to tell them to fight, how can I tell them to fight and be a hypocrite if I can't fight myself? Yeah. You know? So there was a lot of soul searching in that moment. I mean, but that was that light bulb when he even when I see my little nephew tell me, Uncle Ryan, you came home to me. Like, wow. You know, it wasn't immediate, it wasn't like that day I was like, oh, I I gotta go do something. No, it it sat in my heart for a couple days and finally I just like I tell people I stood up, threw down a bag of drugs, and walked away. I mean I but I relapsed again, you know. I relapsed again and had more people turn on me again. You know, even after I'd gotten clean for four months and then relapsed again, and people turned my back on me and said, Hey, you can't do it. You can't do it. You like like sitting there hoping for my demise when I was on the verge of like committing suicide. Like that's how some people are. Like, I like I took that personally that people were like cheering on my demise when I all I wanted to do was die because of the pain I was going through. You know, I was just like, that's how evil some people are.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah.

unknown 12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

And I, you know, I know one of the big things, you know, in recovery is you know trying to get out of your old environment. So have you found like you know, the friends that you had and you know, the people that you were able to obtain cocaine and other drugs from? Like, have you completely cut them out of your life? Are they still in some way active?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I cut out a lot of people. A lot of people cut themselves out of my life though, too, once I start getting clean, too, you know. Like, there's some people that I cut out, and then others that just cut themselves out. But I'll tell you, like, the first time, like when I was really when made it to four months before I had a major relapse and about committed suicide and got clean for good. I used to I cut myself away from everybody, besides like my mom and stepdad and things like that. But then that second time, God showed me, goes, He showed me you're not getting stronger by avoiding everybody. You get stronger by saying no. And that was like a light bulb moment, you know. So I put myself in like these fire moments, like uncomfortable positions for like nanoseconds, and then kind of dip out. So I'd go to like a friend's house and they might be having a party in the middle of summer, they're having a party, and I'd go there for maybe five minutes, and then that urge would come and I'd walk away. And but I was praying for God's strength the whole time, like, and I felt like that's what he wanted me to do. And it was hard.

unknown 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

But yeah, I pretty much cut out a lot of people. Besides, you know, some I go out back in. God's like, hey, let them back in. I they're supposed to be tied deep with to you. So I kind of looked at who was defending me in rooms I wasn't in, too. Why there's a lot of people talking bad about me while I was actually doing good and trying to get clean.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

And how do you see, like, in your recovery? Like, what what part did God play in that?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

He played everything. I would have been dead without him. At one point I knew I was either gonna end up in prison or be dead. Either die from an overdose or suicide. That's how bad I was at a point. Just dealing with my own mess and garbage that I had neglected for years. And I when I first started getting clean, he showed me it wasn't I needed to upgrade my mind. It was my mindset that was stopping everything, my mindset and my daily habits. So he played a huge role in that and then showed me how to actually fight what spiritual warfare really was.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, yeah. And you you know, how how did how did the church, you know, as you were going through all this, you know, I I know as a former like pastor, that you know, that's always a struggle, like when you know somebody's in active addiction, like, you know, what to do when they show up at the doors. You know, earlier I had on a pastor whose son was addicted to drugs and showed up at church one Sunday and stole the entire offering. Um so so you know, it it's hard sometimes for the church to find the balance between boundaries and love. So as you were going through what you were dealing with, was the church a help, or what was where was the church as you were struggling?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

So, like I grew up Catholic, so in my whole introduction to religion was you go to church, go to mass every Sunday. That's it. That makes you a good person. You go to church every Sunday because that's what you do. Well, they forgot the one foundational part. It was you need a relationship with God, you know, it's all about having a relationship with Jesus, letting him into your life, not you just have to go do these obligations. So that was my whole introduction to everything, but I always believed in God. I mean, through everything I always believed in God, and and I end up walking away about time I was like 13 from all the stuff, you know, stopped going to church, mass, all that stuff, and it would happen that like the celebrate recovery meetings I started going to, the pastor there was my one of my old wrestling coaches. So they kind of welcomed me in and everything because they were actually pretty good people, but when I relapsed at one time, they kind of shooed me away and like, hey, we don't want you, like they thought I was like they couldn't help that I was a lost cause. Yeah, you know, they thought I was a lost cause, but like I said, that pastor he never gave up on me. Like I remember him telling their standing in front of people saying, That's one of my boys, you know. He's one of my boys because, you know, he was like one of my kids, you know. I was so I am still Catholic, and I can tell you that the people there welcomed me in with open arms.

