Ramnani: A quick note this episode was recorded before Donald Trump was elected to the white House for the second time. Today's conversation is one that stays with you long after you have heard it. My guest, Barry Adkins, describes himself as an ordinary, middle class man who never imagined he would be speaking publicly, let alone about the most painful day of his life. But life had other plans. Barry lost his eighteen year old son, Kevin, to alcohol poisoning just weeks after high school graduation. Kevin was kind, compassionate, the type of kid who pushed a friend's wheelchair to the playground and stopped on the freeway to help strangers change their tires. He was full of heart, full of promise, and at the very beginning of his adult life. What followed Kevin's death was a moment Barry still can't fully explain. A sense of presence, a light, and a message Kevin didn't suffer. And something very good will come from this. Those words became a mission in two thousand and seven. Barry walked over one thousand four hundred miles from Arizona to Montana, carrying Kevin's ashes as he crossed mountains, battling exhaustion and speaking to students along the way about alcohol abuse. Critical decision making, adversity and forgiveness. That journey became the foundation for his book Kevin's Last Walk, and for nearly two decades, Barry has dedicated his life to educating young people in parents so that no other family has to experience what he did. Today, Barry shares Kevin's story with honesty, courage, and a profound belief in prevention, compassion, and healing. This is not just a story about loss. It's about purpose, resilience, and the quiet, powerful work of turning grief into something that saves lives. Please welcome Barry Adkins. Hi, Barry. Thank you for your time.

Adkins: Yeah, that sounds good.

Ramnani: It is really lovely to finally talk to you.

Adkins: I thought this would be interesting to do.

Ramnani: Yes, I have heard about your son, Kevin. So can you tell me about yourself and your son Kevin? What was he like?

Adkins: So basically, as far as myself, I'm not the right guy to be here. I'm just an ordinary middle class person in the US. Never had any interest in doing podcasts or getting in front of audiences and telling the story about the most painful day of my life. I'm here because of what happened. As far as Kevin goes, he was a good kid. He was never in any trouble in school. His high school principal didn't even know who he was, and I considered that a good thing. But he had a really good heart. He befriended a boy by the name of David. When he was in third grade. David was in a wheelchair. Absolutely nothing wrong with David except his legs didn't work. But because he was in a wheelchair made it a little harder for him to make friends, right? Kevin was that guy. Kevin was the one that made sure that David got out to the playground and back to class and to the bus, and when they could talk David's mom into it, she would drop him off over to our house. And another unusual rule these two boys had was that wheelchair stayed at the front door. David was a pretty small kid. He could kind of army crawl around the house and kind of pull himself around. And so they left that wheelchair at the front door. Although Kevin had problems with patience, so at times he would just grab David by the arms and drag him through the house. They had a lot of fun together. Yes, he had a big heart. He would actually stop on the freeway and help a complete stranger change a tire or give him a ride, whatever they needed. That's the kind of stuff he did. That's how he did things. So here's what happened. He had just graduated from high school. He got a job right out of high school making good money. I agreed to co-sign a loan so he could buy a new truck because he wanted a new truck. He found one at a dealership, which means I have to go down and sign papers. Here in the US, when you go to a car dealership, they quite often are putting a lot of pressure on you to buy things you don't need or want. And I went down to sign papers, and the first thing they asked me was, how about some life insurance? And I said, I don't need any life insurance. My wife will do just fine if something happens to me. And he said, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about your son. I'm that guy who rather indignantly told him that eighteen year old boys don't need life insurance because they don't die. But I was wrong. They do die. He wouldn't live long enough to make a single payment on that truck. A couple of weeks later, he started the process of moving out. He threw a bed, a TV and a dresser in the back of his truck. That was his definition of moving out for the day. And he came back into his bedroom, grabbed a pair of jeans, threw them in the dryer to De wrinkle, came back in the living room and told me something I've never forgotten. He said he wasn't going to take his toothbrush with him. He'd be back tomorrow and get it. I walked out front with him like I normally do, gave him a hug, told him that I loved him and to be careful, watched him drive away. It was the last time I saw him alive. That night, his friends decided to throw a little housewarming party. Started with a keg of beer. Moved on to shots. He left a voicemail for his sister that night, talking about how drunk he was and how much fun he was having, and how he loved his nephew Collin more than anything in the whole world. He passed out a short time later. His friend Craig that was there kept going back in to check on him. Around four a m, Paul started coming in to nine one one, which is the emergency system here in the US. First calls were difficulty breathing. Next calls were not breathing. My son died alone in a hospital while I slept peacefully in my bed. Then the next morning, Sunday morning, my wife and I are sitting around drinking coffee, and about eight thirty in the morning, the doorbell rings and we're both looking at each other because we weren't expecting company. And I opened the door and I see two police officers and somebody in plain clothes standing at my front door. That should have been a big red flag for me. It didn't even occur to me that something bad had happened. I actually joked with them as they came in thinking this had to have something to do with a dog or a parked car. I honestly didn't know why they were there, but one of the officers and the person in plain clothes stayed by the front door. The other officer walked in and stood in front of a brown chair that Kevin had sat in a couple of weeks before, and talked about how his life was finally beginning. The officer said there'd been an accident and that your son is dead. We asked who and they said it was Kevin. There's something pretty final about it. When a police officer hands you your child's driver's license because until that exact moment in time, you're holding out hope that this is all a big mistake. You've misspelled the last name. You need to be three streets over. Or at least next door, right? Any place but my place. But when they hand you your child's driver's license, you know he's gone and he's never coming back.

