Cave City man becomes 2,000th graduate of John 3:16

Special to White River Now By Andrea Bruner

It took John 3:16 Ministries 14 years to achieve its 1,000th graduate, but it’s taken only six to achieve its next 1,000th.

On Sunday, Jaret Patterson will become the 2,000th man to walk across the stage, free from addiction.

The oldest of four boys, Patterson grew up in Cave City, where his grandparents had an auto dealership and his family name is synonymous with watermelons. Patterson was an offensive lineman for the Cavemen football team. His parents never drank and his family went to church, he said.

All in all, it was a great childhood, he said, but Patterson said he still felt like something was missing.

He was introduced to alcohol at age 15, but his addiction really began his senior year of high school when he dislocated his knee and had to have surgery, following which he was prescribed hydrocodone and Oxycontin at 17 years old.

The hole he felt in his life was filled with opiates.

“That was everything I thought I needed in life. It made me feel calm and confident, and clearly, it took the pain away. People who are addicts search for these highs in different ways,” he said.

When the prescription ran out, he stole pills from wherever he could. “I’m not proud of it, but that’s just how it is.”

He healed from his injury and was a walk-on at the University of Central Arkansas, but he didn’t want to keep up with the work required by football. He also struggled with attention-deficit disorder and test anxiety, and the opiates helped him focus and recall what he’d studied.

He started with a journalism major, hoping to go into the sports field, then later switched it to sports medicine but couldn’t pass all the required classes.

“I had one class I had to have a B in, and I took it three times,” he said. “I had a 78, a 79.2, and a 79.8. I didn’t earn it.”

After four years without earning a degree, he dropped out and got a job selling insurance, while maintaining his addiction to alcohol and opiates.

“It never got to the point it consumed my life – I had it under control,” he said.

But that would not last.

Soon, he was drinking every day, to the point he wasn’t even washing his clothes or taking care of himself.

After a few days of not being able to reach their son, Patterson’s parents showed up in Conway, took one look at the mess around him, and said he was not living in Conway any longer — he had to come home.

“My parents were always there for me. Whenever I was in a tough spot, they were always a call away.”

He said he had not called them, but believes they had a sense he needed help. It was back to Cave City, where he found a job that came with a new temptation. A co-worker introduced him to Roxy, a rapid release of the pain pills he’d first taken as an injured football player.

Patterson couldn’t get enough.

He fell into a six-month spiral in which he spent $15,000 on pills. His fiancee looked at his phone one day and saw that he was sending cash to people on an app and issued an ultimatum: the pills or her.

He quit the pills for five years, got married, and had a little girl. He drank on the weekends and described himself as a “functioning alcoholic.”

In 2021, he got a job in Batesville, still in sales, and was introduced to a version of fentanyl called “pressed 30s.” He said one drug user can spot another. “I can go somewhere and pick them out of a crowd. It’s one of those things – we know each other.”

So when a coworker asked, “Do you like pills?” Patterson wasn’t surprised. He watched the coworker break a pill into fourths and crush one of the tiny pieces so he could snort it.

Patterson bought five pills right then.

He got the pills the next day and divided them the way he’d seen the others done, then crushed and snorted one piece.

“I immediately passed out,” he said. “I fell back, hit my head, and woke myself up. I crushed another piece and did some more…Addicts chase this high, this feeling on the inside of our hearts. It’s a hole that we cannot fill. We try to fill it with drugs, alcohol, relationships, gambling. You’ll do whatever you can to get that feeling.”

Within three months, he had burned through $35,000 to $40,000. He had sold, pawned, and stolen whatever he could to support his habit, yet no one knew the extent of his addiction.

“My dealer got busted, and I didn’t have anything,” he said. “I was sweating and withdrawing, and my boss said, ‘You’re high.’”

Patterson said he wasn’t, and while that was technically true, he was suffering physical symptoms, and when his boss demanded to drug test him, Patterson quit.

