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Man running across Louisiana to raise awareness, celebrating own journey in beating addiction
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BATON ROUGE — A Louisiana man is attempting to set a fastest known time record by running across Louisiana in 10 days or less, starting at the Texarkana line and finishing near Grand Isle.
Chip Autin, 41, says this week will represent 10 years since beating an addiction to meth. To celebrate it, he is choosing to run nearly 432 miles across the state through LA 1, an idea he got in 2023.
"Last year around October, I had just finished my second 100-mile race, and I was trying to figure out what I would do for 2024. I realized that my 10 years of beating a drug addiction to Methamphetamine was coming up. I had the idea of Highway One for a couple of years and then it came back in my head," Autin said.
Autin says he hopes that his run will inspire others struggling with addiction like he did by showing them they have it within themselves to achieve extraordinary things.
Autin spoke to WBRZ about his journey and his struggle with addiction. Audin said he "dabbled" with drugs throughout his 20s. He said it started becoming more and more common until it led to a meth addiction in his late 20s and early 30s.
"For about three solid years straight, that's pretty much all I did," Autin said.
He says he soon hit rock bottom as everything he once had was leaving.
"The girl I saw at the time ended up leaving me. I was helping raise her kids and I had fallen in love with her kids. She ended up taking them. I then had a good friend of mine who died of a heroin overdose. I ended up realizing that I was living in a toolshed on the side of my parent's house," Autin said.
Autin said he considered taking his own life at one point during his addiction.
"I had one night where I was laying in bed with a shotgun next to me with one shell and I was just thinking about taking my life," Autin said.
However, things would start to turn around for Autin.
"I was able to convince the girl I was seeing to take my back. We ended up getting married. Unfortunately, we did get divorced, but her kids are now a vital part of my life and we're still close friends," Autin said.
Then one night, he decided to change his life for the better.
"I had this conversation with myself where I was finally ready to quit. I was going through it like look you got Kristin back, and you're kids are going to be back in your life, why are you even doing this again? You're gonna lose it all again," Autin said.
Autin decided to quit drugs, throwing them all out. He said quitting cold turkey was difficult at first as he suffered withdrawal, but knew what he got back was well worth the struggle.
He said staying healthy and running has helped him along his journey. As for how he decided to become a distance runner, it all started back when he was in high school.
"I made the soccer team and I was a bit out of shape. This was my sophomore year (in high school). Our coach put me in and I would run for five to 10 minutes straight if that, and I was already begging to get off the field because I couldn't breathe," Autin said.
His dad took notice of it and signed him up for cross country. Autin said, at first, he was livid because he didn't want to run but over time he began to love it. It ended up paying off, as he got a starting spot on his high school soccer team the next year.
He stopped running overtime as he started doing drugs more and more.
As he began to clean up his life, Autin's life took another tragic turn.
"My dad ended up getting brain cancer shortly after I cleaned up. My dad wasn't the most healthy guy, but whether you're healthy or not, that's not anything we can stop from happening," Autin said.
His father passed away in 2015. During that time in the hospital with his dad, he started thinking about his own health. He ended up getting back into running in May of that year.
For his run across the state, he said he's taken the necessary precautions and will have several people following him throughout his journey. He will also have a doctor who will be joining them as well in case something goes wrong.
Autin has also teamed up with a local nonprofit called Seeking Action Raising Awareness and Hope to help raise money for the organization. SARAH was established in memory of Sarah Beth Pellegrin, the daughter of founder Renee Bertinot, who died of fentanyl poisoning in 2018.
Autin said he plans on passing through Port Allen on Sunday.
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