When Ben Fuller agreed to come to Winchester, Virginia for a fundraising event at Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge, I figured we'd get a solid evening of worship and maybe a few good moments for social media. What I didn't expect was to sit across from a man who'd put words to almost everything I've watched families walk through for the last two decades.
The evening was electric. Ben led worship in front of a crowd that knew the weight of addiction firsthand. Winchester and Frederick County have been gutted by the opioid crisis. Conservative estimates put 50,000 people in this region battling substance abuse. Double it and you're probably closer to the truth.
Before the event we sat down to record an episode of the Rebuilding Life After Addiction podcast. What came out wasn't polished. It was raw. Fourteen years of cocaine and alcohol. The best friend who died from the same drugs Ben was using. The single worship service that changed the direction of his life.
If you've ever loved someone who seemed too far gone, this one is for you.
The Wound That Started It All
Ben grew up in Vermont on a dairy farm. Only son, one sister, at his father's side constantly. Throwing hay bales, running chores, rushing from the barn to football practice and back. From the outside it looked like character being built.
Underneath it was a question that never got answered.
"All I wanted to do was know that he loved me," Ben said. "I think that's what I missed most as a kid growing up. Not hearing 'I love you.'"
He could outwork all his buddies. Captain of the football team. Everything going for him on the outside, completely empty on the inside.
"I didn't know that hole in my heart was something that only God could fill."
Ben calls it generational hurt handed down. Grandpa to dad to him. Nobody knew any different, so they passed along the only thing they had. That's how it goes until something interrupts the cycle. For Ben, the interruption was Jesus. This is the part most people miss about addiction. It's rarely just about the substance. It's about what the substance is covering. Scripture has more to say about that than most of us were taught, and it's worth sitting with what the Bible actually says about addiction.
The Slide Into Addiction
Like most of us, Ben didn't wake up one day and decide to wreck his life.
It started quietly, between 16 and 18. He got to a place dark enough that he attempted suicide and couldn't go through with it.
"I was just too scared to pull the trigger. I kind of saw the flash of the funeral line, the flash of friends and family, and I was like, 'Man, I'm not ready. I can't do this.'"
Not long after, a different escape showed up. Cocaine. Alcohol. Sex.
"I just began to disappear in plain sight."
He found friends who loved cocaine too. One of them, his best friend Ryan, would become the reminder of where that road ends. They used together for about ten years.
December 16, 2017
"Ryan's dead. December 16th, 2017. He's no longer here. Him and I used for 10 years. Why am I still here? Why is he dead? Why did he overdose and not me? We were doing the same drugs."
After Ryan died, Ben tried to quit on his own strength.
"I said, 'I'll never use again, I'll never drink again. It just killed my best friend.' Two months later, I'm drinking 20 beers a night again."
He kept believing the lie. If I just cut back. If I just move. If I just change this one thing, I'll be fine.
It never worked. It never does. After years of watching people cycle through recovery, I can tell you willpower has a shelf life. Sobriety on its own won't save anybody. You can white-knuckle a few weeks, maybe a few months. But without something deeper, without someone greater, the same bondage finds its way back in.
1,250 Miles to Nashville
When we're miserable, we tell ourselves a new location will fix it.
Ben did what a lot of dreamers do. He moved to Nashville in the fall of 2018. Left landscaping and stone walls and Vermont behind to chase music and a fresh start.
He's brutally honest about what actually happened.
"That addiction followed me 1,250 miles all the way down to Nashville."
You can swap states, jobs, relationships, friend groups. If the heart doesn't change, the same bondage follows. Geography can't heal spiritual slavery. I've watched it play out dozens of times. Families scrape together money to send a son or daughter somewhere new, hoping distance will do what surrender hasn't. The zip code changes. The chains don't.
The Dinner Invitation
Here's where you see God's sovereignty up close.
A family from Vermont, the Davenports, had moved to Nashville a year before Ben did. He barely knew them. He'd landscaped with their son, met them at a hospital after some freak incident, seen them show up at bars and restaurants to support his music. A sweet family that kept showing up.
After they settled in Tennessee, they reached out with a simple question on a Saturday night in the fall of 2019.
"Ben Fuller, will you come for dinner?"
He came for the food.
"They loved me just the way that I was. They loved me just the way that Jesus does. They didn't judge anything. My language, I had beers, I remember drinking beers over there. I couldn't be myself without alcohol."
At the end of the meal, one more question.
