WestCare

For Pikeville tattoo artist, rehabilitation is more than skin deep
By Russ Cassady
Staff Writer
Appalachian News-Express
June 11, 2008

Chad Webb is deliberate when he speaks on the topic of addiction. He’s deliberate because he's been there.

Just over two years ago, Webb found himself at a crossroads, locked behind the doors of the Pike County Detention Center, with his wife, Robin, and his children facing an uncertain but bleak future because of his attempts to feed his addictions.

Now, after reaching his lowest point, he has pulled himself up, working at an extremely successful tattoo shop in Pikeville, supporting his family, which has grown to include five children, and still living life the only way he knows how - as Chad Webb.

Webb is not exactly what people picture when they think of a recovering addict. With a long goatee and tattoos covering much of his exposed skin, as well as his love of motorcycles (his work vehicle is a chopper) and a sense of humor that cuts deeply, some people might miss what lies beneath the surface - a living example of redemption.

A need to fit in

For Webb, acceptance wasn't always easy to find as he grew up in Pike County.

“I had an identity crisis as a kid,” he said. “I finally found acceptance with a crowd of social misfits.

“It started out as, that was the one thing we had in common,” Webb said. “We all liked rock-and-roll music and we all liked to get wild.”

While many of those friends grew out of it, Webb didn’t.

“I grew right into it,” he said.

But, what started out as seemingly harmless partying turned bad, as Webb transitioned easily into harder drugs, particularly into prescription painkillers like OxyContin.

“I eventually stopped liking the buzz I got from pot, and just started liking the pills,” he said. “As OxyContin broke onto the scene, I just embraced it wholeheartedly.”

It eventually grew to the point where the only thing he cared about was the pills and getting high.

The side effect of all the drug usage, Webb said, was that he stopped growing physically, emotionally and mentally at age 14 and didn’t begin to grow again until March 16, 2006 — the date he entered rehabilitation at Westcare’s facility in Pike County.

Crashing down

Before he could reach Westcare, though, Webb said he needed a wake-up call, which came in 2005.

On the front page of the May 1, 2005 edition of the News-Express, there is a photo of a Pikeville Police officer leading a suspected drug dealer to his cruiser during a UNITE roundup.

Just a few months later, on page two of the News-Express, there is a photo of the same suspected drug dealer being led into the Pikeville Police Department after a second roundup.

That dealer was Webb, who now admits freely that he sold pot to an undercover informant, which resulted in his charges.

“That was probably the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

Webb’s wife, Robin, had never done drugs, but went to jail with him the second time because she was there when he was selling.

Webb said he committed several crimes during the time he was using, aside from just selling drugs.

“I’ve done everything short of killing and raping somebody to get OxyContin,” Webb said. “I have robbed my family. I have lied and manipulated to get it.

“It had such a strong grip on me that I took my kids’ Playstation and pawned it to get dope.”

Webb still keeps a fading, tattered Polaroid photo of himself, taken during the depths of his drug addiction, among the items in his tattoo station.

In the photo, Webb is smiling, with his eyes red and glassy, obviously intoxicated, sitting just a few feet from a shoebox filled with items, stolen he said, to pay for drugs.

“I need this,” he said, adding it reminds him of the things he has done and the people he hurt.

Webb also said he has no hard feelings toward the detective that set him up.

“I owe him my life,” he said. “If it wasn’t for him doing his job, I’d be dead. Somebody would have shot me or I would have OD’d by now.”

However, he said that wouldn’t have been the worst outcome.

“Worse than that, I would have kept living like I was living and hurt everyone around me,” he said.

Despite the way he feels about it now, Webb said he didn’t really take the charges seriously — at first.

“I didn’t really take it seriously until Sept. 2, 2005 when I got final(ly) sentenced and I saw those doors close behind me. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere,” he said.

After serving several months in the Pike County Detention Center, Webb said he asked for shock probation.

