Recovered with Purpose: Adam Vibe Gunton #161

Highlights

• Adam’s “golden boy” early life (2:16)
• Wrestling with his responsibility for his addiction (4:28)
• The tragedy that deepened his addiction (7:48)
• The challenges of the high-functioning addict (11:54)
• How one friend finally helped him… by not trying to fix him (25:18)
• How he got clean (30:55)
• Feeling called to inspiring others to sobriety (38:22)
• The power of personal stories to change lives (40:43)
• Adam’s message of hope for listeners (50:22)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond The Crucible.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

When that happened, the only coping mechanism that I had was drugs and alcohol. I hadn’t been taught what to do when a traumatic event happens, so that led me all the way down to being homeless and 86-ed from a homeless shelter because I got to a point where I was hopelessly addicted. The drugs and alcohol weren’t working anymore. They were causing the problems instead of solving the problems. And then by that point, when I realized this isn’t working anymore, I found that I couldn’t stop. Which is a really scary place for someone to be.

Gary Schneeberger :

A really scary place for someone to be. Our guest this week, Adam Vibe Gunton, is referring to being caught up in the cyclical grip of deep drug addiction. But anyone who’s been through a traumatic crucible experience regardless of its details, knows all too well, it’s a painfully common emotion. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gunton shares in harrowing detail how his life went from being a golden boy, the star of every sports team he played on, to a tragic descent into darkness and dependence on heroin and prescription painkillers, set into motion by being introduced to cocaine at 12 and worsened when he blamed himself for a friend’s suicide. He wanted to die until the rekindling of his faith in a miraculous way set him first on the road to sobriety and then to significance. He founded Recovered On Purpose, a nonprofit that helped men and women in recovery tell their stories in ways that help others find sobriety too. Just five years clean, he’s helped more than 1000 people overcome their addictions and has big plans for even more wide-ranging impact.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Adam, thanks so much for being here and I love what you do in Recovered on Purpose and working with addicts, if that’s the right word, or people who’ve had substance abuse challenges and just the power of their stories to help others and help them recover. It’s the paradigm that’s incredible, and just the title of your book, From Chains to Saved, that is such a powerful concept. But before we get into what you do now, I’d love to go into a bit of the backstory of the threads of Adam and what made you who you were growing up. What was a young Adam Gunton like?

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, absolutely. Growing up I was like middle America golden boy. I started out having straight A grades. I was the home run derby hitter at the Little League World Series in eighth grade. My football team won state every year in Little League, and I won state in wrestling in Little League. And then I went to a school that everybody’s heard of. I went to Columbine High School and I was the defensive captain of our state championship football team my senior year, I was the captain of the wrestling team. I even had the opportunity of taking three Broncos cheerleaders to my senior year homecoming.

So by all extents and purposes, I was living the teenage dream, but the issue was that I was putting on a facade and hiding a deep, dark secret that had been growing since I was 12 years old when someone introduced me to cocaine. And it hit a peak my freshman year of college. And that’s when things just kind of changed for me. It was no longer just having fun. I wasn’t that athlete anymore. And it was as if my whole life went in a totally different direction.

Warwick Fairfax:

What was your upbringing like? Your parents, did you feel like you had a good home and it seemed like life was going pretty well, so just talk about that. Yeah, how was that for you?

Adam Vibe Gunton:

I loved my family. My family loved me. We had a really good upbringing, suburbs, that kind of stuff. My parents never missed a sporting event. My grandparents never missed a sporting event. And when I was 10, I didn’t grow up in a religious household. We didn’t go to church together and that kind of stuff. But when I was really young, I started just knowing that something else was there. Really young, eight, nine years old. And when I was 10, my best friend at the time, Ben, we had a sleepover at my place and I knew that he went to church, I knew his family did that and that kind of stuff. So I started asking him, I was like, “What is God? What is this idea of God?” And he told me, “All I know is that you have to accept Jesus in your heart.”

And right in the basement of my parents’ house, two 10-year-old kids got on their knees in front of each other and he just asked me, “Do you accept Jesus?” And I said, “Yes.” I get chills every time I tell this story because it happens again. And I felt it. I had all the opportunities that I could have dreamed for, all the opportunities you want to give to a kid that you’re raising. And I think that’s why it’s important that my story gets out just as much as everybody else’s story.

A lot of people think that the foundation of addiction or the foundation of alcoholism is you grew up in a broken home and it’s not true. Everybody, by the time they’re 15, about two thirds of students by the time they’re 15, say that they have experienced some kind of real trauma. So I think we need to stop allowing excuses and start taking responsibility in a new way as a society and stop telling addicts, “Yeah, it’s because of your past, the way that you are.” Because it’s not true. I was homeless, an IV drug addict, and I had every opportunity not to be.

