In June 7 issue, Russell County News
By Greg Wells
Managing Editor

LEFT - Looking more like a football coach than a pastor Greg Troutt is bringing the message of God’s love to addicts in Russell County.

“The drug problem was a lot bigger here than it was there,” said Greg Troutt.

So he did what he felt was right, came home and started a new treatment program here.

The 2nd Chance Outreach Center, is his way of helping those who walk the path that, without the help of God he would still be on.

Troutt said he had graduated from marijuana through harder and harder drugs until he was into cocaine and heroin and headed for 30 years in prison.

But Troutt got right with the Lord, and then started working for him. He went back to school and then spent a year as a pastor before starting his first non-profit drug treatment center in Killeen, Texas.

That was where he had been discharged from the Army, at Ft. Hood. It is a county with a massive military base and better than 200,000 people living in that area.

But when visiting back in this area during a revival, he discovered there had been half as many drug arrests here in this county of less than 17,000 people.

Statistically, if percentages of drug use were equal in the two pars of the country, the Killeen area would have had over 11 times the number of arrests as Russell County.

He and his wife D.J. moved to the area, and began with in-patient treatment homes. They have begun adding out-patient services, and they are having exemplary success.

Their present success rate is 60 percent, according to Troutt.

“At one time it has been as high as 70,” Trout added. “It has never been below 48 percent.”

He said the national average is 8 percent and the average success rate in Kentucky is 6 percent.

But then it isn’t a fair competition, since as he and those he has worked with say, they have Jesus on their side.

He said they are able to do this, at a cost of $50 a day for in-patient detox and treatment.

“I’ve looked around and the cheapest I’ve seen is about $3,005 for the month and that doesn’t include detox,” Troutt said. “Some programs will run $26,000 a month.”

Now with the expansion into out-patient services he said they are branching beyond the men’s and women’s houses they are presently operating.

“We’ll be working with teens,” Troutt said. “With the ‘Worth the Wait’ and drug prevention programs.”

All the programs are “Christ centered,” he said.

The programs start with prayer, the days end with prayer and all forms of addiction are attacked.

“I’m not saying I’m perfect or nothing like that,” says Ian Kimes. “I still drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.”

Kimes said he has been drug free for about 4 months, thanks to the grace of God.

But he is working on the smoking. His brother Patrick is also working with Trout, and though he has been drug free less time, he’s beat his brother to being smoke free.

Like Troutt the two men spent much of their lives living in Russell County, and like him they migrated to the worst of illicit drugs.

Both were heroin addicts. Both are clean, and sober, now. The turning point, both said, was giving their lives over to God.

This is the miracle Troutt is looking for.

Ian and his wife Mindy began trying to clean-up when they found out that she was pregnant.

Ian said he is over the drugs, as is his wife and their 4-month-old son is healthy, he added.

Patrick also began to try to change because of his kids, but both said they’d wanted to do it just on their own or with family.

They said their sister pushed them to meet with Troutt and his wife, after Ian did he began the program.

“You know it was like well I guess I was just going through the motions,” Ian said describing his start in the program.

After he was saved though he said everything was different, and now he tries to help others find what he has.

“I hand out tracts and stuff,” Ian said. “If God can do this for me he can do it for anyone.”

Beyond escaping the drugs and alcohol Patrick says the program has given him back the man he once was and more.

“I’m totally clean,” he said. “I’ve already gotten a job. — It has been four years since I worked.”

Patrick said he went from a man with two businesses to a user and dealer, to an addict who dealt drugs.

“First I was a better dealer than I was an addict,” he said. “Then I was a better addict than I was a dealer.”

In five years he said he went from an occasional drug user, to a man with a prescription for Oxycotton to a man who could, “take anything break it down and put it in my arm.”

These are but two of the about 100 people in Kentucky that the 2nd Chance Outreach in-patient program has reached Troutt said.

Now they hope to expand that reach with their nightly meetings for adults and teens in their soon to be completed center in Russell Springs.

Troutt said they do it all, through donation funding, and that no one takes a salary from the program.

“We’re all volunteer,” he said. “I keep saying I’ll start taking a salary but I keep putting everything back into the ministry.”

For more information on the programs offered or how you can help call them at 270-866-9548 or 270-384-9548.