“I don’t know what it takes for some people to realize,” he said. “For me, it took losing my freedom, but a lot of people don’t make it there, they die first.”

Webb said when he went before Pike Circuit Judge Eddy Coleman to ask for shock probation, he was just saying whatever he could to get out of jail, and didn’t mean any of it.

However, when he arrived at Westcare, he said, everything “clicked” and he was finally given the tools he needed to dig himself out of addiction.

The beginning of sobriety

Webb said he last got high the day he went to jail, on methadone, and immediately went into self-imposed detox, refusing offers to reduce before he went into jail. While Webb said he believes in medical detox in cases where the person is going to die, it just wasn’t going to work for him.

Methadone, he said, also didn’t work and isn’t an answer for drug addiction, he said.

“For me, that’s what I needed — to lay there and suffer,” he said, adding that, once his head cleared from the methadone, that’s when the real suffering began.

“Everything started coming back to me that I had done to other people. I had nothing to do but lie in that jail cell and accept that.”

He went to church services while serving his time and heard Barry Chaney, who is now chairman of UNITE Pike, speak. After hearing Chaney, Webb said he went back to his cell and went down on his knees in prayer.

“I’ve been saved ever since,” he said. “I can’t say I go to church regularly, and I’m not perfect. But, I’m drug-free and I’m alcohol-free and I credit all that to God.”

In Westcare, Webb began a 12-step program, and began taking a thorough moral inventory of himself, something he said helped him greatly.

“Once you see that all written in black and white ... you start to realize what you’ve done to other people, where you’ve been and the time you’ve wasted — that’s when it all sets in,” he said.

Westcare, he said, gave him the tools he needed to move beyond his addiction.

But, most importantly, Webb’s faith has allowed him to move forward.

“When you’re a drug addict, you have the drugs, all these resentments, all this anger and hate filling your heart up,” he said. “When I went to Westcare and began to clear all that out, I made room for God to come into my heart.”

Life on the outside

Prior to his arrest, Webb had been working as a tattoo artist, something that he loved.

But he didn’t know if he could go back to the business.

“I thought for sure when I got out of Westcare that I’d never be able to tattoo again just because of the environment,” he said.

However, when he got out of Westcare, he learned that Rob Kinman, owner of Southern Steel Tattoos, wanted to speak with him. Webb went to the shop and found that it was a drug-free, Christian environment and signed on to work there.

“I’m blessed because I can come to work and enjoy what I do,” he said. “It’s such a therapeutic community for me.”

Webb said the staff at the shop has been very supportive.

“I’m not saying that every day is rainbows and unicorns,” Webb said. “I don’t wake up every day with butterflies flying all around. But, I do wake up every day knowing I have a clear conscience and I’m going somewhere with people I love. If I have any problems, I can talk to them.”

Part of the reason for that support is Kinman’s own experience.

Webb and shop owner Rob Kinman used to get high together, Webb said, but Kinman has five years clean and sober. While Webb was in jail, he said, he found one day that he had $100 deposited into his commissary account, and only found out later that Kinman had put it there without being asked.

“I hadn’t spoke to him in years,” he said. “It was just out of the kindness of the heart. He knew where I’d been and knew where I was at.”

For Kinman, marijuana served as a gateway, which led to a long addiction, one he was able to beat about five years ago, specifically through the help of his family.

"My wife and daughters, every day when I would go to work, they would all get in the floor and pray for me," he said. "And they would say things to me like, 'We sure hope you stop doing drugs, Daddy. We don't want you to die and we don't want you to go to jail.'"

Instead of being, as he says "mean," about what he was doing, his family, in particular, his wife, set an example of Godliness for him to follow while, at the same time, not supporting what he was doing.

"I woke up one morning and decided I couldn't work where I was working, I couldn't be around the people I was around, and I couldn't do drugs anymore," he said. "And I never did them anymore."

The decision, for Kinman, meant losing his job. He found himself in a situation where all he had was his equipment and the money for his first month's rent on what would become Southern Steel.