Warwick Fairfax:

Was there a time in life in which you were harder on yourself than maybe other addicts might be or, I don’t know if that question makes sense at all or any sense of guilt or…

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, 100%. It makes sense. So there’s two parts of this, because I have seasons to this question. At a part of my recovery, I had this remembering moment of what actually happened. I was introduced to cocaine at 12 years old by someone that was 22. So for this period of time in my recovery, all of a sudden my brain is like, “What did this person do to me? I had all these opportunities and this kind of stuff,” and then I had to have a realization. So the fact that they weren’t in my life anymore for a month after that, a month after he introduced me to it, I kept going with it. When did it become my responsibility? When are my actions my responsibility?

And this goes back to the same thing with the trauma I was just saying. I am not discounting the horrible things that I have heard people have gone through that led them to addiction. I’m just saying whatever it is that led you to it, as soon as you recognize, you can stop blaming it, and you can stop excusing yourself for your actions today. And that’s kind of where I had to get. As soon as my body felt that I could change the way that it feels by instantly just putting something in it, I was like, “What else can I feel like?”

Gary Schneeberger :

And that was a big pivot for you, Adam, wasn’t it? From doing drugs to just kind of party and have a good time and have fun, to what you just described as changing the way you feel. And there was a reason for that pivot that really set your life on the trajectory that made it really hard to come back from. Talk about that a little bit, that pivotal moment where you were still dabbling, I guess, on the edges of things and then something happened in your life and that set you on the express train, if you will.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

It was September 28th, 2008. And I had been out partying and drinking like most nights of my freshman year of college, when I woke up to my phone ringing and vibrating down by my leg, and I swam through the soft sheets to find my hard phone with the bright screen that read 4:47 AM and my best friend Chucker was calling me. And I remember having the conscious choice that I could either answer the phone I always do with, “Hey, what’s up Chuck?” Or I could answer the way I was feeling with, “Ugh, hello?” And in my still drunken state, I chose the latter, to which a soft voice replied, “Hey, what’s up?”

“Why are you calling me this late?”

“I was just calling to say hi.”

“Don’t call me this late again.” And I hung up on him, and he shot himself. And nearly a decade after that experience, I couldn’t share that phone call with anyone. As I bottled it down deeper and deeper and deeper with drugs and alcohol, they were no longer the way to party and have fun. I had to drink in order to be around the funeral as people were hugging me and consoling me. And inside I’m telling myself, “This is my fault.” And that’s where I started learning all the things that I am ashamed of in myself, all the negative feelings, all of the worries and anxieties and things.

I can mask those with drugs and alcohol. I can go to this club and be a little high and have some drinks. I can talk to everybody, I can dance with that pretty girl over there. And before that moment, I was doing it, experimenting, having fun, that kind of stuff. But when that happened, the only coping mechanism that I had was drugs and alcohol. I hadn’t been taught what to do when a traumatic event happens. So that led me all the way down to being homeless and 86ed from a homeless shelter, because I got to a point where I was hopelessly addicted. The drugs and alcohol weren’t working anymore. They were causing the problems instead of solving the problems. And then by that point, when I realized this isn’t working anymore, I found that I couldn’t stop, which is a really scary place for someone to be.

Gary Schneeberger :

Listeners may know this about me because I did an episode of the show where I was the interviewee, Adam, where Warwick interviewed me about my life’s journey. And you and I talked about this when we talked before we started recording this episode. I have an alcoholic past; in fact, I told you that I was going to wear a special thing. Well, this hat that I’m wearing is a hat that I had made by a Hollywood hat maker to look exactly like the hat that Warren Beatty wore in Dick Tracy. It was my gift to myself from my 25th sober anniversary, which was last April. When this show comes out, it will be 26 and four days, 26 years and four days since I have gotten sober.

So I say all that to say one of the things that you’re talking about about letting guilt go, one of the things I remember from AA when I started there was, we can only deal with our side of the street. We’re only responsible for our side of the street. We’re not responsible for what other people do. We’re responsible for what we do and we have to forgive ourselves as we go through that. That had to have been a difficult process as you we’re walking it out.

One of the reasons I think it didn’t happen to you as immediately as it might have happened otherwise, there’s the grips of the addiction, but you were a high functioning addict, right? For the longest time you weren’t the guy who got booted out of the homeless shelter. You were highly functioning. Talk about that a little bit, that period, because that makes it harder. I was like that too, where it didn’t affect my life in the sense of I couldn’t hold a job or I couldn’t keep relationships. I could do those things. Talk about how that played out for you and why that made it so difficult to even know that you needed to find help.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

That’s a deep question with a lot of different paths because after Chuck’s suicide, I found Oxycontin and then had a prescription for it for 250 milligrams a day. And that’s what started opiate addiction for me. And when I moved over to heroin, I had started this company, this pest control company, and I had never sold anything before. I had sold drugs before, but not as a business. So had never sold anything before professionally. And my partner and I started it out of his apartment with a truck and some pesticides and a dream. And the first year that we went out, he was doing servicing. I was going door to door and selling. I just figured it out. And I sold 967 accounts my first year selling door to door. And during that time, I had a needle in my arm. The reason why I believe I was successful with sales, and what I try to let people know is the addiction doesn’t say who the person is, because I never lost my heart for people.

