INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — For a long time, Justin Wade would only tell the kids he taught at the Young Actors Theatre that he was a hard case.

He'd been addicted to drugs and was homeless for a time, he said. He had a tough past but had moved on.

Then he met Jake Meyer. As a senior at Herron High School, Jake had started shooting heroin. It dulled his agony over the drowning death of his 2-year-old brother, Max. Jake was 12 when he found the toddler's body in the family's backyard pool.

Their sister, Carson Meyer, had joined YAT to cope with her own grief. She convinced Jake to participate. Wade asked Jake to build sets and take care of odd jobs.

Working together, the teacher and student learned what they had in common. Jake was vulnerable with Wade about his pain.

And Wade told Jake that he knew he was using, even though Jake was telling people he was clean.

"You can't really lie to (Wade), is the thing," Carson Meyer said. "He can spot it, and he calls you out in a very loving way."

That's because for a long time, Wade had lied to himself. For 10 years, during his 20s and early 30s, heroin and methadone wrapped themselves like a gauze around his dreams, keeping him from fully grasping his talent for teaching and theater.

Now off drugs for 11 years — he's careful to say he's a recovering addict — Wade leads YAT, one of the country's most inventive theater programs. Under his almost 13-year tenure, the program has grown from about 100 students to more than 1,500 per year.

Over the past several years, the teacher has let out his story a little at a time until recently, when he has been frank with YAT's older students.

"Nothing ever in my life will be as hard, and I just had to talk about it," Wade says.

The first time Wade shot heroin, a friend slipped the needle through the skin on his right arm at a house at 16th and Talbott streets. The then-22-year-old had been ensconced in a group of artists and homeless people who hung around the former location of the Herron School of Art and Design and recited quotes nightly from a thick book Wade carried around. Artists they looked up to used the drug, so they wanted it, too.

"The first thing I said was, 'I'm going to do this every day for the rest of my life' immediately after feeling the high because I had never felt so, like, numb or free," Wade said.

That he threw up all night didn't matter. Neither did time or money. Heroin blanketed Wade's pain and fear, imparting a warm, hours-long calm. Even the shadows of the dark, early-morning Downtown streets didn't faze him.

"When you're on heroin, you could be walking in shoes with holes in them and having nothing, and you're content," Wade said.
Wade put heroin aside, briefly, to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in 1997 in New York. But, after about three months, he left. When he stepped off the plane, his then-girlfriend was waiting with heroin.

"I think I did (heroin) 500 days in a row before I ran out of money and even realized I had a habit. . I didn't even notice the downward descent," Wade said.

Paychecks from odd jobs, including construction, restaurants, temp agencies and teaching, vanished within a day or two. To make money, Wade and his friends dressed as students and stole books from colleges to sell them back.

Wade was fired from his special education assistant job at an elementary school after just two months for excessive absences.

Although Wade said he never shot up at school, he frequently missed work. While there, he had gotten close with a young boy whose parents had died in a fire. The boy had refused to say much until Wade started working with him.

"When are you going to get your sins off you, Mr. Wade?" the little boy would ask, teasing him about the "freedom" tattoo on his neck.

When Wade left the school on his last day, the boy became visibly upset.

Wade made it to his light blue Plymouth Reliant before erupting into sobs and punching his car. The memory still rattles him.

"That's the hardest thing to talk about of anything that I've been through is admitting that I had drug problems while I was working for schools," Wade said.

The Wade who tells his story now barely recognizes the old version of himself. He's sitting on a bench outside the Indianapolis Central Library, wearing black-framed glasses and dressed in suede boots, jeans and a blazer. He has a wife, a daughter and twins on the way.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett has appointed him as a member of the Cultural Investment Advisory Council. Wade was selected as a member of Class XLII of the Stanley K. Lacy Executive Leadership Series, which connects and educates civic leaders.

At YAT, he and a group of educators practice "self-empowerment theater." They coach students to write their own scripts, voice how they will overcome obstacles and spend time on stage.

"Self-empowerment theater is a reaction to everything I've been through in my life," Wade said.