Today we’d like to introduce you to Billy Harper.
Hi Billy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I did not start out as an addict. I started out as a kid on a dirt bike.
Motocross was my world growing up. I raced at a high competitive level, and I loved the discipline, the speed, and the feeling of being fully alive. But that life came with consequences. I crashed a lot, and the injuries piled up. By the time I was a teenager, my body was already breaking down, and chronic pain became part of my everyday life.
At sixteen years old, I began undergoing knee replacement surgeries. By the time I graduated high school in 2005, pain management and alcohol were already woven into my routine. What started as a way to cope slowly turned into escape. I was living fast, partying hard, and ignoring the direction my life was heading.
After Hurricane Katrina, I found some early success working in the tree service industry. The work was brutal, the money came quickly, and the environment rewarded intensity. As my injuries worsened, prescription opioids entered the picture. By 2007, I was prescribed 180 pain pills a month and buying more on the street. I was spending thousands of dollars every month just to feel normal.
When pill mills were shut down, my addiction did not stop. It shifted. By 2010, I was using intravenous cocaine and heroin. I went through homelessness, constant relocation, and endless attempts to get sober. I changed cities, walked across states, and chased fresh starts that never lasted. I felt like a dead man walking with nothing left to live for.
In 2017, I was climbing cell phone towers in Alabama and working on the campus at Auburn University when I met Rebecca at a small dive bar outside of town. Not long after that, I found out my dad had cancer and needed help back in Florida. Two weeks into dating, I asked Rebecca to move with me. Despite our age difference and everything she had already been through, she said yes.
What I did not fully understand at the time was how fragile we both were. Rebecca had lost her husband years earlier and had battled addiction herself. After moving to Florida, I quietly returned to heroin use while working during the day. Eventually, Rebecca joined me, and our lives spiraled into a cycle that nearly killed us both.
I have been revived by EMTs more than ten times. Rebecca saved my life more times than I can count. Narcan is the reason I am alive today. Even while earning hundreds of dollars a day doing electrical work, mostly ceiling fans through Home Depot referrals, every dollar was gone by nightfall. Drugs, fuel, and food took everything. Our truck was wrecked in a hit-and-run. We were burning our lives down in real time.
When our dealers were arrested in June of 2021, things became even more dangerous. I found myself back in the same neighborhoods where my addiction had begun, and I could feel myself regressing. On my birthday, June 30, I maxed out my credit cards on an expensive purchase, hoping it would somehow make me feel better. It did not.
On July 2, 2021, after using hundreds of dollars’ worth of heroin in a matter of hours and feeling nothing, I broke. I was raised in a strong Christian home, and I felt completely empty, like everything that once lived inside me was gone. That morning, I surrendered. I sat on my couch crying because I knew it was over, and I walked into detox knowing the pain ahead would be brutal.
Rebecca tried to detox at home and became dangerously sick. My parents came and got her, and she ended up in the hospital. I spent eight days in detox, and when I walked out, I knew this time was different.
There was no easing into it. We found sponsors, worked the steps, and committed fully. Sobriety stopped being something we tried and became the foundation of our lives.
As recovery stabilized, I made a decision to build something of my own. I took the discipline, accountability, and structure I learned in recovery and applied it to work. I founded Empowered Electrical Services from the ground up. What started as one man doing electrical work turned into a structured company built on systems, integrity, and consistency.
Today, Empowered Electrical Services is a seven-figure electrical company. It provides stable careers, clear standards, and leadership rooted in lived experience. I lead the way I do because I know what happens when structure is missing and chaos takes over.
Rebecca and I have now sponsored more than 150 people in recovery. God saved our lives. I have hurt a lot of people in my past, and I carry that with me. Today, my goal is simple. I want to love people where they are, because I know exactly what it feels like to be lost and exactly what it takes to come back.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been a smooth road but I remain Maliable, open minded, and always willing to ask for help and pivot.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Im know for leading a team that impacts people lives through experience using our services. Once they use Empowered, they never forget us!!!
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
We are always open for collaboration. We love helping others succeed and lifting them up with us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Empoweredfl.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1D9x3PAv3W/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billy-harper-7a4a5424a