Ramnani: Oh, wow. So how did you cope over the next few days?

Adkins: You know, the world stops for you, you know. I've got to tell everybody about this stuff. Right? I've got to tell friends and family. I've got a plan for Memorial. I've got to figure out what to do with his ashes or with his remains. Rather, I had an event happen, and this is a little bit difficult to explain, but I'll explain it as best I can. I was laying in bed about four o'clock in the morning, when I can only describe as I felt like somebody had walked in the room and I kind of felt sort of frozen in place. There was a light I've never seen before and haven't seen since, and there was a message Kevin didn't suffer. And something very good would come from this. And as fast as that all happened, I had no chance to figure out where anything was or who it was. I'm sure it was God, but it happened so fast. But for lack of a better term, it gave me a mission to try to make something very good come from his death. And that's what I've been doing for the last nineteen years.

Ramnani: So I understand you walk from Arizona to Kalispell, Montana with Kevin's ashes in your backpack. That must have been quite an emotional time for you. Can you talk me through your journey both at an emotional and physical level?

Adkins: Yeah, so that's a fun one to talk about. So the idea to walk from Arizona to Montana came from the movie Lonesome Dove. In that movie, Tommy Lee Jones decides to carry the body of Robert Duvall from Montana back to Texas to bury him where he was the happiest in my mind. That was one of Kevin's favorite movies in my mind, that's where the idea came from. Obviously, it evolved into doing the speaking. There's a lot of interesting things. There's a lot of people tried to talk me out of this. I had relatives try to talk me out of it. My employer tried to talk me out of it, but I had one guy that said something I'll never forget. He said, how do you think you'd feel about it in ten years if you don't do it? And for me, that kind of sealed the deal. Physically, it was a very challenging walk. There are a lot of mountains between Gilbert, Arizona and Kalispell, Montana. I crossed the Continental Divide twice. Pretty big hills, two three thousand feet kind of things that I have to go up and down, whether all of that kind of stuff. So it was physically very challenging. I averaged about ninety miles a week, and then I stopped and spoke and told the story. I don't know, thirty five or forty times. Wonderful people along the way. Every day people would ask me if I wanted a ride. There was if it was raining. I didn't have a single sick day or weather day. And looking back on it, it really was just an incredible journey. And from an emotional standpoint, I sort of thought once I got him to Montana, we left his ashes up there. I really didn't plan on writing a book, but I kept a journal all the way. This predates Facebook and all of that stuff. So I just had this blog that I did on a website, and people followed it that way. And I told a good friend of mine, I said, well, I'm going to print this out and put it in a binder and send it to you. Right. I'm going to send out copies of it, and he's a good enough friend. He said, no, you're going to write a book about it. And at the time I thought, no, I'm not, because that's a lot of work. But eventually it came around and wrote the book, and writing a book about that was harder than walking to Montana.

Ramnani: How did people respond to your book?

