#96 - From Prescriptions to a Needle: The Truth About Fentanyl, Homelessness, and Recovery w/Logan Adams

“I didn’t want to get high anymore, but I couldn’t stop.” That line sits at the center of Logan’s story—a small-town athlete whose life flips after a bar fight, a traumatic brain injury, and 18 months on prescribed opiates. When the scripts end, withdrawal hits like a freight train. A friend hands him a pill. Forty-five minutes later, addiction has a name.

To watch this whole episode in studio, click here: https://youtu.be/QEkM97g9Fy8

From there, we follow the brutal logic of the street. Open-air drug markets. “Scramble” bags cut with fentanyl, benzos, and quinine. The first IV hit. Speedballs in gas station bathrooms. A blackout and a hospital bed, hands cuffed to a gurney. Robberies at gunpoint. Narcan save after Narcan save—and one young man he couldn’t bring back. Then the darkest chapter: sexual assault used as “discipline” by people who held his debt. Hope narrows to a single point. He tries to die by proximity, chasing the batch that killed others. Winter arrives. He’s too cold to get high.

What changes everything isn’t a slogan. It’s a stranger who lets him borrow a phone, a mother who will cross bridges and neighborhoods to pull him out, and a caseworker who says, “Be at the door by 8 a.m.” He chooses a detox that hurts enough to remember and builds a recovery that actually fits: daily meetings, step work, and a gym where effort turns back into dignity. He grieves the overdose of his best friend and stays clean. He learns that strength includes crying, apologizing, and teaching his son to name feelings before they turn to rage.

Now, Logan runs operations at Fit To Recover in Salt Lake City, a nonprofit built on four pillars—fitness, creative arts, nutrition, and service—that helps people in recovery and those unsheltered feel safe and seen. We talk harm reduction, why fentanyl is everywhere, how meth-induced psychosis rewires reality, and what real boundaries look like for families: stop funding the disease, never stop loving the person.

To learn more about the work Logan is doing with Fit To Recover, a Salt Lake City–based nonprofit helping people in recovery and those experiencing homelessness rebuild their lives through fitness, nutrition, creative arts, and service. The program focuses on dignity, accountability, and community as foundations for lasting recovery, visit: https://fit2recover.org/

If you’ve ever wondered how a “good kid” ends up homeless with a needle, or how someone climbs back to family, purpose, and leadership, press play. Then share this with someone who needs proof that rock bottom isn’t the end of the story. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us the moment that stayed with you.