Second Chances at Emerge:  The Brian Evans Story

Every morning I consider myself blessed to be a parent to my daughter Keara.  A blessing that exists because of people who have helped me on my recovery journey.  Today, I’m doubly blessed as I’m also a part of the amazing mission of Emerge.  If I’ve learned on thing in my personal journey of recovery, it’s the simple fact that I can only keep the peace and joy I have by giving it away.  Serving others in need and treating our fellow human beings with compassion is the currency that leads to true wealth in life.  For those of us in recovery, we know that selfless service is the only way to find real happiness in life.  Keara and I encourage you to invest in this amazing mission!!

>>Brian (& Keara) Evans, Editor for Five Star Marketing

The Power of a Second Chance

Recovering from the horrors of drug addiction — a frail, tattered, lost soul faces insurmountable odds, and unless you’ve been there, I assure you, you have no idea.

The world has rejected you.

Your family has rejected you.

Society doesn’t want you.

You’ve made some incredibly horrible decisions.

A person trying to pick up all the pieces of their life is inclined to think it’d be best if they’d just find a dark hole in the ground to crawl into and die.

Many of us are told this, in fact, when facing the cold hard consequences of our actions in the face of a stern, “tough love” criminal justice system that hasn’t worked for ages in its never-ending quest to keep addicted people locked up for as long as possible.

We are treated like animals. We are told we are worthless. We are told horrible things and looked down upon with utter disdain. For the sake of using, the truth is, many of us have done some horrible things.

We are told we belong behind bars by people wearing badges, people wearing suits and robes, people who are entrusted by society. And because they are so highly-esteemed by society, you had best believe we begin to believe it ourselves. Once we begin believing it, you can bet it becomes true. It becomes a reality. It becomes a wrap.

Nevertheless, I have found that the life of a drug addict doesn’t have to end like this. Recovery is a long journey in which one never “arrives,” in which one is never “cured.” It is a life-long process that only begins when a person has finally come to the end of their old self, finally tired of doing things “their own way” and getting nowhere in life. Once a truly broken soul surrenders their old way of life and sees there are loving people on the other side trying to help them, it’s akin to someone finally “seeing the light.”

There is no end to locking people in cages. You could spend trillions of dollars building bigger prisons and hiring entire armies of prison guards. The system feeds itself. The system is broken. 

However, when you try something different and treat these broken human beings with love and compassion, you get a different result. When you connect them to others who’ve been through the same journey and know how to lead productive lives without the use of drugs — you’d be amazed at what happens.

It’s like a light bulb lighting up. 

It’s like breathing new life into a dead person. Hardened hearts are changed. Lives are rebuilt. Families are reunited and communities are restored. It’s a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

When you see this for yourself, you realize that what we say is true: The opposite of addiction isn’t abstinence. The opposite of addiction is connection and community. And when you plug people like us into the right environment with the right people, that old addict disappears and a brand new human being “Emerges” in their place.

I know this because, by the grace of God, I am one of those people.

If I hadn’t found my way down here to Greene County many years ago and found the amazing recovery community we have down here, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would have been dead years ago.

Coming from a much different community up north, I was shocked to see there were people down here who actually cared about me and wanted to see me get better.

Not only that, but even more surprising was how many of these people had been through the exact same sort of nightmare that I had been through — stuff I can’t even talk about — and there was zero judgment. I have traveled all over the U.S., as a reporter and writer and as a person trapped in drug and alcohol addiction. There is nowhere on earth like Greene County, Ohio. 

Nevertheless, as amazing as the recovery community is here, there has always been one missing piece of the puzzle, one part of the equation out of place — until now.

One of the biggest reasons I have been successful in leaving that old life behind is because I was blessed to find an amazing second-chance employer in Five Star Heating & Cooling Group, which now owns Five Star Plumbing Group, Five Star Mechanical Solutions and Five Star Electrical Group.

All of these companies, in addition to partners like Narrow Path Plumbing and Van Martin Roofing, are second-chance employers who have success rates for rebuilding people’s lives that are utterly mind-blowing. Most treatment centers don’t come anywhere near their success rate. And I thank God every day I was able to connect with them because far too many people I knew didn’t make it, may they rest in peace.

The amazing men who own these companies, Kip Morris, Chris Adams, Doug Van Dyke and their families, are all in long-term recovery themselves. They know the ropes. They’ve waded through these treacherous waters and by the grace of a power much greater than any one of them, they’ve “Emerged” on the other side. These men have already earned their wealth in life. They could have gone off and retired comfortably. However, instead of jetting off to warmer weather and enjoying the fruits of their years of hard work, they put their finances on the line in order to remain on the “firing lines of life” like the good Lord commands us.

In order to reach as many people as possible and fill that missing piece of the recovery equation, the three of them partnered up to purchase the former Greene County Career Center to start the Emerge Recovery & Trade Initiative, which is the first of its kind in the nation.

Since then, as we have worked to nurture this beautiful mission from conception to birth, we’ve had an outpouring of support from community leaders and community members who, like a lot of people, are tired of trying to make this problem go away the hard way.

The old way of locking up people with drug problems has never worked, and will never work. And while treatment is essential, we all know it’s not the end. In addition to treatment and ongoing involvement in recovery programming and mentorship, there is a missing piece of the recovery equation that we believe we have found. In fact, we are certain of it. This missing piece is to train these men and women into skilled trades where workers are sorely needed and to put them to work in careers that give them sustainable incomes.

Only then, when working for second-chance companies and staying connected to like-minded people in recovery, will they be able to become productive members of society where they can clean away the wreckage of their painful pasts and give back to others what was so freely given to them.

In this way, we can move away from a broken system that feeds itself with human suffering and endless amounts of taxpayer money and begin to build an entirely different kind of system — a system that feeds itself with selfless service, kindness and compassion.

Helping our fellow humans and treating them with compassion is, after all, the currency that leads to true wealth in life and in the world around us.

We hope you join us on this journey!

You might be the second-chance someone is waiting for!