I wasn’t a liar. I wasn’t somebody that would manipulate somebody into sales. The reason why people would do business with me is because I would learn what I’m doing to the best of my ability so that every question they ask me, I can answer honestly. And that bled into every single sales job I had. I broke records in two different industries, in three different states for selling DirecTV, Dish Network. One time during my addiction, I wanted to show people that it didn’t matter what you’re selling on the doors. And I decided to show someone that by not knowing anything about solar and going out for a day with him and showing him that I could close some solar.

We got three deals in four hours for solar, because I wanted to show, it’s not about figuring out the exact process of what you need to say to people. It’s about loving people, finding the people that can actually use your service. When you knock on the door, have something that you can find if you can help them within 15, 30 seconds, if you can’t wish them well. And it was difficult being so good at that and a drug addict because I was able to feed my addiction very well also.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s just fascinating in that you weren’t really a different person. You were caring, you were loving others, you were successful professionally. Were you thinking to yourself, “Well, I got this drug addiction, but life’s not that bad.” Does it make harder being a pretty high functioning addict, if you will? Because maybe I guess it got worse, but at one point life wasn’t that bad.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Having a heroin addiction, an IV heroin addiction, it’s always bad. It’s always bad. It’s so up and down all the time, that first year that I’m doing all that success on the doors, everybody’s seeing the pest control company, but nobody’s seeing that every penny I’m making is going in my arm and I’m living in an apartment that’s really dirty. It’s basically I’m living like a junkie, but same as the athlete in high school. I’m putting out this really good show, but nobody sees where I’m actually living. Nobody sees what I’m actually doing back here.

It became a pattern. And it was almost like I needed to put that face on for people. I needed people to value me because I knew I was of no value and I had different ways to prove it. And one of them, I never had to worry, and I never have to worry about ever getting a job. I can go get a sales job at any point in my life if I ever needed to. And they loved working with me. They loved it because I was able to come and break records, do really well for their company and they supported me.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s a scary image you’ve just portrayed. You’ve got the public Adam that people think, “Yeah, he breaks records, he’s a nice guy, closes sales, wonderful guy to work with.” And then the private Adam, which you just sort of felt broken and worthless and unable to stop this addiction and eating up all your money. There were two different Adams. That must have been an incredibly difficult thing to wrestle with. So I know there was a turnaround, but from what I understand, things did get worse, which is hard to, how could it be worse? But talk about that, how it went from, you had this dual life that was… I don’t know if it was functioning, but maybe on some level you were functioning in some strange way. But talk about how it did get a bit worse.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

In 2015, on November 6th, early morning hours, November 6th, 2015, I was in Montana and I was selling door to door. And that night I had gone over to my then girlfriend’s aunt’s house where she was staying and I was kind of hiding my drug use from her. Even I had told her that I had stopped and that kind of stuff. And I left her house, went around the corner and I made up a shot and I shot up. And at first got really upset because I thought it was bunk because I didn’t feel anything. But then the next thing I know, I’m waking up on the asphalt in a pile of glass, blue and red lights everywhere and police and medics around me. And this was before everybody knew about fentanyl. This was at the very beginning of it when they were still selling it as heroin.

So I overdosed on fentanyl and at the time there wasn’t enough knowledge about it and that kind of stuff to find me support. And I was put into the criminal justice system. I didn’t go to prison, I didn’t go to jail for very long, but I was on probation. I got a felony for having a really little amount of drugs and I was sick. It was my medicine. You would think that being in a courtroom facing five years in prison and watching body cam footage of your own dead body would make you stop. But I suffered for two more years after that. I was seeking treatment. There was no treatment for me. My probation officer was seeking me treatment because I was honest. I was honest.

By this time, 2015, 16, 17, I was honest with everyone. I couldn’t hide it anymore. I actually wanted help the whole time. And I couldn’t get into a treatment and it just kept going. I was going to 12 step meetings every day. I was going to church every Saturday and Sunday, a Bible study every Tuesday. And I was consistently just getting worse and worse and worse. I had quit my door-to-door job because I knew that I’m just enabling myself. These companies now give me an apartment or they give me a house, they pay all my bills. Plus they give me a check every week as I’m selling. And I was being mentored by the second fastest growing CEO of that year on Inc 500. And the reason why he decided to mentor me is because when I came up to him, I said, “I’m a drug addict. I have a good heart and I want to help people. I don’t know what to do.”