Adkins: It was a self published book that was more therapeutic for me. I'm glad I did it because and this is something I tell people all the time that have been through something, whether it's addicts or anyone who's been through a very difficult time, even if you're never going to publish it, write the story down. Because, you know, I did the walk in two thousand and seven and I wrote the book in twenty eleven, and I've just recently on my Facebook page, I've started putting excerpts of what I did because I've kind of forgotten all the details myself. It's been, you know, I did the walk in two thousand and seven. That's seventeen years ago. I've forgotten the details and I am so glad that I documented what happened, because there's no way I would have remember. I look back through it, I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. That's what happened. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. What is the most difficult aspect of your journey? That was only a couple hundred miles into the journey when I was just exhausted, and I really started wondering, am I going to make it? If you ask me, did I ever wonder about being able to make it? Yes, there was a lot of doubt there because I was only about two hundred miles into it. I had blisters. I had something we call plantar fasciitis, which is a very painful foot problem. I was just exhausted, but I realized that I was thinking about things wrong in my mind. I'm thinking about I've got another twelve or thirteen hundred miles to walk, and that's what I thought about every day. But at some point I realized that's not a good idea. So what I would think about is I'm going to walk three more miles, I'm going to take a break, and I just want to make those three miles. So I looked at it in really tiny chunks of three miles. My wife call her the road manager. She met me every three miles. She'd have a chair sitting out there so I could sit down for a little bit and stretch. And it's a great metaphor for life because a lot of times, how does that saying go? We often overestimate what we can get done in a day and underestimate what we can get done in a lifetime. And for me, that's kind of where I was, is I stopped thinking about Montana because it was too far. It was two states away. It's a long ways. There's a lot of miles. But once I started going to the three miles, take a break, move on. I was much better off. How did you feel when you came to the end? So there was definitely a physical relief, right? But now you got to leave him there, right? And I guess I would describe myself as kind of letting go as I went. I mean, I played back a lot of fond memories of him as I walked. I'm one of those people that as a parent, I don't mind talking about him. Still, I know that sometimes in the grief process, people, they don't want to talk about that loved one, but that loved one was part of your life. And we still talk about it to this day. You know, something will happen. Oh, yeah, that was that was a Kevin thing. So I had to let go of him. But because I wrote the book and because of all the other stuff, he's still there, right? I got a little angel looking out after me. I'll put it that way.

Ramnani: I understand Kevin died from alcohol poisoning when he was eighteen, but I also understand that the minimum legal age for drinking is twenty one in the United States. How did the law let him down? And do you hold any individual or any public body responsible for his death?

Adkins: So yes, you're correct. Drinking age is twenty one. In the US. They don't enforce that very much. It's unfortunate, but if something happens they will go after someone. But in general we don't do a good job of enforcing that. And that's kind of why I really believe that it's all about education. It's about helping kids understand what can happen. And critical thinking at that age is not fully developed. And so what I do is I just get out and tell the story because I think education is what's going to fix it. Were there people to blame? Yeah. The guy that owned the house that he moved into, he was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He ended up getting, I think, six months in jail for that. They proved that he bought the beer, but they couldn't prove that he bought the booze, the hard liquor. And had they been able to prove that, they would have charged him with manslaughter. But for me, I never wanted to play the blame game. When you lose a child, playing the blame game can just lead to more problems, right? And so that's one of the things I really focused on is I'm not going to blame anybody. I just want to make something very good come from this. As I talked about earlier, I've stayed away from the legislation part of it and the legal part of it for the most part, because I really believe that we need to spend more time educating students about what can happen with drugs or alcohol, because nobody ever believes it's going to happen to them. And that's why I tell the personal story so that people understand it can happen to you. The two most important decisions that you or your children are ever going to make are about drugs and alcohol. It isn't even close. We all know stories. We need to educate ourselves about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, as if our lives and the lives of our children depend upon it. Because it does. It just does. And the second thing I tell them about is adversity. Bad stuff happens to everybody. The way you respond to adversity is going to define your life. Notice I didn't say might. It will. And third, and perhaps most important is about this thing called forgiveness. It was easy for me to forgive the guys at the party because this was Kevin's choice. This was Kevin's decision, and it was easy to forgive my son because that's what parents do. But there's one person that was really hard to forgive and that was me. It took fourteen hundred miles and five pairs of shoes, but I have found a way to forgive myself. I heard a pastor describe it best once he said that anger and vengeance lead to one thing destruction. Forgiveness leads to healing. And sometimes the most important person you need to forgive is yourself. Nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes. It's the way you handle it that matters.