"Will you come to church with us in the morning?"
Simple invitation. God used it to change everything.
November 3, 2019
The next morning Ben walked into Church of the City in Franklin, Tennessee.
What broke through first wasn't a sermon or a theology lesson or a slick presentation. It was worship.
"I walked in there and I heard the music. Again, here comes the music. It rose up inside of me, and I just ran into the auditorium and stood there in the aisle."
"As a man who'd been living his life as a secret drug addict hiding in plain sight, I'd never been higher."
Romans 10:9 flooded his mind. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you'll be saved.
"I cried out. I said, 'Jesus, help me. I need Your help. I don't even know who You are, I don't even know what this is right now, but everybody's hands up, the music playing.'"
John Reddick was on stage singing "God Turn It Around."
"I surrendered. I said, 'I'm done running.' And He did. He turned my life around."
What Nobody Talks About
We celebrate the altar moment. We share the testimony. We cheer.
We don't talk enough about the next day.
Ben doesn't dodge it.
"No one talks about this either, but I felt it. I was probably lonelier than I'd ever been in a really long time after I gave my life to Jesus. It was lonely."
"All my friends, bye. 'What are you doing, Ben? Are you brainwashed? Jesus? Worship? God?' I've still got lots of friends I haven't heard from, don't talk to anymore, gone away, blame me, whatever it is."
Even family didn't fully understand what had happened. He had Jesus, and his old world was crumbling at the same time.
This is where so many people fall through the cracks. The altar moment is real, but the follow-through is where freedom gets built or lost. The spiritual high fades and the hard work of rebuilding starts, and without people who refuse to leave you alone, the old life has a gravitational pull that's tough to resist. I wrote more about that stretch and why it breaks so many people in what happens when treatment ends.
The Davenports wouldn't leave Ben alone. They kept inviting him back. They kept inviting him over.
The Man With the Towel
"You know who was there at my baptism with a towel? My best friend Paul. He landscaped with me for most of my life. I had no idea that he was secretly praying for me every day."
"I would show up hungover, and he was there to wrap me with a towel and say, 'Welcome to the family. I've been praying for you your whole life.'"
Paul told Ben something that still moves him. "I thought you were hopeless. I thought my prayers were never going to be answered."
These were people from Vermont, a state that's only 2 to 4 percent Christian. The Lord still found the people in that community to pray for Ben before Ben knew what prayer was.
If you're praying for someone right now and it feels pointless, keep going. You don't know what seeds you're planting. You don't know who else God has positioned around them. The work of loving an addict usually happens in the dark, long before the breakthrough. If you've run out of words for it, here's help for how to pray for an addict you love.
Identity: The Song God Used to Tell Ben Who He Was
If you know Ben Fuller, you've probably heard his breakthrough song about identity in Christ, "Who Am I." It's been streamed more than 20 million times, but for Ben it was never a career moment.
Ben says God gave him that song to tell him who he was now.
"We wrote it in under an hour. It was special and powerful, and we had no idea what was gonna come out of it."
Later, especially during his first headline tour, the Holy Spirit pressed the message deeper.
"He really showed me. He was telling you your identity from that day forward. Now you're no longer a drug addict, you're no longer an alcoholic, you're no longer a womanizer. No, you're a child of mine. And I love you."
Night after night he stands on stage and declares that truth. Not just over the crowd, over his own mind.
"I'm a child of the Most High God, and the Most High God is for me."
"I'm not thinking, 'Where am I gonna get my next fix tomorrow?' No, I'm speaking life over myself, which is so important because it's so easy to get down, so easy to fall back into the ditch."
This is the core of what I call the Robe phase of recovery. Who you are matters more than what you did. The Father doesn't hand you a servant's uniform when you come home. He throws a robe over your shoulders. That's identity, and it's the whole foundation of freedom after addiction. We went deep on that picture in a full episode too, the robe, the ring, and the sandals.
Music does that. It reaches what a sermon sometimes can't. If a song has ever caught you off guard and said the thing you couldn't say yourself, these eight songs for addiction recovery are worth a listen.
From Addiction to Prison Ministry
God has taken Ben's story into some of the hardest places in America. Prisons.
He partners with ministries like God Behind Bars and Prison Fellowship, bringing worship and the gospel into facilities like San Quentin and Louisiana State Penitentiary.
He says something a lot of church folks don't want to admit.