So he started talking to me every day and it ended up where I called him on the floor of this corporate apartment that he had gotten me telling him, “I’m going to kill myself. I can’t do this anymore.” And he talked me down and I decided to quit my job, quit everything and do whatever it takes to find recovery. Moved into a homeless shelter. You’ve ever heard, “You got to let him hit rock bottom?” Rock bottom is a myth. It is a myth. It does not exist. Because I thought it was rock bottom back in 2013 when I had that pest control company and I was sitting in that apartment, I was telling you about, writing a suicide note on my iPad and then shooting up, trying to kill myself. Then I thought it was rock bottom when I was in a homeless shelter and I was on my knees praying and I look over and I’m in a homeless shelter with about 80 other men in a room. And I thought that was rock bottom.

Then I got 86-ed from the homeless shelter to where I’m super homeless and I can’t even go back to the homeless shelter to eat lunch. And I thought that was rock bottom. And it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And for me, I just consistently was making these plans on how I’m going to make this work. If I go to this meeting and this meeting and this meeting, if I get this guy to sponsor me and this guy to mentor me and all these different things, then I’m going to make it work. And I couldn’t get it.

It just got to a point where I literally gave up, I gave up, I wanted to die. I asked God specifically, “Please just let me die. I’m not going to these meetings. I’m not going to church anymore. I’m not going to Bible study. Please just let me die.” And when I said that to him, I was so honest, I really didn’t want my life anymore. And that’s when he showed up and that’s when I actually had the willingness to listen to what he wants me to do and change my life.

Warwick Fairfax:

It seems like up to that point we sometimes talk about when you’re at the bottom of the pit, what you are saying is there was no bottom. It was like a black hole. It sucks you in. There’s no way out and there is no bottom. There’s endless degrees of down and darkness. There’s an infinite array of more darkness, more pain, and no hope, no light. As we know from black holes. There is no escape once you go in there, even light can’t escape. Is that fair, that sounds like that’s where you’re at and that’s probably why you were thinking of suicide because you’re thinking, “Oh, it can get worse.” Even when you couldn’t even get to a homeless shelter, you were probably thinking, “Oh absolutely, it can get a lot worse than this.” At that point that’s probably what you were thinking. Is that fair?

Adam Vibe Gunton:

That’s exactly what – exactly. And that’s what scares me so much about ever going back in any way because people will say, “I know I can’t relapse,” because they’ll die. I’m like, “I know I can’t relapse because I don’t know what’s going to happen.” And I know that I got to a point where I wanted to die but I couldn’t die and I couldn’t quit using. So I don’t ever want to go back because it’s so scary not knowing how bad it gets.

Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, was there any sign that after being arrested that you’d pivoted from this double life? The public Adam and the private, you were one Adam, maybe a messed up hurting Adam, but one Adam. As you were falling down this bottomless pit, at least your arms were flailing to try and get a handhold on the stones maybe before you weren’t even trying to grab the stones, but at least you were trying. Did it feel like there was a small shift, you were being honest, you were being one Adam and at least you were trying?

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, 100%, because then my boss had to bail me out of jail. That’s a hard phone call when someone doesn’t know you’re a drug addict to say, “Yeah, I am in jail because I overdosed.” That’s a hard phone call. Then everybody knows. And at that same time, I used to be able to go to different states and would have my own technician because I could fill the technician’s schedule up. He wouldn’t have to have a whole team. So I would be able to go wherever I wanted. My technician, God bless him, he didn’t understand anything about addiction and he just quit. And he was like, “I don’t want anything to do with him. I don’t ever want to talk to him again. Addicts are this and this and that.” So all of a sudden my worst fear was added onto because someone actually left me because of it.

But then also there was this other group of people that were fully supportive, came and bailed me out, still kept me in a hotel, talked to me every day. And yes, I was working for him. But I could tell there was a difference. It wasn’t just because I was working for him. Because he knew me. He knew that I sell to love people. I do this because I love people. And that’s interesting. I wish everybody, and it’s getting better and better and better, but people should know that addicts are very sick, they’re very sick. They’re not bad people. And some people are bad people whether they’re addicted or not. So I believe in love and I hope that everybody listening to this shows someone love that they might not have before.

Gary Schneeberger:

And you have a friend that you had at that time. It’s a great segue. Who was that kind of person who didn’t try to fix you, quote unquote, who just walked alongside you. If you needed a ride somewhere, he gave you a ride somewhere. If you needed something, he gave you something. He treated you not like your disease, he treated you like his friend. And that really was the start of the miraculous healing from addiction that you encountered. Talk about that, what that meant to have someone who just looked at Adam as Adam, not Adam as a problem to be solved.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

And you put that so perfectly. My best friend, Brendan, he was the Bible study leader of the bible study I went to every Tuesday for months before I found recovery. He took me to church, he would pick me up from the homeless shelter, take me to church, Bible study, coffee, lunch, whatever. And then when I was kicked out of there, he would pick me up from the streets wherever I was at, make sure that I was getting to Bible study, make sure I was getting to church and that kind of stuff. And he was the only person in my life, throughout my entire addiction, that never gave me advice about how to stop, advice about what I need to do to change. He just expressed love the way that he knew he was supposed to from God. He just walked with me through this and it took me months.

