Colton recently finished the restoration program at Adult & Teen Challenge Ohio Valley and says his relationship with God sustains everything else in his life.
Colton, 30, a native of Freemont, Ohio, graduated in 2015 and stayed sober for four years, but he fell back into his old lifestyle using and selling drugs.
He realized he needed help about six months ago and returned to ATCOV and completed the program.
“I think I got to the point of just being tired of living the lifestyle I was living,” he said.
His fiancée and his daughter were dragged into his struggle, too, and that’s part of the reason he sought help.
Colton started shooting heroin when he was 15, but he was drinking and snorting pain pills before that. Drugs became his focus. Now that he’s clean, he feels better than he has in a long time. He wants to earn a degree.
“I plan on going to school to become a pastor, hopefully get a pastoral degree,” Colton said. He knew back in 2015 that he was called to ministry. Soon after completing the ATCOV program the first time, however, he got married and had four children – three with his now ex-wife and one with his fiancée. He drifted away from church and from attending recovery meetings.
“I just kind of got caught up in being a husband, a dad, and a provider so I just worked full time,” Colton said. “I worked a lot and strayed away from everything I felt that I was called to do.”
His fiancée is thrilled and proud of his progress. “It’s been a recovery process not only for me, but for her too, and everything that she’s experienced with me and gone through this addiction with me,” Colton said.
Before coming to ATCOV, he had no foundation in Christianity or relationship with God. “Teen Challenge, back in 2014-2015, was really the first time where I got that introduction to who the Lord was,” he said. “After I made that initial contact with God, it really stirred something up inside me to know more.”
Today, he describes his relationship with God as “genuine and intimate” and that’s made all the difference. “That’s what it boils down to for me, it’s everything,” he said. “It really does come first and that’s really what the program teaches you. It teaches you that what you build on and what you build with sustains you and keeps you. Just developing that one-on-one relationship. I understand today that if I don’t have that and that’s not my single focus then everything else just crumbles around me.”
