Community Engagement - The Most Important Question

By: Dr. Jason Roop

I’ve always been good at asking questions.

As a young boy growing up in East Tennessee, I quickly realized I could keep any conversation going by simply asking, “Why?” That’s just the way my mind works. I’ve never been satisfied with surface-level explanations for why things are the way they are. There has always been something in me that wanted to understand not only how things work, but why they work. Why do people do what they do? Why do some people thrive while others struggle? Why does transformation happen for some and not for others?

That tendency has served me well in life, and it’s also gotten me into a lot of trouble.

It’s taken me deep into experiences I’d rather forget, and it’s given me insights that were not easily earned. But probably the most important question I’ve ever asked was this: When it comes to helping someone recover from addiction, is the goal to completely overhaul them from top to bottom, inside and out? Or are there good qualities already present that we can identify and build upon?

I don’t come from an academic family. My grandfather was a coal miner, and my dad drove a coal truck. I was the first person in my family to attend college, so when I entered a PhD program and my advisor told me to choose a topic I’d love waking up every morning to study for the next three years, it felt like Disneyland.

I genuinely love learning. I love figuring out not only how things work, but why they work. I can go all in on some of the most random and unusual topics if they capture my attention. More than anything, I’ve never been content with surface-level answers. The doctoral process gave direction to that curiosity. It provided a structure for asking better questions and a method for pursuing answers. For the first time, my curiosity wasn’t something to manage. It was something to cultivate.

And among all the questions I could have pursued, one kept showing up over and over again.

How can a person truly experience transformation? Must we erase ourselves in order to change, or is there something already within us that can be leveraged for positive and sustainable growth?

I needed to know the answer because, up to that point, I hadn’t done a very good job of experiencing transformation myself.

I spent seventeen years in active addiction. I was arrested eighteen times, overdosed four times, was raided by police twice, and eventually found myself homeless in late 2012. After being kicked out of a homeless shelter for sneaking in drugs, I found myself literally living on the streets.

In 2013, I finally admitted that I didn’t have the answers and checked into residential treatment. I stayed there for a full year. I met my soon-to-be wife Amanda in the spring of 2014. We got married on October 24, 2014, and I graduated from treatment on October 25.

Busy weekend.

Years later, while pursuing my doctorate, I discovered something that had never been clearly articulated in the research literature. The answer was yes. There are qualities we can identify and build upon to help people experience meaningful transformation and recovery.

Many of those qualities are actually leadership traits.

The reason they often go unnoticed is because they are observed through the lens of addiction. They show up as denial, manipulation, stubbornness, perfectionism, and other distorted expressions of otherwise powerful human qualities. Addiction doesn’t create those traits. It hijacks them. If we can separate the person from the behavior, we uncover new territory from which growth can occur.

That single question eventually became the foundation of the Trait-Based framework, a model designed to help people identify strengths and build lives rooted in purpose.

Ironically, I launched the Trait-Based Model of Recovery at the very same treatment center where I first entered recovery in 2013, nearly ten years to the day after walking through its doors carrying nothing but a trash bag full of torn and tattered clothes. The first time I arrived, I came with nothing. The second time, I arrived with a team prepared to launch a framework that would eventually impact thousands of lives.

In many ways, that same spirit of curiosity also guided Amanda and me to Louisville. We realized that if we wanted to continue growing this work, we needed a more connected and accessible home base. We asked a simple question: What if we moved to Louisville?

We put our house on the market. The first couple who toured it made an offer. Thirty days later, here we are.

We’ve only been here a short time, but we’ve already been blown away by the warmth of this city and the willingness of people to invest in one another. There seems to be a genuine belief here that people deserve opportunities to grow, heal, contribute, and thrive.

Maybe that’s why Louisville feels like the right place for this next chapter.

After all, some of the most important discoveries in my life began with a question.

And maybe the most important question we can ask another human being isn’t, “What’s wrong with you?”

Maybe it’s, “What’s right with you?”