He baptized me in the Yellowstone River August 28th, 2017 and I didn’t get sober until November 6th, 2017. That’s saying something when someone is just walking with someone. Because in reality, we have to really understand our own inadequacy sometimes. We don’t know everything that’s needed for someone else’s life. And if you can recognize that love is the thing that someone needs and you just express the love because you want to express love to them, that’s when they can find the change themselves.

Can you imagine telling an alcoholic that’s in his alcoholism these days, “Why don’t you go to AA and do the 12 steps?” Do you think there’s any alcoholic on the planet that’s never heard that, or that isn’t thinking that in the back of their head? We know, we know, dude. You’re just bashing me more and more. And that’s what I coach people also that have someone in their life that is addicted. I tell them, don’t bring it up until they ask you because there’s no reason to. Just love them. Text them every week and just let them know how much you love them, that kind of stuff because you’ll become a safe place for them to come to when they’re ready.

Warwick Fairfax:

Humans don’t often have that unconditional love in which they love you right or wrong, slow to condemn, quick to love, quick to forgive, quick to understand. That’s not very human for most of us, but it sounds like this friend Brendan was a lot of that.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

And I think you actually hit the nail on the head that I haven’t put together before. It’s not a human trait. It’s not a normal human trait to unconditionally love somebody, not judge them, not condemn them, and to see them as the value within them. And how can you possibly get that except from getting that from God. You have to learn how God sees people in order to see people how God sees people. And what he did and what was so different, it was as if he was on a mission from God. It was as if as he was walking, he knew that what he was doing was what he was supposed to do from God. And it wasn’t something where he needed to be the one that was the one that gave Adam the advice that got him clean. He understood that ultimately it was going to be God.

And he believed also. I believed that he believed the entire time for me also. But he didn’t have expectations of me. He didn’t expect this thing from me this month and do this in order for me to keep loving you. No, he was just there. I express that in every way that I can to people now. And it’s a difficult thing to do. Like you’re saying, it’s not really human and especially when you get messages from everybody and you’re getting a bunch of them per month.

A way that I express it now is every single email, every single message that I get from someone, I personally speak with them. I personally ask them what’s going on in their life. I personally ask them questions and I personally tell them what I would do in those shoes because I’ve been through it. Or I ask them, “How can I support you? What do you need?” And the interesting thing is that it feels better being the person loving than the person being loved. It’s this paradox, this spiritual paradox where you will always be more fulfilled by showing the love than receiving the love. And it’s almost as if it’s because you’re getting the infinite from above and expressing exactly how you can in your human.

Gary Schneeberger:

Speaking of getting the infinite from above, great pivot point here. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the grip of your addiction and the way that it affected your life, but here’s the pivot point. From above came change. Walk us through that. Let’s get into both your getting clean, your getting saved and then getting commissioned to go out and doing what you’re doing right now with your foundation.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, I started it a little bit earlier when I was sitting in a car that a girl let me borrow and it wasn’t stolen, but I did have to start it with a screwdriver because that’s how we lived back then. But I’m sitting in this car before Bible study and I had this epiphany that I have tried everything here. I have literally tried everything there is here to quit. And I sat back in the seat and I audibly said to God, “I’m done. I’m not going to Bible study, I’m not going to church. I’m not going to these meetings anymore. Please just let me die.” And right when I said that I heard a whisper in my heart. I don’t hear the audible out here, it’s as if he is right here in my heart. And he said, “It’s time, go.” And at that moment you would think I was like, yay, excited.

But I knew it was God. And my immediate reaction was anger at him because what’s different about this time? What’s different about this time than all the times that I dumped my dope in the toilet saying I’m never going to use again and then wake up and pawn my TV? What’s different about this time? So I’m in this car and I’m screaming at him and I’m crying like, “Please just let me die. Please just let me die.” And I’m doing this for a few minutes. And then when I start calming down, he just repeats himself in that still soft voice. And he said, “It’s time. Go.” And again, I didn’t get this overwhelming sense of power or anything, but I just got this sense of willingness that I’d never had before. Okay, I’m going to let go of all my plans of two meetings a day and church every Saturday and Sunday and this person sponsoring me, I’m going to let go all of that and let you take total control.

And I made that decision right there in that car with him alone. And I go to the Bible study, I’m 12 minutes late, I open the doors, I bust them open and they’re in the middle of prayer and I interrupt prayer and I dropped down on my knees and I throw my hands up. I’m like, “Guys, I used again. I can’t stop. Please help me, please help me.” And I’m 148 pounds at the time, I’m 215 now. I’m crying, I’m a mess. I was just screaming and crying with God. And Brendan, same exact Brendan, walks over to me and he pats me. He’s like, “Hey bro, let’s just get through Bible study.” He walks me over and we go through Bible study.

