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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Conversation with Richie Halversen

Today, Ritchie Halvorson is a pastor and an evangelist, a success story in ministry.

But not very long ago, things were very different.

I'm John Bradshaw and this is our conversation.

I Really appreciate you taking your time.

Now, I don't think we should define you by your past.

There's more to you than your former drug addiction, but it's quite a story.

And as a matter of fact, before we go any further, I do want to point out that I read this very good book that Richie wrote.

Notice the subtitle, 1 Person's Struggle and Recovery from Opioids.

It will bring you or someone you know, maybe and someone you know, an enormous amount of hope.

You know, it kind of happened as anything does small slowly over time, you know, It kind of came in the back door.

In high school I'd kind of recreationally gone away from faith and had dabbled in kind of the party lifestyle.

It was something that was kind of exciting to me.

My friends were doing it, so it was kind of that same generic story.

And then I got married very young, 19, just 6 months out of high school, and my wife and I got married, and quit doing some of the other drugs, but then started justifying the opioids because a doctor had prescribed them.

So, you know, that was what, And I justified those for a long time, thinking, okay, well, I'm not doing the street drugs, I'm not doing the drugs that I used to do, and a doctor prescribed these, so these are okay.

But these really came in and pulled the rug out from under me just as much, if even more, than anything else.

So what you're saying is that your initial experience with opioids, that was doctor prescribed opioids.

That's really interesting and germane to this in a big way because so many people use prescribed opioids which as we know end up dragging a lot of people to places they never even thought they'd go.

He used to work with us here at It Is Written.

What was it like to be raised in that environment?

I don't think there's, people make too much about being a PK, but you were raised, you know, really immersed in ministry and evangelism.

Was there an expectation that you would follow in your dad's footsteps?

Often I was asking you to be a preacher like your dad, like your uncle.

Yeah, my son gets asked that all the time.

Yeah, I mean, and you know, when I was younger, I loved it.

And yeah, I was adamantly, absolutely, I'm gonna do this.

Got to high school, and when I started drifting kind of away from spiritual things and God, that's kind of when I really just didn't wanna have anything to do with it.

But I enjoyed for the most part growing up in a pastor's home, that my parents lived their life and their faith and ministry.

It just was a part of the way my world was.

It wasn't this negative picture that sometimes I hear talked about growing up in a religious home.

They encouraged me to develop my own personal relationship with God, and it was a God of love and grace, and So it was a great experience.

But it's definitely like living in a glass bowl a little bit.

They do have sometimes expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations, and there was certainly that.

Yeah, I think, I honestly feel like there's too much made of the negative aspect of, oh, I was a PK or this person's a PK.

I know lots of pastors and lots of pastors' kids.

For the most part, it's just a great, happy existence, not too terribly different from if your dad works in a shoe store or meat works.

It's just what my dad does and we get on with life and life rolls by.

And man, the seeds that were planted during that time when I came to that place where I needed some help and I needed a foundation, I had that and I had that support and I had that spiritual connection that I knew that I could reconnect to so I wouldn't change it for anything.

I want to get back and get back to when you're in high school but I want to ask this.

When you talk and you talk about your addiction and so on, does it get to the place ever in your own ministry you say I'm not that guy or I'm more than that guy or is this something you're really happy to talk about because you understand or you feel like it's going to be helpful to many people?

Yeah, you know I am NOT that guy that I was when I was in active addiction.

And anybody who has known someone in active addiction or struggled with active addiction, then they know what addiction can do to someone.

And so I'm not that same person, but I also know that if I let down my guard and I don't do the things that I'm doing right now to keep that faith strong, I could go back to being that person.

And so, but no, I enjoy talking about it.

The painful experience, not so much, but it's a part of the story.

And so I like telling it just if I can say I can help be a part of someone else's recovery from addiction, man, I want to be a part of that.

There are a lot of people watching us right now saying, I'm glued to this because there's someone in my family going through it.

Yet, I think there's probably a slice of the church, any church, that says, well, this is just so foreign to me.

I think it's really important to understand that people struggle with addiction.

Statistically, it's like 90% of people either have struggled with addiction or have close family or friends that have struggled with addiction.

We may not be able to relate to the actual addict, but most of the time we can relate to the family of the addict or the friend of the addict.

And even though the church hasn't always been known the best way to address, and I shouldn't say every church, some churches have always been a beacon of light for people who need recovery.

Let me just tell you, I have seen the church really make significant strides towards becoming a place where people can encounter the gospel as they are, but God doesn't want to leave us there.

He wants to make us better, happier for life.

Okay, so I'm going to ask the question that lots of parents want me to ask, and that's this.

You're in a Christian high school and you started this slide.

Okay, they want to know why you started the slide and what they could have done to stop that slide in their kid.

And my mom and dad still ask these questions.

You know, my mom will still say, Rishi, was there something that, you know, I did or that we could have done differently?

Maybe we shouldn't have sent you away to high school, we should have kept you at home.

And as parents, we play this woulda, shoulda, coulda, and the reality is when an individual gets to a certain age they start making their own decisions, they start to have to make a decision to put into practice the things that you taught them as a parent.

And so parents need to kind of give themselves a break often.

I'd say most people do when they end up in this situation.

I started reading and watching and things that I probably shouldn't have that were not of God.

I started kind of consuming things that slowly were driving me away from him.

I started hanging out with a lot of friends who were good kids but just kind of were like me who had this sense of we wanted to experiment life and do this and do that and we just didn't listen to our parents when they said there's only pain there, you know?

I remember reading an article years ago and the writer, an elderly fellow said to parents, you wouldn't take all the credit for all the good that's going on in their life.

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