In the parking lot, he called everyone he knew until he found someone willing to sell him something. Once he got on the road, he began having second thoughts and turned his car around to go to the hospital. He told the staff he was either going to get high or kill himself, explaining he’d been on a seven-month fentanyl binge.

“I was hysterical and told them, ‘I’m from a good family, I don’t know why this happened,’ and the doctor said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re white, green, black, or blue with opiates, rich or poor – it’s going to get you if it’s going to get you.’”

Patterson then went to a secular rehab for 30 days, got out, and started in Alcoholics Anonymous. Then one day, he was at the river and saw someone drinking, so he convinced himself he could have one drink.

But when he got to the liquor store, he didn’t buy beer. He bought vodka.

One shot turned into an empty bottle in 15 minutes.

“We trade one (addiction) for the other,” Patterson said. “We get out of our pit, think we’re good, and immediately go back there.”

He lied to his wife, repeatedly saying he would quit, all the while hiding alcohol in old shampoo bottles and random containers, drinking from sunup to sundown.

As he was leaving work one day, he got pulled over by a wildlife officer and hauled off to jail. Even though he was behind the wheel, he has no recollection of pulling out in front of an 18-wheeler and nearly getting hit.

He also got pulled over on his parents’ road, where his mom saw her son in the patrol car. She called the judge and told him to raise the bond to cash only so he could not get out of jail.

***

Sitting in jail, Patterson said he was thinking about what would come next. Having grown up less than 20 miles from John 3:16 Ministries, he knew the program works and wanted that same help, that same success.

Following an interview process, Patterson got into John 3:16 but he didn’t know what to think about the camp, which is currently home to 235 men.

All he could think was how he was from a good family and this shouldn’t have happened, but there would be no sugarcoating the situation any longer. He had to accept who he was and let go of the guilt and shame.

“Throughout this whole thing, I had run away from God,” Patterson said. “I was a broken, worthless mess. It all came to me in my first Sunday night Bible study with Mitch Bell. He said some things that made me look inwardly, and I got saved on March 12,” just a week after he arrived.

“That’s how much the Lord worked on me in a week…He keeps revealing these things to you and you’ve got to keep giving them to Him.”

Patterson said there has been mending of relationships, starting with his wife, who at one time was ready to divorce him. But one of his best days was Father’s Day, when the ministry invited the men’s dads to a fish fry and also to stay overnight so they could see just what the camp is like for their sons.

“I was sitting with my dad and he started laughing, saying, ‘Could you imagine four months ago we’d be doing this?’ ’Cause me and my dad could not sit in the same room for the past five or six years – we’d just be at each other’s throats. And we were having fun, actually talking.”

Patterson said before he came to John 3:16, he thought he was a good dad, but he sees now he didn’t really know what love was.

“I didn’t know how to be a good dad, a good husband, son, a functioning member of society. But when you are saved, you are a new creation in Christ. That old person is dead. I get a fresh start on my life at 31 years old, which I never expected. It’s all about submission — giving it all to God.”

Patterson said he’s not sure what the future holds, but he would like to eventually work in jail ministry — just like someone took a chance on him, he would like to pay it forward and bring others to the kingdom of God.

When Patterson looks at the new arrivals at the ministry, he sees broken men like himself and he’s ready to help.

“We’re going to get in that pit with you, but we’re not going to stay in your pit. We’re going to help you get to Christ,” he said. “We’re going to take you directly to the foot of the cross, but it’s up to you. It’s free will – it’s your choice. …

“When I’m out there busting my butt working long hours some days, doing dirt work, weed-eating out there at the camp, I’m doing it for that guy that’s taking his first drink. I’m building this house for that guy that’s taking his first shot. I’m doing it for the guy that’s going to the doctor and getting his first pill.

“That’s why we do it – the next guy. Because the way was paved for me, for 20 years. The 1,999 graduates before me did all that to get to me. If we always remember that we’re doing it for the next guy, as Christ says, we can move ourselves out of the way – this place will never slow down.”

Jaret Patterson (center) with his wife, Taryn (right), and their daughter Elliette.

Images: John 3:16 Ministries