unknown 17:57

Good, good.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

The priest, everybody welcomed me in with open arms. They couldn't believe. At first they were just kind of excited to have somebody young, so interested in their faith, because like at one point I felt like I was just a sponge. I would show up to stuff and just wanted to learn. Learn about my faith, learn about why everybody does this, why do you do this? You know, so I showed up to all these like meetings, workshops, everything. And they were people were just like, man, you know, you know, Kathleen was kind of dead, you know, it's all a bunch of older people and no younger generation of people. So they were they were well, like I said, they welcomed me in with open arms.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Good, good. And you know, I from my understanding, you've now used your story to help encourage others. So, first off, you have a podcast. Can you tell us the name of that and what it's all about?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

So, my podcast is called Through the Fire, and it's basically about showing people who've overcome things. Because we've all been dealt with bad hand at life and had to overcome something. So it's about showcasing people and their stories about overcoming to accomplishing big things. Because one thing I realized when I was coaching kids was a lot of people don't believe they can do something, and a lot of the times that things with the kids stem from their parents who kind of put them living beliefs in their head of like, oh, we're we're pity me, we're just these type of people. It's like, no, you can accomplish anything you want to in life. Look at me, like who never thought, you know, that I a former drug addict and as bad shape as I was in, could be doing a podcast, could be coaching kids, could be allowed around kids to go help them and been successful at it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, yeah. And uh so people can find that is it just an audio podcast, or are you on YouTube as well?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I'm on YouTube and rumble. So through the fire, just like it sounds through the fire.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Perfect. And and then you also have some type of coaching that you do to help people.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah, so I started like I said as a wrestling coach, and then I switched I in that process I became more of a mindset coach. So I used everything that I went through through my addiction, and how I started upgrading my mindset, battling through that addiction and helping these kids accomplish big goals in life. And next thing you know, I'm working with athletes from all over the city of Ireland and others from other states even. So now I'm raising all the work with business people.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

And if people's interested in learning more about your coaching business, what would be the best way to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 20:50

So I would either say probably send me a direct message, uh, get over me on Facebook, Ryan Wickline, or my email is through the fire81 at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Perfect. And I appreciate your encouragement for people and you you know for being one of the minority success stories in overcoming addiction and you know, continued prayers. You know, I I know it's not something that just disappears or whatever, and you know, you have to walk by faith and trust God every step of the way and continue prayers for your coaching business and your podcast and YouTube channel, and hopefully God's got great things in store. Well, I shouldn't say hopefully, I know God's got great things in store for you and you know we'll be excited to see where God leads you.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Hey, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Absolutely nice to meet you, Ryan.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Well, thanks so much for watching this episode of the Roar of Judah Show with Dr. Mike. I hope you're inspired and encouraged to grow in your own faith. Please follow us online. We're on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, your favorite podcast platform, all under Roar of Judah Show. Also, we'd love to hear from our viewers. Leave a comment. Uh, if you want to email us, we're roarofjudashow at gmail.com. You can also visit us online. The website is www.roarofjudashow.com. On there, there's a link to our online store. I'm a licensed professional counselor. I specialize in anxiety treatment. You can find my Freedom from Anxiety video program that's already helped thousands of people. Also, I have a 90-day Freedom from Anxiety devotional book. We also have all kinds of merchandise to help you share your faith, and I hope you'll check that out. We also believe that we all have a story that declares God's glory. If you'd like to be a guest on this show, we'd love to have you. On the website, towards the bottom, there's a little form that you can fill out, and we would love to hear your story. So may the Lord bless you, may the Lord keep you, may his face shine upon you as you let your light shine so others would see your good deeds and worship your Father in heaven. This is Dr. Mike signing off. Until next time.