At the end when everybody was leaving, one of the elders, Carmen, comes up to me and he says, “Hey bro, I just got a word. I need to pray for you.” I was like, “Okay.” And he sits me down on this ottoman in the middle of the room and he stands in front of me. And Brendan is standing behind me to the right. And George, another elder is standing next to him. And for the first time in my life, this man put a hand on my shoulder. He looked me in the eyes and he started to speaking to spirits in the name of Jesus and telling them to leave me.

At that moment, I’m literally feeling weight coming off of my shoulders. I’m feeling as if I’m getting loosened from things. And after this event, I actually make it five days clean, which at the time is a total miracle. We can’t do that in those grips. And Brendan, again, Brendan comes and picks me up, takes me to IHOP, International House of Pancakes, and we’re having breakfast and I’m sitting there and I’m talking to him and everything, I’m all excited. I’m like, “Dude, I’m actually going to do it. I have five days.” He’s like, “Okay bro, yeah, let’s go.”

And I get this text message on my phone and I open it up because I just have this little flip phone and it’s from my dope dealer. And he’s like, “Hey bro, I just got some new stuff. It’s fire. I’ll give you a free 20 to try out.” And right when I read it, I felt the spirit go in through the top of my head all the way through my body. My toes were tingling, my fingers were tingling, I lost my peripheral vision. All I could see was the phone and my thumbs just started texting back and it was in King James. It was like “Ye shall not text me again. Thou has texted me for the last time.”

Then when I finish the text, I feel it, leave me again. My vision comes back. I’m like, “What the heck?” And I’m looking at the phone and I show it to Brendan. I was like, “Dude, that was not me.” I was like, “That was not me. I don’t know what that was.” He was like, “Okay.” And I pushed send, I close it and I’m looking down at my pocket. I was like, “Dude, I don’t know what that was. I don’t know who that was.” And I look back up and Jesus is sitting across from me. The entire restaurant had completely disappeared, it was as if I went into a trance. There was a bright light coming from behind him. He was smiling at me. I immediately knew who it was, immediately knew it was happening. And the only thing that I can compare that moment to was when I used to shoot up heroin, when all those negative thoughts and those identities that I’ve been struggling with and the guilt and the shame and all this stuff is clouding my mind and then it all goes away with one warm flood.

But the difference of this moment is all that negative stuff flowed out of me. And immediately I was overwhelmed with a sense of purpose and value and love and identity and peace in less than a second. And I immediately fell my face to the table, my hand up. I said, “Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God.” I came back up and he was gone. And I believe 100% in instant healing, putting your hands on somebody and they’re healed and Jesus does that. That didn’t happen for me. And I believe it’s for a reason. For the next three weeks, I was craving, withdrawing, shaking every day, needing dope because this is the first time I’ve gone this long since I was 12 years old. And the only thing that helped me through that time, the only time I got relief from those shakes and the cravings was when I was sitting down with another person that suffered the same disease as me who was helping me find recovery.

I embarked on the 12 steps. When I was actually sitting down and writing out my fourth step, I spent all my hours working my steps. When I was actually sitting down and writing it, I didn’t have the cravings, I didn’t have the withdrawals for whatever reason. I did my first ever fifth step on day 25. And this whole time my sponsor’s come in and pick me up every morning from the sober living house at 6:30 AM. On day 26, he comes and picks me up and we’re on the way to go do the work in his 1983 mailman Jeep. And I’m looking over at this beautiful sunrise and for the first time since I was 12 years old, I had no desire to drink or use and it hasn’t returned since.

It was as if one day my mind is going this way, “I need dope. There’s nothing I can do, I’m craving.” And then all of a sudden just a completely different thought pattern. I actually don’t desire it. What is this? And when I actually experienced that freedom that I wanted to die because I didn’t think it was available to me, as soon as I accessed that and knew it was available, I knew it was my life’s purpose to get as many people to find that freedom as possible and to help as many people find it in whatever way I possibly could. And at the beginning of my recovery, again, I found a lot of professional success. I built that company. That was in 2018, they did $48,000. I came on as chief marketing officer in March of 2019 and we did $1.3 million the rest of the year and then we doubled the following year also. So I’m having a lot of success in early recovery.

I’m in my apartment right before two years clean and sober, new apartment, new car, new motorcycle. I was homeless a year and a half ago and I had a thought that I wanted to kill myself. Like, “What the heck? I made it, what is going on?” And as soon as I felt that though I have these guards up from it, I know that’s not me. I know those are not my thoughts now. So I got up and I went over to my bed, dropped on my knees, and I started praying deep those deep prayers like, “God, I’m sick of this. Show me what you have me here to do.” And just started praying, “Help, I want to help millions of people, God. Show me what to do.” Go to sleep, wake up in the morning, do the same prayer, and five minutes later I’m eating breakfast and I’m on Instagram and I see this ad, never seen this ad before and it’s for a conference for how to bring God into your business.

