You did the hardest thing already. You got clean. But then you're standing there thinking, all I've known is drugs. How do I even get a job?

That's the conversation here. Shayne Weiser knows the work of rebuilding from the ground up. As a young man, legal trouble and a string of bad choices stopped his life cold, and he climbed back from ten dollars an hour into a successful business and a life of purpose.

We get practical. Why your first job doesn't have to be your forever job. Why fourteen dollars an hour beats zero. How to find a mentor and what to actually look for in one. Vocational training, entry-level work, and why companies with real accountability are worth starting at. And the mindset shift underneath all of it, that failure isn't terminal, and the right people in proximity can pull you up to a level you can't reach alone.

We also get into his own story, from losing his license in 1997 to building Glory Ridge Farm out of a thousand dollars and three beehives, and the moment he stopped seeing himself as a failure.

If you're fresh out of a program wondering what comes next, or you love someone who is, this one's for you.

Shayne's work: https://gloryridgefarm.com

If you or someone you love needs help, start here: https://svtc.info/get-help

Rebuilding Life After Addiction is a production of Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge.

🎙️ Host: Justin Franich | Executive Director, Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge
🌐 Full episodes + resources: https://svtc.info/podcast
📖 Faith-based recovery guides: https://svtc.info
🙏 Support this ministry: https://svtc.info/donate
📞 Need help? Call us: 540-213-0571

You did the hardest thing already. You got clean. Then comes the part that rarely gets talked about: the debt, the wrecked credit, the bills you can't look at.

I sat down with my friend Jacob Dobscha, a business insurance agent with LD&B Insurance in Harrisonburg, Virginia, to lay out exactly how you dig out. Not theory. A plan you can start the week you get home.

We cover the whole thing. Where to begin when everything feels like it's on fire. The first $1,000. The debt snowball and why you go after the smallest balance first, ignoring interest rates. What to do when you can't even make your minimums. The emergency fund, retirement, and the long game of owning a paid-off house. And why the same drive you used in active addiction can build something real now that it's pointed in the right direction.

Then Jacob tells a story I won't forget. His mom, a single mother of three, put her whole paycheck in the offering plate the week rent was due. What the church did next is the reason he's spent his life passionate about money. Not to get rich. To be the one who gives.

If you're clean but buried, this is the conversation.

Connect with Jacob Dobscha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobdobscha

If you or someone you love needs help, start here: https://svtc.info/get-help

Rebuilding Life After Addiction is a production of Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge.

🎙️ Host: Justin Franich | Executive Director, Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge
🌐 Full episodes + resources: https://svtc.info/podcast
📖 Faith-based recovery guides: https://svtc.info
🙏 Support this ministry: https://svtc.info/donate
📞 Need help? Call us: 540-213-0571

Relapse almost never starts with the drug. It starts long before that, in the warning signs most people miss.

I've known Nathaniel Gray since 2008. Back then he was coming out of an active heroin addiction with a stack of charges, and he couldn't read. A man in his cell wrote his letter into the program for him. A pastor he'd never met stood up in court and said God sent him there for a stranger. That was the start.

Twenty years later, Nathaniel is a Certified Peer Recovery Specialist and a mobile crisis responder, and he came on to talk about the part of recovery nobody films. Not the rock bottom. The staying free.

We got into the warning signs that show up long before someone picks back up. The reservation you start making in your head. The herd you drift away from when you get strong enough to think you don't need it. Nathaniel walks through the herd picture, the buffalo and the predators on the edge, and why early recovery means standing in the middle. We talked about why "once an addict, always an addict" is bad recovery advice when you believe you're a new creation in Christ, and the one thing he checks in himself every morning before his feet hit the floor.

Nathaniel is the founder of Exquisite Care Companies. Learn more at https://www.exquisitecarecompanies.com.

If you or someone you love needs help, start here: https://svtc.info/get-help

Rebuilding Life After Addiction is a production of Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge.

🎙️ Host: Justin Franich | Executive Director, Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge
🌐 Full episodes + resources: https://svtc.info/podcast
📖 Faith-based recovery guides: https://svtc.info
🙏 Support this ministry: https://svtc.info/donate
📞 Need help? Call us: 540-213-0571