City People

Winn Freeman, Living Life rehabilitation program help addicts gain wisdom

By Abe Hardesty • City People Writer • October 7, 2009

Nine years after Winn Freeman made a drug/alcohol training program his life ministry, the California native continues to get strange looks when he talks about the Wisdom in Living Life program.

“Our focus is not to teach people how to be clean and sober,” Freeman says. “Drugs are the symptoms, not the real problem,” Freeman continues. “We deal with the problem.”

The 54-year-old Freeman, sometimes known in rehabilitation circles as “the drug guy,” deals with the issue each week in classrooms at a training facility near Travelers Rest. He typically spoke to 10-12 students when he began the ministry in 2000; today, a room of more than 100 is common for his “Choosing to be free” program each Thursday.

It is the oldest of three weekly programs offered at the training facility that once housed the Ebenezer Elementary School. He and colleagues teach similar classes Monday and Tuesday evenings.

It is a fitting subject for Freeman, whose life was thrown into chaos as he developed drug dependency as a teenager. “Clean” for 21 years, he now speaks to drug users with authority.

Sometimes it takes a person like me to convince someone that they can get their life back,” says Freeman. “If you want to work on a car, you don’t talk to a painter.”
In terms of drug knowledge, Freeman is a certified mechanic. “A good kid” who found himself in trouble when he began to experiment with alcohol and speed as early as age 11, Freeman dropped out of school and left home at age 15. In the next 17 years, he lived the life that many teenagers dream about – playing guitar in a Bakersfield, California, rock band that traveled from city to city. It was a lifestyle that made illegal drugs easy to find.

Freeman saw his family life and two careers crumble under the weight of alcohol and drug addictions. His younger brother, Aaron, died as the result of a heroin overdose. Freeman “hit bottom” at age 32, when, from the back seat of a police car, Freeman began his recovery with a transformation to the Christian faith. In a nutshell, that’s the foundation of Freeman’s program today. He calls it a “Christian, Bible-based alternative” to more conventional drug treatment programs.
In fact, Freeman never refers to his program as one offering treatments.

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