I was like, “If that’s not an answer, I don’t know what is. So I click on it, I buy a ticket and I go out to this conference in Vacaville, California. And the first night, I don’t know anybody there, there’s 1500 Christian entrepreneurs there. And the first night Jesus Culture is playing on the stage and I’m right in front and I’m worshiping and just getting in it with God. And then I hear that same voice from the car before Bible study and it said, “Your new company’s called Recovered on Purpose.” And I looked up, I was like, “That’s good.” And I pull out my phone and I get the domain right there, recoveredonpurpose.com, dot org. And then I check the Secretary of State. I’m super excited. And then a couple days later, this speaker comes up on stage and is talking about publishing a book, how to self-publish a book and all these different things.

And I’m rigorously taking notes and I’ve always wanted to write a book. Same voice again. “If you publish your book for your two years clean and sober, you’re going to inspire so many others to do the same. I was like, my two years, that’s in five weeks. And I was like, but I know that voice. I know that voice. And anybody listening, when you hear that voice, follow. Whatever you think your plans are and whatever you think your limits are, that voice has none of them. He doesn’t have limits and he has plans we can’t conceive. So I go home, I let my business partners know, “Hey, I need to take a few weeks off,” and I turn my phone off and for the first couple days I know that I’m not going to be able to just sit down and figure out writing a book.

I have five weeks. So what I do is on this giant whiteboard, I start dumping out every experience for my life, every possible memory I have of stories, of experiences, of things. And I write them all out in five words or less just so I can remember what they are. Write them all out. And then I think, okay, what do I want my book to actually say? I know I want to share my recovery story, but my recovery story could share so many different things. What do I want it to share? In mine, I wanted to share with people the reality of the spiritual realm and my testimony of Jesus.

So I take this list of all these stories and I start picking the ones out that would point to that message and I start putting them on this other whiteboard. Then I make a mind map. You know how it’ll make a story. And then I sit down with a checklist and I write each one, one by one by one by one by one. And then I published From Chains to Saved on November 6th, 2019, for my two years clean and sober. It became a number one bestseller. I was able to outsell the Big Book for a month, which the Big Book saved my butt and the Bible saved my soul.

Warwick Fairfax:

Just for those who may not know, just say what the Big Book is because you guys know, but everybody might not.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yep. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I’m okay. I don’t say that I’m a member of any specific fellowship, but I do work out of that thing because it worked for me. I sit down and I read it with people and I do the work with it exactly how it says to do it in there and it works. So I published that book. And what I didn’t realize during this whole process is that that way that I just wrote that book became exactly the foundation of Recovered on Purpose and how I coach others to share their story. Because when you get up and you share a recovery story, what do you want it to share? Do you just want to tell your story? Or do you want to specifically tell women out there that have lost their kids in their addiction, who feel hopeless that they’re never going to get them back, how you lost your kids and you got them back two and a half years into recovery.

And now you’re getting married and you, you’re doing podcasts and you’re doing all this stuff. Do you want to share that specific message or do you want to make sure that you share your testimony of Jesus? And there’s all kinds of different ways to share a story. And now we’re got a lot of people out there sharing their stories. I’ve got someone that’s given her first professional speech this month to a bunch of judges and lawyers and teachers who are leaders of at-risk youth because she was an at-risk youth, but now she’s going to be speaking to them and teaching them how to help the kids that they’re serving.

There’s so many of us in recovery. And to be clear, I love every single one of the fellowships out there that are helping people. I love every single member of every single fellowship. I believe that it is outdated, the way that you expect to help people waiting in a room for them to walk in. We have social media, we have podcasts, we have books, we have videos. I have a video on YouTube that has reached over 750,000 people. And the amount of emails I’ve gotten from people, “Hey, how did you do it? I’m looking for help,” and this kind of stuff. Hey, send them a link to the fellowships near them, send them a link to treatment near them. We have so many different tools at our disposal in this season of the world. We need to take advantage of them. And that’s what Recovered on Purpose is about. We get our stories out to reach the people that don’t know that the freedom is available to them.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s so inspiring what you’re sharing, Adam. I just want to go back for a moment to that time in the car and IHOP. It seems like you tried everything, mentors, advisors, you were falling through this bottomless pit. There was no hope. Maybe it’s like the walls were glass, there was nothing to hold onto, but yet somehow you found faith, you found God. That provided a bottom to the pit and more than just the bottom, lifted you up. It seemed like, if I’m getting this right, God was able to help you when nothing else worked. The other thing that I know it’s hard for many of us to fully grapple with, I know in my church and others this whole concept of spiritual warfare, which is very difficult to understand and the word is controversial maybe, but there’s different ways of looking at it.