Ramnani: So it sounds like you blame yourself for what happened. Can you explain that?

Adkins: So as a parent, your number one job is to keep your kid alive. And that didn't happen. And so there is forgiveness that needs to go along with that. There's no doubt more things I could have done that may have changed this outcome, but I didn't do that. It's kind of interesting. I never talked to him much about alcohol, because he had a relative in the family who was an alcoholic, and he always talked about how stupid he was and he was never going to do that. I talked to him about drugs, so I was more worried about that. But I never talked to him a lot about alcohol because he saw it. He knew what happened.

Ramnani: According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Underage drinking is a serious public health problem in the United States. Alcohol is the most widely used substance among America's youth and can cause them enormous health and safety risk. As a parent who had lost a child to alcohol poisoning, do you think there are sufficient safeguards for young people now in terms of the law?

Adkins: There are laws in place. On a practical level, what they have done here to improve things is it's called a good Samaritan law. If a student in the case of Kevin, if they call for emergency help nine one one, they're not going to get in trouble for that. In reality, most of the people just simply don't understand. And there isn't necessarily law enforcement that's focused on breaking up underage parties. That's not something that jurisdictions have. They may occasionally have somebody that's focused on it, but it's so widespread that I have to be careful what I say here, but it's not really a focal point, because the difficulty with laws is you make a law to do something, but if you don't fund that law with additional law enforcement, then it's a priority thing. Right. If there's a car crash or an accident or a shooting or something like that, they're going to focus on that and they're not going to spend their time going out looking for underage drinking. There just isn't enough people to do that. And that's why it always comes back to educating people about what can happen. And that includes both kids and adults, because a lot of times adults just kind of laugh it off and say, oh yeah, it's a it's a rite of passage. But for me, it's only by the grace of God I'm here today because I did drink underage. But you do stupid stuff. That's the only way I can describe it. You do really, really stupid stuff. So would it be good if there was more focus on it? Yes, but unfortunately, there's really no money in it. Right. And we have a lot of rehab facilities here. I'm sure you do in the UK as well, where we probably spend billions of dollars on rehabilitation, but we don't spend much money on education and we don't spend much money enforcing. It's unfortunate, but that's my perspective on it.

Ramnani: So do you think the problem is the law enforcement?

Adkins: No, I, I think that for me, it comes back to education. I think the problem is we don't understand what can happen because, you know, in here in the US alcohol is legal. So they when you're twenty one. So it's just not taken seriously. And kids say well adults drink so I can drink. So the same thing has happened here with marijuana. Marijuana is now legalized in a number of states. And what they found is now that it's been legalized, but it's not legal for anyone. I think it's twenty one. Is the age on that as well. It's not legal for them, but because it's now legal for adults, they're having more problems with the students and the underage people. And it comes back to education. Here's the things that can happen, right? Alcohol used in moderation is not a problem once you're twenty one. And that's what I tell kids all the time. Wait until you're twenty one. You will not regret it. And the likelihood of having a problem if you wait until you're twenty one to drink is pretty much nonexistent.

Ramnani: As you know, America will have a general election in November. What is your opinion about the policy on underage drinking from both candidates?

Adkins: Honestly, I don't know what either one of their policies are on that really. Once again, when it comes to policy, I think understanding the education part of it, the enforcement part is important as well. But understanding what works and doesn't work in terms of discouraging people from using drugs or underage drinking. And everybody's different on that. I don't think it's going to be a one size fits all. A lot of the students have said that, but not everyone responds that way. Some people want to know why isn't the brain developed? What part of the brain is developed? What part is developed? How does the brain respond to these things? What are the chemical reactions when you drink a beer or when you use some kind of drug, marijuana or opioids or a big thing, fentanyl, all of these things. Some people will respond to that better. So I don't pretend to think that what I do is the only way to prevent this. When you're talking about law enforcement and those kinds of things, the best analogy I can give you for why I believe so much in prevention is if you walk into a room and the faucet is on, there's a water leak, there's water spouting everywhere and all anybody is doing is trying to mop up the water. Nobody's trying to fix the leak. Everybody's on the floor. They've got buckets. They're trying to mop up the water. That's not going to work because you need to get that water shut off. And until you get that water shut off, no matter how much law enforcement you have or anything else you have, that water is still going to be running. Until you fix that. You can put laws in place, but I don't know that they're going to do anything. And again, I think we talked about this in emails. I don't talk much about policy, but that's my position. We could pass another law. But until we shut that water off, we're not going to fix the problem.

