Rob Rowsell

“I’ll give you a little bit of background. My wife and I were living on the streets, homeless in 1999. I'm a recovered crystal meth and crack cocaine addict.”

Interviewed by Jonathan Rozek for Ten Paths. David Lindahl was not involved in editing these interviews.

Rob: I’ll give you a little bit of background. My wife and I were living on the streets, homeless in 1999. I'm a recovered crystal meth and crack cocaine addict.

On November 22, 1999, I stumbled into a 30-day drug rehab, and I have not picked up a drink or a drug since that day. My wife—before or since that time—has never picked up a drink or a drug that she was addicted to. She was addicted to me. She believed in me when nobody else did—when both my parents and her parents told her to run away from me with her arms flailing in the air. She refused to listen. She saw something in me that nobody else did. And she's actually a gift from God that got me through all of that. She's reaping the benefits of that faith today, and she deserves every bit of it!

Jon: If it's OK for me to ask, how did you meet your wife?

Rob: My background is auto repair. It's in my blood. I was managing an auto repair shop, which at that time was a three-bay Chevron station with a convenience store. She pulled in one day with a broken belt.

Jon: Where was this Chevron station?

Rob: It was in Chandler, Arizona.

Jon: How did you end up in the auto-repair business?

Rob: My father was in the auto repair business, so I started as a mechanic. I didn't know a ton of well-off older auto mechanics, and I saw the writing on the wall. But I did see some people making a fairly decent living that sold auto-repair services, like the guy that calls you and tells you that you need a water pump, this is how much it will cost, and he can have it done by the end of the day. So I started to get some skills in that area. I started selling and worked for an engine company where all they sold were engine installations. Over time, I got acclimated to the front counter and the management side.

Jon: How long were you in that business?

Rob: I've been in the automotive industry for 35 years in one way or another. Actually, we just sold our auto-repair shops as of two weeks ago. I am now retired from auto repair.

Jon: Was that something that is now a relief to you?

Rob: That's been on my goal sheet for about five years. We've been scaling our stores to get to the point where we could exit at a good time in the market, with one buyer at a good price. It just happened.

Jon: Well congratulations.

Rob: Thank you, Jesus.

Jon: I’d like to backtrack and hear more about those early years if that’s OK.

Rob: Sure. I was a manager for that Chevron station and the owner of the company walked up to me one day. He said: “Give me your keys. You need to prove to me that you're done with your crystal meth and your weed problem. Then you can have the keys back and you can run my store again. But until then, get out of here.”

I couldn’t prove to him that I was done, because I wasn’t. For the next four years, I was “running and gunning”. I ended up losing my house and I was homeless. That's how the downward spiral took place until I walked into that rehab center.

After that, I was about three months sober when I walked into an auto repair shop again, and a gentleman by the name of Richard gave me a chance, even though I still looked a little bit like a crackhead. He was able to see past the way that I looked and offered me a position. I worked for him for the next four and a half years.

Little did I know that he was training me, by his example, on how to run a profitable, ethical auto-repair shop. Four and a half years later an opportunity became available in California near where my parents lived—where I'm sitting right now—for an auto-repair shop. A friend of a friend reached out to my dad and asked if I would be interested in chatting with him about buying his auto-repair business.

Jon: So you were a user before you ever got into auto repair?

Rob: Oh yeah.

Jon: When did that start?

Rob: At the age of 11. I dropped out of school in ninth grade. So the last year of formal education that I have is eighth grade. My drug habit had become more important.

There were times of sobriety, though. I got sober at 20 for a little while. I found the Lord, and things were going well in my life. Then due to other circumstances that were going on in my life I went back to smoking weed. Next thing you know I'm doing dope, and next thing you know I'm drinking again. So in that period I had some good times, but I eventually ended up homeless and penniless. I performed fraudulent schemes, did petty theft, and shoplifted to support my drug habit. Everything I owned fit in the back of a Geo Prizm hatchback.

Jon: You said that you stumbled into that rehab clinic. What were the circumstances there? Were you literally walking by and found it, or was it something else?

Rob: It was because I went in to see my probation officer for a “probation intake” appointment. At the time, she was my second probation officer. I had another one for driving under the influence. This second one was for domestic violence.