"I have more church in prison than I do in church, to be honest with you. Those guys are sold out. They're looking. They're receiving, they're humble, they're honest."
Why? Because a lot of men on the inside are done pretending. Tired of the life that put them there. Desperate for real hope, not clichés.
Ben knows he could've been on the other side of those bars.
"I never got caught. I was the guy that never got busted. My favorite thing was drinking and driving. I'd park my truck and have no idea where it was. No idea how I got home, or how I didn't swerve and kill somebody or myself."
"So God caught me on the outside so that He could send me in."
Contentment Over Platform
We live in a platform-obsessed world. Even in ministry it's easy to chase numbers, stages, followers, reach.
God has opened wild doors for Ben. Christian radio. The Grand Ole Opry. CMA Fest in front of 50,000 people. Red Rocks, twice in one year.
Here's what's changed. He's not chasing it anymore.
"I set out for my own fame and my own things when I went to Nashville with a 12-pack in the passenger seat. I wanted to sing about country music and beer joints."
"But if you're content with Christ, then you're content. Just leave it at that. God, whatever else You do is awesome."
If your heart isn't content in Christ, no stage or stream count or chart position will ever be enough. The finish line just keeps moving. This is why I keep saying sobriety isn't the same as peace. You can hit every external marker and still run on empty. Freedom isn't the absence of substances. It's the presence of something greater.
What Ben's Story Means for You
If you're in addiction right now, here's the truth. Addiction is an escape, not a solution. A new state, a new job, new relationships won't fix what's broken inside. It'll follow you.
You can't white-knuckle your way to freedom. Ben tried after Ryan died. Two months later he was back to 20 beers a night. When people tell him they're doing sobriety on their own, he says, "Good luck. I don't believe in luck, but good luck. Because you ain't gonna do it for much longer. I don't care how strong you are, how tough you are. If you don't have a Savior, if you don't have Jesus."
You need Jesus, and you need people. Ben had both. The living Christ who met him in worship, and believers like the Davenports and Paul who refused to walk away. Surrender to Jesus plus real Christ-centered community. That's where transformation actually happens.
If you're praying for your own Ben, maybe a son, daughter, sibling, or friend who looks hardened or numb or completely uninterested in God, don't stop. Don't stop loving them. Don't underestimate one meal, one invitation, one act of stubborn grace.
The people who thought Ben Fuller was a lost cause are watching him preach and sing the gospel in places they may never set foot. Paul prayed for years and thought he was too far gone. God proved him wrong.
If today is the day you're done running, we can help you take the next step. Call or text 540-213-0571. It's free and confidential.
Watch the Full Conversation
This interview was recorded before a live event at Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge in Winchester, Virginia. Watch the full conversation above, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Connect With Ben Fuller
- Website: BenFullerMusic.com
- Spotify / Apple Music: search "Ben Fuller"
- Instagram / Facebook: @BenFullerMusic
Frequently Asked Questions About Ben Fuller's Testimony
What is Ben Fuller's testimony? Ben Fuller spent fourteen years in cocaine and alcohol addiction, lost his best friend to an overdose, and tried to quit on his own strength and failed. Then a family from Vermont invited him to church one Sunday morning in Franklin, Tennessee, and he surrendered his life to Jesus during worship. He now leads worship, tours, and ministers in prisons.
Where is Ben Fuller from? Ben grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont, one of the least churched states in America. He moved to Nashville in 2018 to chase music, and that's where his life turned around a year later.
Was Ben Fuller ever in jail? No. Ben is open that in fourteen years of addiction he never got arrested, even though he put himself in dangerous situations like drinking and driving. He believes God protected him from prison on the outside so he could one day walk back in as a free man with the gospel.
Does Ben Fuller do prison ministry? Yes. Ben partners with God Behind Bars and Prison Fellowship, bringing worship and the gospel into facilities like San Quentin and Louisiana State Penitentiary. He says he often finds more honest, hungry faith inside prison than he does in church.
What does Ben Fuller sing about? His music centers on identity in Christ, his own story, and redemption. His breakthrough song "Who Am I" came out of the truth God spoke over him after addiction. His album "Deeper Still" reflects the same shift, digging into God's word in place of the constant search for the next fix.
How did Ben Fuller get sober? Not through willpower. He tried that after his best friend died and was back to drinking heavily within two months. What changed everything was surrender to Jesus combined with real Christ-centered community, the family who kept inviting him in and the friend who'd been praying for him in secret for years.