That, he said, meant 18 to 19 hours a day, having to fire employees because of their drug use, including once firing his only employee, leaving the business solely in his own hands.

Tattooing with a difference

Southern Steel is definitely not a normal tattoo shop.

With Kinman at the lead, it has a decidedly Christian slant, with profanity and Satanic and other types of tattoos banned.

"It's not cut from a regular cloth," Webb said.

Many times, doing a tattoo gives he and Kinman a chance to witness. However, many of the shop's customers are already Christians, and sometimes conversation during a tattoo turns to Biblical topics.

"There's been three or four people sitting around and basically having a Bible study while someone's getting tattooed," he said.

However, like Webb, Kinman does not believe in trying to force a person into making a decision.

"I do not believe in shoving religion down someone's throat," Kinman said. "I believe we're just supposed to treat them a certain way and God will take care of the rest."

Both Webb and Kinman do a lot of charity work, mostly quietly. One recent project they undertook was to paint a mural at the Lighthouse homeless shelter in Lexington.

For Webb, it’s a necessary thing.

“The more I stay involved with other addicts and with recovery, it’s a reminder to me of how easy it is to fall back into it — it keeps me sober,” he said, but added there is a secondary reason. “I did do jail time, but I don’t think that’s repaying my debt to society — it’s just putting more stress on taxpayers.”

Webb continues to go to Westcare once or twice a month and speaks to people in recovery there. Westcare also sometimes brings people to Webb and the other artists at Southern Steel, where they cover drug-related and hate-related tattoos.

Webb has recently been named the co-chair of the Pike County Recovery Committee, the aim of which is to help support those going through recovery. In addition, he said he would like to help get a program together to take donations to help put people through recovery.

“I have so many ideas,” he said.

Appreciation for life

While there are some regrets, Webb said he doesn’t regret what he went through.

“I regret hurting other people,” Webb said. “But the Lord blessed me. I made it through with no diseases. I made it through without dying or killing anybody.

“I, actually, am glad I’ve been through what I’ve been through,” he said. “Because now I don’t take anything for granted.”

While many people go through life not realizing that they “have it made,” Webb said he has reminders everyday of what he lost.

“I appreciate just being able to walk outside and have grass under my feet and the sun above my head,” he said. “Or just going to the refrigerator and making a sandwich when I want to — it’s just trivial things — being able to buy my kids something.”

Webb said he has not been able to hang out with his old friends.

“I miss them, but I don’t want anything to do with them,” he said. “That’s going to hurt a lot of people’s feelings, and I’m sorry, but I have a life now that I cannot look back on.

Webb said he now has a clear conscience about what he does, and he has not had to change himself, just the people, places and things he was around.

“I’m just me, man,” he said. “I have a ball. I can remember last night, I know where I went. I don’t lose money. I don’t have to worry about who I robbed last night, who’s looking for me or who I owe money to.”

He also understands that, through his addiction, he wasn’t the main one hurt by his actions.

“I was high during all this — I was miserable, but it’s good because I was high,” he said. “It’s the people around me that were suffering. That’s the real victims of drug addiction.

“I really don’t have any sympathy for drug addicts — I have empathy,” he said.

He also says he won’t even so much as drink a beer now.

"One beer, to me, would lead into two 80s (80 mg Oxycontins) an hour later," he said, adding that he has invested so much in his sobriety, to fall even slightly would affect him so deeply, he would feel no reason to avoid everything else," he said.

Webb said he will watch his own children for signs of use as well, and warns parents to not help their children feed addictions.

“They don’t know that they’re loving their kids to death,” he said. “If you really love your kids, don’t give them dope money, send them to treatment.

“If not, the next time you’re looking at them, you might be looking at them in a coffin,” he continued.

Most importantly, though, he said he puts his recovery before all things, which makes how he performs in everything else better.

“I put that before everything else because I know that, without that, I’d be better off dead,” he said.

WestCare is a 501(c)(3) Tax Exempt Organization