There's a saying in jail that goes: “Don't ever take the probation because you won't get through it.” That's a true statement, Jon.

Jon: Really?

Rob: You won't get through it if you're still using drugs. Eventually you're gonna pee dirty, you're gonna lose your probation, and you're going to end up doing the time. For me that was two years in prison.

I knew I was at this fork in the road. The probation officer handed me this thick intake application. It asks you everything about your drug history, your work history, and so on. You get “naked” with them on this form.

I'm reading the form and thinking: Here I am at this fork in the road. Am I gonna lie like I've always lied, and then do the prison time like they talk about? Or am I gonna get “naked” and get real with this lady and tell her the truth?

I decided I was done with drugs and alcohol. I filled that form out honestly—right down to the fact that the crack pipe was still warm in my pocket. I told her everything, knowing that she could say: “You're outta here”, and revoke my probation.

I sat in a conference room and when I was done filling it out, she picked it up and went to her office to read it. I sat there alone, and was scared to death, quite frankly.

She came back 20 minutes later and invited me to her office. She said: “Well it looks like we don't need to waste any money on a drug test, now do we.” She set the path for me to go to that rehab clinic. She was my probation officer for the next three years. As part of that rehab, I started going to 12-step meetings. I also found some people that God put into my life, and who pointed me in the right direction.

Jon: I’m curious: How much was it the chemistry between you and this particular probation officer that made you decide, OK, I'm going to be honest? Do you think you might have made a different decision if it were a different probation officer?

Rob: No. There was no particular chemistry.

What I didn't share with you yet is while I sat there and contemplated what I was going to do, I had tears running down my face. It was because of all the thoughts of the misery I'd put my parents through, and the fact that I hadn't seen my children in a year and a half. It was because of the misery, turmoil, and torture I put my wife through over the last couple of years.

Her parents had disowned her because of me. There was just so much drama, and I was realizing where I was in my life. I was at rock bottom.

In the world of recovery, they have a term called “low-bottom drunk”. Although I am an alcoholic, that wasn't my drug of choice at the time. In my case I was a low-bottom addict. That's a person that needs to lose everything before they get it—hopefully before they lose their life.

The choices for an active addict are jails, institutions, death, or recovery. If you don't recover, you're going to some sort of an institution, you’re going to jail, or you're going to die. Those are really the only choices.

Jon: So it wasn't a different probation officer, it was you who had changed in that meeting, and that caused the different outcome?

Rob: Yeah. I didn't want to go to prison for two years. That's what had been set aside in order for me to get the probation. I didn't want to die, so it was right there in that probation officer’s chair that I made that decision and filled out the application honestly.

Jon: We'll get into real estate in a minute, but you have such an amazing story. One other question: Is it possible to change other people's minds or does it have to come 100% internally?

Rob: It has to come from within. They have to be done with their addiction. In the world of recovery, we have something called sponsorship. You get sponsored by somebody who has already got a year of sobriety. If somebody asks me to sponsor them, it's the first question that I ask them: “Are you done? Because if you're not done, I can't help you. My time is too valuable for me to even try. You've got to be done.”

Jon: What if the person says: “Oh yeah Rob, I'm done!” How often is that person not done, and can you tell on the spot whether it’s the truth or not?

Rob: I don’t know about on the spot. 20% of the time they're really done, and 80% of the time, they're still writing their story. But you don't know that until you are with them long enough to see if their actions back up their words, or not. If they're not going to the meetings that you recommended, not doing the reading that you recommended, and they're not calling on schedule, they're really not done.

Jon: How many minutes would you need with somebody to know whether that person is done?

Rob: Just a couple of homework assignments.

Jon: Well, man, you've got a book inside of you.

Rob: I've written one! In fact, I've got the second one coming, now that I'm retired from auto repair. Dave Lindahl is the one who inspired me to write the first book. It’s called Addicted to Life, and it’s on my website, RobRowsell.com.

The foreword of the book is written by one of my arresting officers from 1999, and chapter eight explains how we reconnected. It will absolutely blow your mind. The first chapter starts with me in a jail cell. Throughout the book I show different mugshots they took of me over time. But the main message in the book covers the success principles that Claudia and I used to get out of that lifestyle, and that can take anybody out of a lifestyle of mediocrity. That's the whole purpose of the book.

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