The floor of the Hamilton County jail cell kissed 36-year-old James Wahls’ forehead as he lay prostrate on his knees, sobbing.

It was May 11, 2011. The day before his 37th birthday.

He’d been arrested again. Another DUI. His marriage was on the brink of collapse. He was trying to hide his drinking from his three kids, then 6, 7 and 8, but the truth was leaking out.

The DUI didn't faze him. But the realization that he could've had blood on his hands, he said, was a wake-up call.

The day before, he’d almost killed a woman with his $60,000 Jaguar.

“It was a fender-bender,” he said. “Luckily nobody was hurt, but I realized — a couple more inches and I could’ve taken her life with my selfishness.”

“That’s what crushed me,” he said. “I used to think I’m just drinking — I’m just killing myself — I’m not hurting anybody. We don't realize it, but [alcoholics] are this huge tornado that destroys everything and everybody around us.”

Wahls was making “way too much money” at his “hot-shot job” as an Indiana nursing home administrator. He had a $500 watch on his wrist and a $60,000 XJ8 Jaguar in his garage. But he wasn’t happy. He was searching for peace at the bottom of a bottle.

Make that bottles.

“Normal people have a bad day, they go home and watch a little TV and go to bed,” Wahls said. “But me, crazy alcoholic, I feel like I’ve gotta drink myself into oblivion because I don't know what else to do.”

He’d been drinking since he was 19. The past 18 years had been a blur of “too many” promotions, followed by flashy cars, $400 pens — and booze. He didn’t know how to cope “with anything.”

“I was never afraid of dying," he said. "I was afraid of living, because I didn’t know how.”

'God, you have to do this, because I can’t'

He bailed himself out of jail and called a cab. A lot of good that Jaguar did him now.

He slunk home to his wife and kids in southeast Indiana. The next morning found him bent over double on his knees, alone, on the floor of his second-floor bedroom, doing something he never thought he was capable of — praying.

“I didn't grow up in the church,” he said. “I'd never read the Bible. I didn’t know anything about religion, other than that I believed there was a heaven, and there was a hell. And I was certain I was going there.”

His life, he said, was “out of control.” He was downing a bottle of scotch a day, but didn’t think he had a problem — until that moment.

“I didn’t have enough energy to even stand up,” he said. “So I fell down on my knees, bawling like a baby, because I was scared to death. I thought there was no way I was going to be able to leave my house and not drink again.”

His next words were pure desperation.

“Finally, I just looked up and said, ‘God, you have to do this, because I can’t,’” he said.

Lessons from the Amish

For the first time in his life, Wahls wanted to get better.

Immediately after his prayer in the bedroom, Wahls said he felt wrapped in a “blanket of peace.” But he was unsure how to turn his plea into something more meaningful.

He entered an intensive outpatient program; committed to getting — and staying — sober.

And then came a blacksmith’s forge.

What Wahls wanted most was respite from a "more of everything" mindset. He was spending money just because he could, to "impress people that I didn't even know or care to know."

"I was a hot mess," he said.

But working with his hands brought him fulfillment.

"There's something about making something out of nothing," he said. "There's a piece of me in every single knife I make, because my hands were all over that thing for three hours."

He enjoyed the manual labor, the process of transforming raw steel into blade. He spent hours talking to God. And he realized that, for the past 20 years, he'd had his priorities crossed.

"I was living to work, not working to live," he said. "I make 1/14 of what I used to make, but I'm happy."

The turn wasn’t completely out of character: Wahls grew up in LaGrange, a northern Indiana town three miles from the Michigan border. The population in 2017 was just under 3,000. His Amish neighbors, he said, had “sweet blacksmithing tools.”

Why can’t I do that? he thought.

He started a community blacksmith’s forge, Indy Hammered Knives, in Acton, a neighborhood of just under 6,000 residents 15 miles southeast of downtown Indianapolis in November 2014.

Jeff White, a bladesmith from Peru, Indiana, taught him the basics, and Wahls took it from there.

Wahls works Monday through Saturday at his forge, logging more than 60 hours a week at the full-time gig he calls his “hobby job" because it doesn't feel like work.

He grinds away on a 200-year-old anvil and swings a 150-year-old hammer. He brands the handle of every one of his knives with a special touchmark — a blacksmith’s signature.

Wahls’ is a pair of crossed knives.

The heart of his small town

It’s a sweltering, 90-degree Saturday afternoon in June, the kind of day when even the thought of moving is agony. Wahls is hard at work inside his smithy in a former Rabourns Garage gas station that dates from 1901.

It’s 110 degrees in the AC-less forge, and sweat is dripping — no, gushing — down the 45-year-old blacksmith’s forehead, back, and salt-and-pepper goatee. He wipes his hands on his dusty work pants, next to the gloves hanging from his belt.

He’s buttressed by an army of box fans whizzing and whirring away, laboring to maintain some semblance of cool as he transforms steel into blade. Custom knives can take up to 20 hours over the forge.

“I’ve forged until 2 in the morning before,” he said. “I’ve hit one knife more than 800 times.”

But even with all those hours, Wahls makes just enough to pay the bills and goes home when he’s tired.

"If I got an order for 5,000 knives, I wouldn’t take it," he said.

Indy Hammered Knives is the community gathering spot on Saturdays. A steady stream of old college friends, neighbors and customers amble through Wahls' smithy to talk knives and swap stories.

“I have times like this all day, every day, where people just come in, I stop working, and we talk,” Wahls said. “It’s the best.”

A silver cross pendant dangles from his neck, butting up against the pair of glasses hanging from his open shirt collar over a red T-shirt. A reminder.

Going global

Wahls offers a lifetime guarantee on his knives, which range from a $10 throwing knife to a $300, 17 1/2 inch "The Sword of the Spirit" blade.

He counts "Naked and Afraid"’s Melissa Miller and Indiana Representative Mike Speedy as customers. And he recently learned he’d gone global. Two French consular officials took an Uber to Wahls’ smithy during an Indy visit after stumbling across his website in France.

He also teaches knife-making classes for up to five people per session, which span two eight-hour days and run $250 per person (participants must be at least 18 years old).

“I can sit in here all day by myself and enjoy the silence, but that to me is kind of selfish,” he said. “I want to share my knowledge with others.”

He never saw himself as having anything worth passing on. But he's grown to love teaching — maybe even more than knife-making.

“I’ll always be an alcoholic,” he said. “People are always like, ‘Does life get better after recovery?’ No, life stays exactly the same — it’s just as hard as it was the day before. But we get better when we allow someone else to take the wheel.”

Email IndyStar reporter Sarah Bahr at sbahr@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @smbahr14.