Everyone has a story.
Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person–someone who is well-known, influential, or successful, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
“The first time I used drugs was with my father. We were at the deer woods and he and my uncle thought it would be funny to load a pipe full of weed and give it to me and let me smoke it.”
Make no mistake. This father and son loved each other. But they did not have your traditional father-son relationship.
“I remember being a little kid riding with my Dad in a Chevrolet box truck, standing on the bench seat. He would hold me up by the nape on my neck and roll a joint with one hand. Daddy was good at it.”
Daddy also had a substance abuse problem. Eventually, his son would have one, too.
“I had a $400 a day habit. I was working and selling drugs to support my habit and my family.”
Dustin Jones, owner of Dustin Jones Construction, which is headquartered in Benton, has long-since been clean. As a result, the recently turned 43-year-old has grown a business which last year built 17 commercial buildings, contributing to the company’s best year financially. Dustin says his is a “multi-million” dollar company.
What’s even more impressive is that Dustin is here to talk about it.
“For sure, 110 percent,” he said, when I asked if he would even be alive had he not overcome his addiction. “I would be six-feet under right now. No doubt in my mind. No doubt in my mind.”
The married (Dustin was not with his current wife when he was an addict) father of two children — including a son with cerebral palsy — told me his story of drugs and recovery over lunch at a place of his choosing, El Patio Bar & Grill on Airline Drive in Bossier City. Dustin loves Mexican food, and enjoyed beef enchiladas with rice and beans. I had a chicken and beef fajita taco salad, while listening to Dustin’s mesmerizing story.
His fall was much more predictable than his rise.
“I wasn’t much to be kept in a classroom. When I would go to school, I wouldn’t listen to the teachers. I talked. I was a clown. I got in trouble a lot. That was when they could paddle. I got paddled a lot.”
Dustin was expelled from Evangel Christian Academy not long into his freshman year of high school. “I literally had an appointment with the principal to get paddled every two to three weeks. That’s how I remember school. I wasn’t even on the call list anymore. ‘Can we beat your kid?’ ‘Please, beat him.'”
Dustin then went to Captain Shreve, but didn’t last long there, either.
“By that time, schools were getting rid of me and I was getting rid of school.”
Dustin’s parents let their son drop out, but on one condition. He had to work. The father of one of Dustin’s friends owned a construction company. Dustin asked for and got a job. But he was no longer hanging with guys his own age. That led to Dustin exchanging weed for the hard stuff.
“My favorite choice of drug was cocaine. I liked pain pills and cocaine together.”
“How did that make you feel?” I asked.
“10 feet tall and bulletproof.”
And running with an older crowd meant there were plenty of “10 feet tall and bulletproof” drugs to go around.
“I think they thought it was funny. We were the kids, and they were old enough to buy the liquor, and they had girlfriends in college who would bring home acid and cocaine and all these different things. We were running with a bunch of older guys. We just wanted to fit in. They were kind of pushing it off on us. It was funny to watch us. They were enjoying themselves. After a while, you started enjoying yourself. You started enjoying that lifestyle.”
If a drug addict is fortunate, he or she will hit rock bottom and live to tell about it.
Dustin is very fortunate.
“Jail (he’s been arrested three times) helped me straighten up a lot. A friend overdosing showed me a lot. You’re not 10 feet tall. You’re not bulletproof. My friends around me started dropping like flies. The friends I ran around with were all dying. There’s only so long before your card gets pulled, too. If you have any sense in your head and you have a praying mom, and you have some knowledge of the Lord, you start looking around and saying, ‘God, can things be different?'”
The answer was “Yes”. Dustin kicked his drug habit, but was a ways down life’s dead end road. Then one night in 2016, Dustin — who grew up going to church — let God have it.
“I was smoking a cigarette, sitting in a chair on the carport . . . . Everything from all those years started bubbling up. I started getting mad . . . . I got mad at God. I told him if all there is to life is waking up, going to work, paying bills, and coming home, I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Dustin then went inside, took a shower, and for some reason, was moved to read God’s word.
“Every southerner has a bible somewhere in their house. You might have to dust it off. I had one . . . . Unless you’ve had this experience with the Lord, there’s no other way to explain it. I was reading the words, but the words met me in a place where they just leaped off the page. I knew God was getting my attention.”
It was then that Dustin made a long-standing appointment to meet his maker every evening at 6 o’clock.
“I spent that time with God. I did that for almost a year. It was the biggest growing season of my life. because I committed to an appointment with the Lord, which worked out so many of those insecurities — not fitting in as a kid, not understanding who I was — all those different things.”
The change in Dustin’s life has been gradual but steady. He has become a well-respected builder, whose “house is paid for. We don’t have a mortgage. We own some property. We don’t owe the bank anything.” Among Dustin’s most successful business accomplishments is the renovation of several buildings which make up Bossier’s popular East Bank District.
“Who would have thought a bunch of cocaine-doing, drinking, partying wild idiots who met in Baton Rouge over a football game 20 years ago would merge into that down there?”
Dustin could have taken the rest of the day sharing his story. “I believe people can use my story and go further.” But the time had come for me to ask my final question. As always, what is it about his story that can influence others?
“First, put God first in everything you do, and you won’t miss your mark. If you truly seek him, you will find him. Second, relationships are very key. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is what the bible says . . . . Be kind. Be gentle. Be humble. Remain humble. Always remember where you came from, because you’re a split hair from being back in that same spot . . . . Continue to give all the credit to God, because at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have woke up this morning without him. You wouldn’t have woke up this morning without him.”
Amen.
Do you know someone who has a story to tell? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com