Overcoming Addiction Through Faith: Rob Reynolds' Recovery Story

Rob Reynolds I'll start with you man why don't you introduce yourself and maybe share a little bit of your story all right you make me go first now I'm Rob Reynolds I'm from originally from Martinsburg West Virginia currently reside in Romney West Virginia but I grew up on the streets with parents that were addicts and alcoholics who pretty much did the best they could but it was a lifestyle I grew up in by the time I was trying to make a long story short by the time I was 16 I was dealing Mass amounts of weed getting into cocaine drinking a lot I done give up on Sports and everything by the time I graduated I barely did that but I moved on to really doing cocaine a lot doing a lot of acid partying my parents let everybody party at my house so it was like everybody loved my house it was Senior Skip Day 247 so of course I had girls everywhere just all the time and thought I was the cool kid in school and then after I graduated most of my friends graduated too so they went on to morgant town and different colleges and so my connect was like you're moving to morgant toown with them all our all of our customers went there so we moved to Mor i m in morgant toown for probably about six to nine months and severely became an alcoholic at that point like I just lived at the bar and for some reason that point I knew I had to get out of there or it was going to get really bad so I moved back just kept living the same lifestyle but ended up meeting the woman getting her pregnant lived together for two years and then decided to get married and figur we make it that long we get married never ever went to church except for I think one time when I was five was the only time I really went and I heard the Daniel and the lion Den story at a vacation bible school thought it was pretty cool but that's really all I ever god of the Gospel growing up but the woman that I married her mom was a Christian and so she would make us go on Christmas and Easter I was one of the creers that would show up on those two days but I remember being so high yeah I was so high and so drunk that nobody but nobody came over and shared Jesus with me they left me sit in the corner and I didn't want to listen to the pastor but like nobody bothered to tell me there was an answer or that and so I just felt like I was treated like I was Trashed by them and I never really wanted to go fast forward that I got into a bunch of criminal activity can I interrupt real quick yeah please so is it isin't it strange how the religious folks and the church folks that's one thing and maybe it's changed a little bit in the last 10 years but I know when we first started working in addiction the religious folks just didn't know what to do with us as addicts like the church folks it was always like you they try I know my experience my family always told me you're go to church it'll help change you and then when I went to church with the track marks on the arms like they didn't know what to do with me I heard you say a little bit of that when you were talking about the Greaser thing you showed up and it was like okay well he's here now what we're lost that was my experience and I was married 10 years so there was 20 opportunities at least I don't think we really went maybe a wedding or something like that but really it was two times a year I was there with an opportunity to hear the gospel like I said wasn't listening to the pastor by far I was hung over and stinking and smelling and looked like straight hell I'm sure but at any point somebody could have said something to me or at least tried to share her mom was always nice to us but she didn't have the answer mean she never dealt with that stuff so then by the time I got to 2004 i' went and did some Plumbing in 2000 I really I went in and out of AA a lot and na and at one point I wanted to get clean because we had a second kid and I thought I'm going to go down and do plumbing work in Virginia Manasses area and her my wife at the time uncle was a Sunday school teacher and a deacon in the church so I thought well maybe I'll go work with him and maybe that'll help so again I like thought that might be an option and I went and I just remember he treated me worse than anybody ever treated me in all my life like he cussed me out every day told me I was stupid I wasn't ever going to make and I had no idea what I was doing so that didn't take long I stayed there for years but ended up not being a to work with him within 6 months because it was just impossible so that put another bad taste in my mouth for chks so I kept getting into criminal activity it hurt my back I on oxy cotton and all this time I was going through depression and all that I got diagnosed bipolar Mantic depressive borderline paranoid schizophrenic I was taking all kinds of psych meds I think by the time I went to prison I it was taking 500 mams of caka twice a day plus all the other stuff plus abusing oxycotton plus pills and Coke and drinking and anything I can get my hands on so I was like a garbage man and Jes by the time 2004 came I remember always saying I don't know if any of y'all did this but I was like well at least I'm not that bad anybody else do that their addiction I did everything except shoot the needle and smoke crack until 2004 so for 14 years where to live but at least I got a car exactly like I'm I said I'm working I got a job and at least I'm not shooting dope so I was smoking it and snorting it but as long as I wasn't shooting it I thought I was somehow better than them and the last three years I just remember I just give up man I just wanted to die I did want to live so then I started smoking crack then I started shooting up herin I ODed at least six times in them last three years and tried to like I tried to go down to the river one day and purposely tried to over overdose I had some heroin but I mainly had about eight or 10 oxycotton 80es a bunch of perets a bunch of vums a bunch of crack and a bunch of beer and did it all and didn't wake up for two days and drove myself to the hospital just wanting to die that's I think when I finally went to a rehab didn't stay there long this time again and got out and wound up getting three charges for robbery not too long after that my last sent in 2007 I robbed a the bar that my wife worked at I ran out of that money and robbed a sheet store I ran out of that money and then robbed a man at a convenience store so I wound up with a 10-year flat prison sentence in 2007 I did two years at the regional waiting to get the prison and everybody kept trying to hand me a Bible and tell me about Jesus and through my whole in and out of jails I just remember thinking I didn't want him on the street I for surely am not going to want him in prison when I just am I'm down on my last luck what and all the people that were trying to hand me a Bible was getting high with me on the street so I was like there's no way and U but then I wound up going to prison and my daughter who was 12 at the time wrote me a letter and finally she was the last person I had left and she said Dad when you get out I'm done with you don't talk to me don't come around like I don't even want your last name don't come to my wedding I won't be at your funeral like