By Sandra Marroquin –
He lost all his teeth as a drug addict.
“All my teeth were knocked out either robbing drug dealers or other incidents gone wrong,” said Christian singer Joe Nester. “I had become that person that I envisioned when I took that first hit of crack over ten years ago.”
In June, Nester passed away from a sudden bleed near his trachea, leaving his wife, Faith, and kids Kiley, Hunter and Layla. During his 13 years of sobriety, he produced four full albums with millions of views on YouTube.
Joe Nester had a united, good family, he said, despite his parents divorcing when he was six. He was unproblematic in school and was an all-state pitcher.
He became a drug addict instantly. A friend in his rock band gave him crack cocaine. Even though he worried he might become an addict, he tried it.
“I had all these thoughts racing through my mind of homeless people begging for change, people missing their teeth, these drug addicts,” he remembered.
Within six months, he was homeless. As the summer progressed, he vowed he would get clean and sober after summer. The addiction held fast.
“That summer lasted 10 years,” he said.
He ate out of dumpsters and slept on cardboards under bridges. He was in and out of prison.
“In 2012, I was on the run for first degree armed bank robbery,” Nester said. “I was looking at life in prison.”
An old drug buddy sent him a train ticket to a rehab facility in South Florida. By chance, his roommate had an acoustic guitar. After 10 years of leaving behind music for drugs, Nester picked it up and began strumming.
Previously, he had written songs to become a famous rock star. Now he poured his emotions into his music. He wrote songs about what he was going through. It was soothing for him to play in moments of anxiety and fear and thinking about relapsing.
As the weeks went buy, other guys in the rehab, and later the half-way house, encouraged him to sing publicly. He was terrified. “What if they don’t like it?” he wondered.
Eventually, he tried playing at a local coffee house.
The response was overwhelming. Night after night, the crowds grew. Within a month, he was signed to a record deal.
Still, Nester was not Christian. That came later.
“I was empty on the inside,” Nester said. “I was still caught up in lust, perversion, foul language, smoking,” he said. “I was looking for external things to fix an internal problem.”
Eventually, Nester wandered into a church, and he heard the simple gospel. The Word filled the void like nothing before.
He married, had kids and produced music.
He died June 28 after a month and a half of “fighting for his life,” his family reported online.
