NASHVILLE — Eddie Chisholm found himself in the back of a patrol car. Handcuffed. High. Suicidal.
In 2011, he had just tried to end his life by overdosing on crack cocaine.
“I was screaming for help,” he recalled. He called his friend Ron Frost and pastor John Roebuck. They called the police.
“I stayed in jail for seven days and really didn’t think I was going to jail at first,” Chisholm said. “Ron was at the house and he said, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ And I looked at Ron and said, ‘How in the hell is it going to be okay? I’m going to jail.’”
Too many stories like this end in tragedy. But Chisholm’s didn’t.
“I fought all addictions. I kind of call myself the A-to-Z guy,” he said. “If it started with an A or a Z, everything in between: gambling, food, sex, drugs, alcohol, anger, resentment, everything.”
He had been struggling with addictions since early in life, and in 2003 turned to Narcotics Anonymous in hopes of getting clean, a fight he waged for eight years before relapsing.
That moment in the patrol car, however, started something new. After his release from jail, Chisholm searched for faith-based programs and found Celebrate Recovery.
“I was still cloudy at that time, but I knew I had to do something different,” he said.
The group was meeting at Oak Hill Assembly of God. Frost dropped Chisholm off that first Monday night, and Chisholm kept coming back.
Today, Chisholm is 15 years sober — still in recovery — and leads the Celebrate Recovery group at Woodmont Baptist Church in Nashville.
“We listen to everybody. Most addicts just need somebody to listen to them,” he said. “Being in recovery and being around recovery since about 2003, I’ve seen a lot. I’ve lost a lot of friends to overdoses.”
Celebrate Recovery is a Christ-centered, 12-step program built around 26 lessons and eight principles that meets once a week. Participants collect chips for every month of sobriety, a tangible marker of progress.
“The most encouraging thing is when you see people come in and pick up that blue chip, which is the surrender chip,” Chisholm explained. “Then in 30 days they pick up another chip, and in 30 more days it’s a 60-day chip, and we call it a ‘celebration.’”
The one-year chips draw the biggest cheers. But recovery, as Chisholm and Frost — who co-leads the group — are quick to point out, rarely follows a straight line. People stay anywhere from six months to years, which is why the two men describe the group as a “forever family.”
“It may not be the family that you grew up in, but it’s folks that you can talk to about what you’re struggling with and what you’re dealing with,” Frost said.
That family keeps growing. People from one of Woodmont’s step-study groups, for example, have gone on to start their own groups at Hermitage United Methodist Church and McKendree United Methodist Church.
On a typical Monday night at Woodmont, about 40 people — men and women ranging in age from 18 to 92 — gather to work through addictions that run the full spectrum: alcohol, opioids, anger, overeating, and codependency.
Pornography, Chisholm and Frost say, may be the most common struggle they see, with opioids and alcohol close behind.
One persistent challenge is getting people through the church doors in the first place. Even those who attend services regularly often hesitate to admit to their pastors that they’re struggling.
Frost and Chisholm have addressed this head-on by inviting pastors and youth ministers to share their own stories of isolation, depression, and loneliness — what Chisholm calls the three roots of any addiction.
“Our participants see that and they get some sense that a pastor could hear my story and not look down on me,” Frost said. “I think churches have to be more accommodating to hearing that people have problems.”
The program’s foundation, Frost explained, traces back to when pastor Rick Warren and John Baker designed it around what they called “hurts, habits, and hangups.”
“A lot of the material is really about whether you were dealing with anger, codependency, lack of self-esteem — the root causes that led to addiction in the first place,” Frost said.
“Whether it was shopping, gambling, drugs or alcohol, the intent is using Christ to help you through that. You get to the end of it a better overall person, with a sense of serving back in the faith community somewhere.”
Testimonies are always shared. Wins are always celebrated. The group’s motto says it simply: “We’re going to love you till you can love yourself.”
“Most people come into recovery not loving themselves,” Chisholm said. “We beat ourselves up. We feel like we’re not worthy. But God can forgive us if we do what we’re supposed to do. And we always say it’s OK not to be OK.”
Before the group wraps up each week, they close with one final phrase: “Keep coming back.”
“And that’s one of our main things,” Chisholm said.
He’s heard the dismissive comments over the years.
“Some people will say they’re just a bunch of drunks up there on Monday night,” Chisholm said. “And that hurts. They may have been drunks, they may have been drug addicts, but the misconception is that people can’t change.”
Chisholm knows they can. He’s proof.
“To see how God has blessed me,” he said, “I give Him the glory.” B&R