you're dead to me and that like that made me realize I was becoming worse than my parents ever were and I said okay I got to do something so I put myself in a residential treatment program called arsat in huttonville state prison and the guy was a Christian that ran it never knew that didn't care about that really then I ran into Mark cubble who Justin's met I think and Rocky Meadows a great guy yeah and then Rocky Meadows has life house down in Huntington those two were in the program with me and they were like leaders and I just remember coming to them and saying guys I don't know how to do this but I don't want to be an addict anymore and I need help and they literally wrote me up every day held me accountable every day till I was tired of writing and they was telling me about Jesus and I really didn't want to hear it they were doing devotions and so I would listen to their devotions but never really go and then they said kyver prison Ministries is coming and they're going to serve good food for four days and you get all the cook you want for free and I was like whoa what did you say good food and cookies sign me up and for real that's why I went for cookies and the first couple days the people was coming up yeah chocolate chip cookies that's it I promise it see was that the LM biscuit song he did it off of the cookie did it all it's terrible oh that's so good oh sorry for real no but I'm really like people's convinced me over the past eight or nine years to write a book and I think it's going to be called cookies with Christ because that's Lally what but I ended up I ended up going and they was trying to hug me and love on me and I didn't want to hear it I just kept eating the cookies but the third day that I was there they asked us to write down everybody we need to forgive and everybody need to forgive us and I didn't want to talk to them so the more that I did this they left me alone so I took all day long and did it and we went outside and they balded it up and we had to throw in this burn barrel and this pastor Rob perrar prayed and it was the first time in my life that I felt anxiety and panic attacks leave but I could breathe for once I was like a and like a weight come off and I started crying in front of 60 dudes in prison which is not the coolest thing to do and I remember blaming it on the fire I'm like oh it's the smoke but I felt something real C onions yeah and I said I went back to the cell because I was scared to death I didn't know what it was and I remember saying God if that's you I want that and the next morning when I came into the prison that Pastor was sitting there and he said man I've been up all night praying for you I feel like you want to talk to me and I was like yes sir I do and he said well I got a scripture for you and he gave me Proverbs 35 and 6 which meant nothing to me at the time what now become one of my main verses all my life just trust him and get out of the way pretty much yeah and I ended up walking in this Chapel with him and as soon as this little makeshift Chapel with shower curtains and as soon as I walked in he never said a word I know now what it was Holy Spirit hit me and I just fell flat on my face and everything that I wrote on that paper and everything in me just started gushing out for like two hours I cried and snotted and balded on the floor till I was a mess and then I stood up and I really couldn't see it was such a surreal encounter that I don't know only thing I can do is explain it to you I know I believe it and I know it was there like I stood up and it was just this huge Shining Light on this side that I couldn't even look at and then I looked down and I was still laying there dead and I could breathe and I was free and everything was just so I just never felt that way before and I knew that all my addictions and everything was going like I knew I met Jesus and that dude died and I couldn't explain that back then I know now what it is and from that day I never took a cakil I never weaned off of nothing I got radically delivered in that one encounter I finished the program I got out and went through I waved my parole six months because I was up for parole but I waved it to get into a christian-based program and I got in this place called House of Miracles I went there and got discipled for a year and that Pastor freaked me out the first day cuz it was a Pentecostal prayer meeting and I had no idea what that stuff was I'm thinking we're going to hold hands and H pre people was rolling on the floor wailing crying screaming and talking in tongues and I'm like uhoh whoops what did I get into send me back to prison tomorrow please koola yeah no said pastor came and asked me said you okay I'm like absolutely not don't ask me to drink the Kool-Aid I'm done and he's like what I like send me on the bus to prison tomorrow and he just so calmly he said I bought you a Bible I want you to open it to Acts 2 and I want you to read it to me and I read it he said now read it again and I read it and he said Son all I can tell you is if you'll believe everything in here is for you it's the absolute truth you can walk in it you can do it put your name on it and Bank on God you'll never go back to that lifestyle and I just remember thinking I don't know how to do this thing so I'm just going to trust you am man ever since then I had no religious background to undo I was just a brand new baby that said yes and believed every bit of it and ran by faith it's been 12 years that was November 20th 2010 when I got saved in prison I've never had a relapse never went back never went to AA na none of that as Gerald Mayhem would say not sh na AA none of that I just got radically delivered and know I'm a son and been pursuing him ever since man I had a recovery program or as a youth pastor for four years had a recovery program Freedom House it's actually right before right when I met Justin before I started Freedom House I was speaking at Team Freedom House I was speaking at Teen Challenge he actually calmed me into my first testimony actually he I would never do such a thing yeah he was because I was coming up the Teen Challenge and sharing with the guys on Sundays and having fun and loving it I was okay with the oneon-one but he's like someday I'm going get you Shar testimony at Chapel I'm like no not happening yeah and then like a couple weeks later he just put my name on there and he's like hey you're doing I'm like no Justin I'm not he said you'll be all right I'm not going to be here you go ahead I'm like no but I did and man when I did it just I don't know just Unleashed something to me that I knew that the rest of my life I was compelled to tell people my story and preach the gospel man and had the Freedom House for four years and now I have my own church now Freedom House is shut down and now I just took a director's job at Cumberland Teen Challenge getting ready start a Teen Challenge down there man I'm remarried God's brought my kids back in my life I've adopted two other kids that's not supposed to happen with 17 felonies what so I live in a new kingdom and a new person hey thanks so much for watching this if you enjoyed this story please like And subscribe to the channel by clicking here or you can catch another episode right over here have a great day