Becoming a Positive Role Model: Surviving addiction and depression

Julian Watkins had just graduated from law school and was working his first gig as a corporate lawyer. He was supposed to be happy because he was successful.

Instead, he was in the hospital because he’d taken too many drugs.

It’s a struggle that started while he was growing up in Cairo, Ill., where he says he often felt the effects of racism, being excluded from trips his friends went on together because their parents didn’t want him to go with them.

“It was kind of tough growing up there, just because I never really felt like I fit in anywhere,” Watkins says.

This led to insecurities, depression, mental health issues and drug usage, and he was arrested several times “just because I got bored, basically,” he says. His drug usage, he says, “took a real bad turn” during law school and directly afterwards as he went through a divorce.

In 2012, after being released from the hospital, Watkins quit corporate law and moved back home to Cairo, where he got a job as a high school janitor at his alma mater. He worked there for a few months to “reset” before opening his own law firm. During this time, he began coaching junior high and then high school basketball and baseball, which he identifies as a “major turning point” in his life.

“Just connecting with the kids there and realizing how many problems there were and how few positive role models the kids had [made an impact on me],” Watkins says.

At one point, he was called upon to be the head prosecutor for a case in which one of the basketball players from the team he coached had been shot and killed. Another one of his players was shot and killed after being robbed in Charleston, Mo. Both of these young people, he says, were like sons to him, and one of them lived with Watkins and his wife for a time.

These young people’s deaths led Watkins to realize the deep need for young people to have positive role models in order to make decisions that lead them out of trouble. He began reaching out to high schools and colleges to ask if he could speak to groups of students, sharing his own story to provide young people with “something to look forward to.”

In 2018, he booked a TED Talk during which he shared his story, and people from across the country began reaching out to book him to speak at their events. As a response to these requests, he founded Growth Journey, LLC, a life coaching service to help people reach their full potential.

Today, Watkins is a husband and father and owns his own law firm, The Law Office of Julian Watkins, which he runs out of the house his grandpa lived in, in Cairo. He credits his wife, his family and the friends who stuck with him even when they hadn’t heard from him for years with being his support system. Staying close to those people you can rely on no matter what, he says he’s realized, is important.

It’s also important, he says, to be honest when you’re struggling and to check in with others who might be going through a difficult time.

“The one thing that helped me was just opening up and telling people that I needed help and wasn’t able to do it [on my own],” Watkins says. “I was able to move back in with my parents and get a job as a janitor just to make ends meet. I think being vulnerable and taking that first step to say, ‘I’m not OK’ is huge. And I think so many people struggle in silence, and we don’t realize that they’re even struggling until it’s too late. Especially people that look happy a lot of the time. … [It’s important to] be more empathetic when people are vulnerable.”

Hear Julian tell his story in his own words at the Survivor Stories event Thursday, Oct. 28, at 6 p.m. at One City, presented by Ramsey Branch Retirement Community and Cape Family Medical. Reserve your complimentary ticket at https://2021survivorseries.eventbrite.com, or watch online — no ticket needed — at https://www.facebook.com/semissourian.