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 originally from Martinsburg, West Virginia. I currently reside in Romney, West Virginia. But I grew up on the streets with parents that were addicts and alcoholics. They pretty much did the best they could, you know, but it was a lifestyle I grew up in. By the time I was 16, I was dealing mass amounts of weed, getting into cocaine, drinking a lot. I'd given up on sports and everything. By the time I graduated—I barely did that—I moved on to really doing a lot of cocaine, 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 24/7. Of course I had girls everywhere all the time and thought I was the cool kid in school. After I graduated, most of my friends graduated too, so they went on to Morgantown and different colleges. My connect was like, "You're moving to Morgantown with them—all our customers went there." So we moved to Morgantown for probably about six to nine months. I severely became an alcoholic at that point. I just lived at the bar. For some reason, at that point, I knew I had to get out of there or it was going to get really bad, so I moved back. I just kept living the same lifestyle but ended up meeting a woman, getting her pregnant. We lived together for two years and then decided to get married. Figured if we made it that long, we'd get married. I never ever went to church except for—I think—one time when I was five. That was the only time I really went. I heard the Daniel and the Lion's Den story at a Vacation Bible School—thought it was pretty cool—but that's really all I ever got of the Gospel growing up. The woman I married—her mom was a Christian, so she would make us go on Christmas and Easter. I was one of the C&E-ers that would show up on those two days. I remember being so high and so drunk that nobody—nobody—came over and shared Jesus with me. They kind of left me sitting in the corner. I didn't want to listen to the pastor, but nobody bothered to tell me there was an answer or that you know... So I just felt like I was treated like trash by them, and I never really wanted to go. Fast forward—I got into a bunch of criminal activity. Can I interrupt real quick? Yeah, please. Isn't it strange how the religious folks and the church folks... I mean, 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. The church folks—it was always like... My family always told me, "Go to church, go to church—it'll help change you." And then when I went to church with the track marks on my arms, they didn't know what to do with me. I kind of heard you say a little bit of that when you were talking about the C&E thing—you showed up and it was like, "Okay, well, he's here now. Now what?" We lost—that was my experience. I was married 10 years, so there were 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, I wasn't listening to the pastor by far. I was hungover 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—she never dealt with that stuff. By the time I got to 2004, I'd gone and did some plumbing in 2000. I really went in and out of AA a lot and NA. At one point I wanted to get clean because we had a second kid. I thought, "I'm going to go down and do plumbing work in Virginia—Manassas area." My wife at the time—her 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." Again, I thought that might be an option. I went and I just remember he treated me worse than anybody ever treated me in all my life. He cussed me out every day, told me I was stupid, I wasn't ever going to make it, I had no idea what I was doing. So that didn't take long—I stayed there for years, but ended up not being able to work with him within six months because it was just impossible. That put another bad taste in my mouth for church. I kept getting into criminal activity. It hurt my back—I went on OxyContin. All this time I was going through depression and all that. I got diagnosed bipolar, manic depressive, borderline, paranoid schizophrenic. I was taking all kinds of psych meds. I think by the time I went to prison, I was taking 500 mg of Seroquel twice a day plus all the other stuff—plus abusing OxyContin plus pills and coke and drinking and anything I could get my hands on. So I was like a garbage man. 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 in their addiction? I did everything except shoot the needle and smoke crack until 2004. So for 14 years, I was like, "But at least I've got a car. I'm working. I've got a job. At least I'm not shooting dope." I was smoking it and snorting it, but as long as I wasn't shooting it, I thought I was somehow better than them. The last three years, I just remember I just gave up, man. I just wanted to die. I didn't want to live. So then I started smoking crack, then I started shooting up heroin. I OD'ed at least six times in them last three years. I tried to go down to the river one day and purposely tried to overdose. I had some heroin, but I mainly had about eight or 10 OxyContin 80s, a bunch of Percocets, a bunch of Valium, a bunch of crack, and a bunch of beer. Did it all and didn't wake up for two days. Drove myself to the hospital just wanting to die. That's when I finally went to a rehab—didn't stay there long this time again. Got out and wound up getting three charges for robbery not too long after that. My last stint in 2007: I robbed the bar that my wife worked at, ran out of that money, robbed a Sheetz store, ran out of that money, 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 jail waiting to get to prison. Everybody kept trying to hand me a Bible and tell me about Jesus. Through my whole in-and-out of jails, I just remember thinking, "I didn't want Him on the street—for sure I'm not going to want Him in prison when I'm just down on my last luck." All the people that were trying to hand me a Bible were getting high with me on the street, so I was like, "There's no way." But then I wound up going to prison, and my daughter—who was 12 at the time—wrote me a letter. Finally she was the last person I had left. She said, "Dad, when you get out, I'm done with you. Don't talk to me. Don't come around. I don't even want your last name. Don't come to my wedding. I won't be at your funeral. You're dead to me." That made me realize I was becoming worse than my parents ever were. I said, "Okay, I got to do something." So I put myself in a residential treatment program called ARSA in Huttonsville State Prison. The guy who ran it was a Christian—never knew that, didn't care about that really. Then I ran into Mark Coble—who Justin's met, I think—and Rocky Meadows. Great guy. Rocky Meadows has Life House down in Huntington. Those two were in the program with me—they were like leaders. 