But I guess more broadly, I think many people would think there are forces for good and forces for darkness. And I think we all have moments in our lives where there is good thoughts that enter our minds and there’s not so good thoughts. And for people of faith, the tools we use is prayer and the Bible. Say, “I don’t know where this came from, but it’s going.” So it sounds like you faced those thoughts. People talk about inner demons and it doesn’t really matter for the purpose of our conversation where it all comes from. But not only did you have faith, you found a tool to deal with your inner demons, inner darkness, what have you, that you didn’t have before. So talk about, that was the reason for the change for you.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

The whole time, I know God exists. There was even a time in my addiction where I was writing prayers to him to quit and I even wrote my own 12 step program, thinking I might be able to do it just with God. But I had this immense amount of shame and guilt because I loved him so much and I knew that there was no way he could love me because of the way that I was being. And that shifted in my first 30 days of recovery. I remember having this, I was in a meeting and I don’t know what happened, but it was like my thought process just clicked like, oh my gosh, God loved me first. He loved me before I even accepted him.

Then I just started going through all this stuff. I was like, he loved me the whole time. There’s nothing I have to do to earn his love. There’s nothing I can do to earn his love. And when I realized that, I can know that that solves all my problems, not just my inner demons. It solves all my problems. And I can always go back to a place where the same love from Brendan, it had to be expressed to me through Brendan for me to get it, but now I spent time with him every morning, I need to fill myself up with that love that I know exists.

Gary Schneeberger:

I say all the time to guests, we always go by content, not the clock, but we’re also mindful that guests have lives and they have places to go. Tell listeners how they can find out more about Recovered on Purpose and then we’ll let Warwick ask more questions for as long as you can stay with us.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

And I appreciate that and I’m loving this conversation, loving this conversation. On Facebook, Recovered on Purpose. I do a lot of stuff on there. I do the Recovered on Purpose show and do some posts on there and stuff. And I reply to every message on there. And if you’re in recovery, I made a free relapse prevention worksheet and you can fill it out on your phone or your laptop, your tablet or whatever. Made it super simple at recoveredonpurpose.org. And I give my book away, a digital and audio copy that I read to you, and that’s on recoveredonpurpose.org as well.

Warwick Fairfax:

Adam, one of the things I love about Recovered on Purpose, and I loved the title, is your thought about the power of addicts sharing their stories to help others. You mentioned, I think that 9% of addicts coming out of rehab make it sober a year. So relapse is sadly all too common and maybe the norm, but just talk about how the power of giving, of loving others through sharing their stories is a game changer to change those stats, which I think is the core tenet of Recovered on Purpose. Talk about how the power of sharing their stories changes addicts lives and changes others’ lives.

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, for instance, if you have a school that you’re speaking at next week, you have this big podcast you’re doing three weeks from now and you have a TEDx talk that’s coming up in October, how are you going to be thinking about using drugs? You are looking forward to so many different things and you’re thinking about the people that you can help. You’re constantly thinking about this message that you’re going to be able to express to the world and help people with, you know, have this purpose. And that’s what I think is lacking in the recovery world.

We are really grateful to find recovery and we forget how hard it was to find it, how much work we had to do to find it. And we should be working equally as hard or more hard to help others find it. Even if you’re not in recovery, if you’re not an addict, there is something that you have been through. And this is something I tell everybody, if you have been through something that you thought was going to break you and you made it through, there is somebody going through that thing right now that needs your message for hope, the exact same thing that broke you, that you healed from, and it can become your superpower.

Warwick Fairfax:

Let me ask one final quick question. There may be somebody today that feels, I usually say at the bottom of the pit, but let’s, I think, use your perspective, which is haunting. They may feel like they’re falling through a bottomless pit. There is no bottom, there is no hope, there is no light. Suicide may feel like for them the only option, but they’re in this ever falling bottomless pit. What would a word of hope be for somebody that maybe today they’re in that situation and they may be an addict or some other challenge, which they’re just in endless free fall. What would a word of hope be for that person?

Adam Vibe Gunton:

Well, it’s a lie. It’s a lie to think that there is no way out. And it’s a really powerful thing to take responsibility. And I’m not saying it’s not hard what you’re going through. I’m not saying that you don’t deserve the grace that you need right now, but all grace to you, all love to you. And take the responsibility to learn from whatever’s going on right now and take the steps that are going to pull you out of it. If that means calling someone in your life that could help you through this, if that means reading a book that you think might give you some wisdom around it. If that means going back to church, just walk in. The first step towards really changing is deciding to take the first step. Whatever it is in your situation, this is your call to take it.

Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough, listener, to know when the last word on a subject has been spoken. And Adam Vibe Gunton, Vibe is not his middle name. I asked him, did Mr. And Mrs. Gunton name you Vibe? And he said, no. It’s a nickname that helps him differentiate himself between another guy. And it’s kind of cool because he is got a vibe to him, which is nice. So until we are together the next time, listener, please remember, we understand. You heard it in this episode. Your crucibles are difficult, but you know what? They’re not the end of your story.

In fact, if you learn the lessons of them, if you apply the lessons of them, they can become a great new chapter in your story, as it’s become in Adam’s life, as it’s become in Warwick’s life, and my own life. Because what ends up happening, if you learn the lessons of those crucibles and move forward, the destination that you’re headed to is the best of all because it is a life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.