Ramnani: So is this your motivation for you to tell Kevin's story? What would you like other people to take away from it?

Adkins: I don't want this to happen to anybody else. It's completely changed my life. It's a very painful event. What I want people to understand is that it can happen to you. I'm that guy that never believed anything bad would happen to my kids. I just never really gave that much thought. But the reason I tell the story is because it's a very personal story. I do travel to speak, but if you have listeners in the US, I'm happy to do it. I don't charge anything except costs when I go to do things. Also, I have put together lesson plans for schools. I just reach out to me a couple of ways you can get Ahold of me. Facebook. It's Kevin's last walk. The book is on Amazon. It's Kevin's last walk. A father's final journey with his son. Or just Google my name, Barry Adkins, and it'll come up. But that's really my motivation is to try to shut that faucet off. I want to try to help other people to prevent this from happening, because I promise you the grief part of this, and I'll touch on that here real, real quick. Everybody handles grief differently, right? But one of the things that I've learned nineteen years in the rear view mirror is that one of the things I wanted to do after Kevin passed away is I wanted to feel the way I did before he passed away, and that's simply not possible, right? Because he's gone. He's never coming back. The old you is gone as your child. There's a new you there. That new you can be a better version of the old you, if you'll let it, if you'll try to make something very good come from it. But unfortunately, with these things, there's what they call collateral damage. It causes people to turn to drugs and alcohol because this person died of it. It causes marriages to break up. It causes all kinds of problems when you play the blame game. And so in the rear view mirror, I'd say you're never going to feel that way again. There's a new you there, but the old you is gone.

Ramnani: What message do you have for a parent who has child who might be drinking underage?

Adkins: I think they need to understand what can happen because again, it's something that's very common. Some people survive it, some don't. Unfortunately, as time goes on, you realize there's a lot of lives that are destroyed. One of the things that I tell both parents and students, it's an awkward conversation to have, right? Sit down and say, oh, we're going to talk about drugs or alcohol today. But Google has this thing called alerts so you can get alerted if there's a story about alcohol poisoning or a DUI or something like that. And what I tell parents is you don't necessarily have to have the conversation with the child, but you can have the conversation with your spouse when the child is present. Because despite what you might think, kids are always listening to what you're saying. They may not want you to talk to them, but they're always listening, right? And so you can have that conversation with them there, but not talking to them directly and let them listen to the conversation you have. Did you see this in the paper? Did you hear about this person? Right. And I tell kids the same thing. They don't really want to start the conversation, but just let your parents hear you talking about drugs or alcohol that you saw at a party while their parents are around. Parents are listening to what you're saying on the phone, right? If you're talking to them, I know today it's a lot more text. Maybe you got to look at the text, but it kind of helps start the conversation because once you start the conversation, I think it gets a little easier, but starting it is tricky.

Ramnani: Also, do you have any final thoughts?

Adkins: Well, first of all, I really appreciate you bringing me on. Really. Again, it's about education. Feel free to reach out to me. I'm easy to find. I'm always here to do things remotely if I need to. I actually have videos of exactly what I say at schools in addition. So I've got the lesson plan. During Covid, I wasn't able to go in anywhere, so I recorded a version of exactly what I say at schools. It's not the same as being there in person, but it's there for people to use. I'm just here to try to help. Anything. You have some ideas for me? Reach out. I'll give you my opinion.

Ramnani: Barry, it is a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for your time. I hope that many people will learn from your story.

Adkins: Thank you. Bye bye.

Ramnani: Bye. If you or anyone you know have been affected by the issues raised in this episode, you may find help and resources on the support page below.

 

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