Jerry Hetrick Case Study

Jerry Hetrick is the man behind the grill always cooking up a meal and sharing his story through food and a hearty smile. Jerry is a roofer by day, but spends his evenings and weekends planning and preparing food for those less fortunate or troubled by the same addictions he once faced.

Jerry started drinking when he was 11 years old. He was always extremely shy and suffered from chronic embarrassment. One day he tried his alcoholic father’s booze and he felt better. He drank for the next 20 years. Alcohol and drugs became his way of coping with life. Jerry says in the later years he was legally drunk most of the time although he kept a job most of those years. There were times he would wake up in a different town and not know how he got there. Eventually, this lifestyle took a toll on his second marriage and his wife left him. Jerry thought about suicide often. He thought of all the ways he could take his life and was determined to find the one way that would guarantee he would not survive.

When Jerry got his 3rd offense for driving drunk he was offered the choice of jail or alcohol treatment, he chose treatment. He walked into the VA hospital with every muscle in his body tense. He went to a group meeting and when the leader asked him a question, all he could do was cry. “It’s ok,” the leader reassured …show more content…
“As I laid in bed praying, suddenly my muscles relaxed, the room became clear, my mind became unscrambled and for the first time I slept without all the dreams.” The next morning the difference was so noticeable 3 people asked him about it within a short time. He told them, “I feel good. The dreams are gone.” Jerry was never the same again. God intervened and everything changed, even his attitude. On the day he left the hospital, the head nurse asked him if he would speak to all the head nurses about alcoholics and help them understand. They had never seen his kind of success