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." They literally wrote me up every day, held me accountable every day till I was tired of writing. They were telling me about Jesus. I really didn't want to hear it. They were doing devotions, so I would listen to their devotions but never really go. Then they said, "KAIROS Prison Ministries is coming. They're going to serve good food for four days and you get all the cookies you want for free." I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa—what did you say? Good food and cookies? Sign me up." For real—that's why I went. I went for cookies. The first couple days, the people were coming up—yeah, chocolate chip cookies. That's it. That's it. I promise. Was that the LMFAO song he did it off of? The cookie did it all? It's terrible. Oh, that's so good. Sorry. No, but I'm really like—people have 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 literally what... But I ended up going, and they were trying to hug me and love on me. I didn't want to hear it—I just kept eating the cookies. The third day that I was there, they asked us to write down everybody we need to forgive and everybody who needs to forgive us. 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. We went outside, they balled it up, and we had to throw it in this burn barrel. This pastor, Rob Perrar, prayed. It was the first time in my life that I felt anxiety and panic attacks leave. I could breathe for once. A weight came off. I started crying in front of 60 dudes in prison—which is not the coolest thing to do. I remember blaming it on the fire: "Oh, it's the smoke." But I felt something real. I went back to the cell because I was scared to death. I didn't know what it was. I remember saying, "God, if that's You, I want that." 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." I was like, "Yes, sir, I do." He said, "Well, I got a scripture for you." He gave me Proverbs 3:5–6—which meant nothing to me at the time. Now it's become one of my main verses all my life: just trust Him and get out of the way, pretty much. I ended up walking into this little makeshift chapel with him—shower curtains and all. As soon as I walked in, he never said a word. I know now what it was—Holy Spirit hit me. I just fell flat on my face. Everything that I wrote on that paper and everything in me just started gushing out for like two hours. I cried and snotted and bawled on the floor till I was a mess. Then I stood up—I really couldn't see. It was such a surreal encounter. I don't know—the only thing I can do is explain it to you. I know I believe it and I know it was there. I stood up and it was just this huge shining light on this side that I couldn't even look at. Then I looked down and I was still laying there—dead. And I could breathe, and I was free. Everything was just so... I just never felt that way before. I knew that all my addictions and everything was going. I knew I met Jesus and that dude died. I couldn't explain that back then—I know now what it is. From that day, I never took a Seroquel. 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 waived my parole six months because I was up for parole but I waived it to get into a Christian-based program. I got in this place called House of Miracles. I went there and got discipled for a year. That pastor freaked me out the first day because it was a Pentecostal prayer meeting. I had no idea what that stuff was. I'm thinking we're going to hold hands and... People were rolling on the floor, wailing, crying, screaming, talking in tongues. I'm like, "Uh-oh. Whoops—what did I get into? Send me back to prison tomorrow, please. Kool-Aid? Yeah, no." Pastor came and asked me, "You okay?" I'm like, "Absolutely not. Don't ask me to drink the Kool-Aid. I'm done." He's like, "What?" I said, "Send me on the bus to prison tomorrow." He just so calmly said, "I bought you a Bible. I want you to open it to Acts 2 and read it to me." I read it. He said, "Now read it again." I read it. 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." I just remember thinking, "I don't know how to do this thing, so I'm just going to trust You, amen." 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 Mayhew would say, "Not shNA, AA—none of that." I just got radically delivered and now I'm a son and been pursuing Him ever since, man. I had a recovery program—I was a youth pastor for four years, had a recovery program called Freedom House. Actually right before—right when I met Justin—before I started Freedom House, I was speaking at Teen Challenge. He actually conned me into my first testimony. I would never do such a thing. I was coming up to Teen Challenge and sharing with the guys on Sundays and having fun and loving it. I was okay with the one-on-one, but he's like, "Someday I'm going to get you to share your testimony at chapel." I'm like, "No, no, no—not happening." Then like a couple weeks later, he just put my name on there. He's like, "Hey, you're doing it." I'm like, "No, no, Justin—I'm not." He said, "You'll be all right. 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—it just unleashed something in me that I knew the rest of my life I was compelled to tell people my story and preach the Gospel, man. Had 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 to 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, you know what I mean? 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.