From Addiction to a New Life.

John was four or five when his parents divorced. His stepfather was an abusive alcoholic. He grew up believing that if he had never been born, the world would have been a better place. By his teens he was smoking weed, drinking, taking pills. By his twenties he had been introduced to morphine through a hospital injury — and that introduction quietly opened the door to heroin.

He overdosed more than once. The phrase "we're going to lose him" became something the people around him said out loud. The bedroom became the place he injected just to make it to the next day.

On a borrowed plane ticket to St. Thomas, with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, John walked into a Salvation Army office, asked Kevin for help, and within twenty-four hours had a job, a place to stay, and the beginning of a community. He met his wife in that community. They built an HVAC business together. He says he prayed sobbing on the floor — "I'm going to do it your way" — and the weight lifted.