By Jeremiah Love –
At a stop sign, God spoke to Adam Vigil: It’s either my way or your way. As he pondered, he postponed. He’d get sober starting Monday.
On Monday, he was in jail facing a life sentence. At a DUI stop, the MMA champion, high on cocaine, had fought eight cops until finally being subdued.
“I never felt so empty or like a failure in my life,” he says. “I lost everything.”
Today, Adam Vigil leads a ministry to help struggling youth while he runs a Colorado Springs-based concrete business. Both his ministry and his business carry his fighter name: Unbreakable.
Adam was 2 when his mom entered rehab. Adam stayed with his dad, who also struggled with drug addiction. As he grew up, his dad became a drinking partner, more of a buddy than a father figure.
He was molested twice in his childhood, so it was easy for him to want to escape the self-loathing by consuming.
“I didn’t want to live. I felt like I was a failure,” Adam says. “I felt I deserved the sexual and physical abuse. I had anger all the time. I was mad at myself, empty and trying to fill the void in the hole of the trauma.”
Fights, drugs and juvenile detention marked his teens.
The rage got channeled into the Mixed Martial Arts, where he for the first time in his life excelled.
“MMA definitely made me feel better. I got some recognition for doing something good for once,” he says. “I knew in my heart I wanted to be better.”
But he never overcame the drugs or the feelings of unworthiness.
“They’d schedule a fight. I’d get sober. I’d go fight,” Adam says. “Right after the fight, I’d go get high.”
It was 2017, and Adam was trying out for the Ultimate Fighter Competition, the most prestigious league.
At a stop sign, God spoke. He had never heard God or known God before.
“Your way or my way.”
He pulled over. “I’d never heard the Lord before in my life, so I got chills everywhere,” he remembers. “I knew what that meant: Get sober and follow me.”
“No, I’m going to get sober Monday,” he thought.
Bad idea.
That very night, he got pulled over by cops for a Driving Under the Influence. He was high on cocaine. He escalated and fought the cops. The melee turned into eight versus one. Finally, bloodied and beaten, Adam was taken into custody. He woke up in a padded cell.
He was facing life in prison.
In solitary confinement, he asked for something to read. The guard gave him a Bible.
“I opened that book, and I was hooked,” he says. “I couldn’t set that book down.”
Roman 8:38-39 arrested his attention: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“For a person who felt like he never deserved love, that could not receive love, that opened my eyes,” Adam says. “I don’t have to earn this, I just gotta receive this. I can receive love for the first time.”
He gave God his heart.
He took a 7-year plea deal, doing a Bible study in jail. He was paroled after 3-and-a-half years.
But he had no support system. He relapsed. “I was playing with my addiction,” he says. “I’m a severe addict. It snowballed into shooting drugs.”
He became a full-blown addict. One day, he was shooting meth laced with fentanyl and wanted to overdose. But the injection chamber exploded, and the drug didn’t enter his system. “I knew that was divine,” he says.
God spoke to him again. This time it wasn’t “my way or your way.” Now it was “death or life,” Adam says.
“I felt the weight lifted but I knew there was work to do,” he says.
“I got addicted to his love,” he says.
Adam resumed MMA fighting. He is 12-1-0 in MMA.
He helps kids to escape addiction.
“I want them to have freedom, peace and love,” he says. “It’s not the easiest decision, but it is the best decision. If I can do it, anyone can do it.”
