Getting Clean Wasn't the Hard Part

Don Wilkerson has been doing this longer than almost anyone alive. Co-founded Teen Challenge with his brother David. Ran the Brooklyn center for 16 years. Built the curriculum that hundreds of programs still use. Planted centers in over 100 countries. The man has seen more addicts walk through a door than I can wrap my head around.

So when he told me the thing that separates those who stay free from those who don't, I paid attention.

"It's one thing to be clean," he said. "It's another thing to be pure. And blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

That's not a slogan. That's six decades of watching people. Some make it. Some don't. And the dividing line isn't willpower or circumstances or even how bad the addiction was. The dividing line is whether the person stopped at sobriety or kept going toward transformation.

I know this because I lived it.

When I left Teen Challenge, I was clean. No question. The drugs were out of my system, I had a Bible in my hand, and I had a fire in my chest that felt like it could burn through anything. But clean doesn't mean free. Clean means the substance is gone. Free means you've become somebody new. And there's a gap between those two things that nobody warns you about.

The first few months are the hardest, not because you want to use, but because you don't know who you are without it. Addiction gave me an identity. A terrible one, but an identity. I knew my role. I knew my people. I knew how the day was going to go. Take that away and you're standing in the middle of your own life like a stranger in someone else's house.

Don told me something about the students who come into Brooklyn TC under duress, the ones who show up to please a mother or a wife. He said when they come in, they don't just hear the gospel, they see it. They see people just like themselves worshiping, studying, rebuilding. And that's what cracks them open. Not a sermon. Not a rule. Watching someone who was just as broken as you start to look different.

But here's the part that stuck with me. He said the ones who come in just to get clean, most of them relapse. Not because the program failed. Because they stopped too early. They got the drugs out but never let Jesus in to the places the drugs were covering up. Getting clean was the goal. It should have been the starting line.

Paul said it this way: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NKJV). Don pointed out that the recovery world uses the word "recovery." But the biblical word is transformation. Recovery implies going back to something. Transformation implies becoming something you've never been.

That's a completely different trajectory.

I talk to people all the time who are sober but stuck. Six months clean, a year clean, two years clean, and something still feels off. They did the program. They checked the boxes. They're not using. But they're not free either. They're white-knuckling it through life wondering when it gets easier.

It gets easier when you stop trying to manage sobriety and start pursuing a life worth being sober for.

Don said the ones who make it long-term all have the same markers. They find a new connection to God on a personal basis. Not religion. Not church attendance as a checkbox. An actual relationship with Jesus where prayer becomes daily, the Word becomes food, and they start asking what God actually wants them to do with their life. They get connected to the body of Christ, not as a recovery requirement but because they need people. And they find purpose. Something bigger than staying clean.

He told me something that made me laugh. There was a Time magazine article years ago that criticized Teen Challenge for trying to make preachers out of everyone. Don said, "That person was absolutely right. We do try to make preachers out of them." Not in the vocational sense. In the sense that sharing your faith and helping others is what keeps you alive. Life after treatment can't be about maintaining sobriety. It has to be about building something.

This is where families get confused too. Your son or daughter comes home from a program, and they look better. They're clean. They're saying the right things. And you breathe for the first time in months. But clean is not the finish line. If they come home and have no purpose, no community, no direction, no sense of who they are beyond "recovering addict," they are in danger. Not because the program didn't work. Because the work isn't done yet.

The question isn't "are they sober?"

The question is "are they becoming someone new?"

Don's own brother Jerry became an alcoholic. A Wilkerson. Grew up in a minister's home, same family that founded Teen Challenge. For years he held down a job, then it got worse, and he ended up practically homeless. Don's mother told him, "Jerry is going to come back to God, and he's going to go to Teen Challenge." Don said he believed Jerry would come back to God but with the name Wilkerson, he'd never come to TC. His mother said, "You just wait and see what God is going to do."

Jerry came to a rally, walked to the altar, entered the program, did six months, and went home to his wife and children.

That story isn't about willpower. It's about a family that prayed and a man who eventually stopped settling for clean and chose to be made new.

If you're sober but something still feels off, that's not a sign that recovery failed. It's a sign that you haven't gone far enough yet. Jesus didn't save you so you could spend the rest of your life managing cravings. He saved you to give you the robe, the ring, and the sandals. Identity. Authority. Mission. The hard part isn't quitting. The hard part is becoming.

And that part is worth every bit of the fight.

If your family is dealing with addiction and you don't know where to start, we can help you find the right program.

Hear more on our podcast: Don Wilkerson: The Co-Founder of Teen Challenge on Transformation, Relapse, and What Recovery Really Means.