The Dish: Dyson Adams found God. Then he found barbecue.

Dyson Adams can get by on no sleep, which comes in handy with barbecue. Since the beef ribs, brisket and pork all require 24 hours in the smoker, he might snag just a few hours of shut-eye on a bench.

Every few hours he’ll throw a log of oak or cherry wood into the massive silver smoker, along with some big spoonfuls of maple syrup-soaked pecans on top — a technique he learned while touring barbecue joints in Texas. “It gives a really nice aroma,” he said.

His devotion to meat is part of the reason that in the six or so weeks since Adams first launched his Parkville barbecue stand on the side of a busy highway, it’s become something of a Baltimore County sensation.

Before Adams even opens the Slicen Dyson takeout window at noon each weekend, customers start lining up, filling every parking space in the small lot on Perring Parkway. A few park illegally down the road, taking their chances. It’ll be an hour, maybe longer, before they get anything to eat.

For their wait, they’re rewarded with tender, fatty beef cheeks and massive “dino” beef ribs, the meat — seasoned with just salt, coarsely ground black pepper and smoke — wilting off the bone. The pit beef at Slicen Dyson is so lush and juicy it practically brings tears to the eyes. The stand stays open until it sells out, usually around 3 p.m. for beef, 5:30 for everything else.

To Adams and those who know him, the success of Slicen Dyson, which started as a catering company and food trailer three years ago, is a marvel. It’s also practically a miracle. A few years ago, Adams was on a path of destruction when he hit rock bottom.

In 2019, he’d already been problem drinking for years — even going to jail after a drunken escapade one summer. Then one night while drinking in college, the Towson High School graduate got in a fight with his roommate, who placed him in a headlock. Adams jerked his body in the opposite direction. He later realized he had nerve damage all through his head.

The pain and pressure felt like someone squeezing his skull like a basketball.

“I didn’t sleep for three months,” he said. “Like I literally go to bed and then I would lay there, and then the sun would come up.” He withdrew from school.

“He went through months and months of invisible agony, which was really hard to see as a parent,” said his father, Ashley Adams.

A succession of doctors diagnosed him with occipital neuralgia but couldn’t seem to help. One night, while visiting a family farmhouse in Pennsylvania, Adams planned to kill himself.

“I had the gun loaded and everything,” he said. “I couldn’t do it.”

Instead, he flipped open a Bible. He paraphrases the verse he opened to: “I reckon the suffering of the present time doesn’t compare to the glory that will come.”

Over time, the pressure in his head began to lift.

The simple decor at the barbecue stand is a testament to his own journey over the past seven years. There are knickknacks from the family farmhouse in Pennsylvania, the same one where he’d considered ending his life and then found relief from the pain in the Bible. There’s a replica Texas Ranger gun in a frame. His dad did all the metalwork, including the steel gate by the smoker with the business’s logo carved into it.

A few months ago, all that was here was Pete’s Crab House, a decades-old crab shack and a favorite of Adams’ family friend Scott French. French introduced Adams to the owners of Pete’s and the owners of Snoasis snowball stand in Timonium. They agreed their three businesses could share the location, each taking up a separate wing of the space.

“When I met these guys, I knew it would work,” said Mike Hellman, owner of Pete’s Crab House.

Now, six years sober and mostly pain-free, Adams credits God with helping him survive and eventually discover his passion for meat.

“The head injury was a gift in disguise, because it forced me to stop drinking,” he said. “Because if I drank, the pain would only get worse.”

Though he “had nothing to do with God” for most of his life, he developed a newfound faith after “a come-to-Jesus moment” at a pain rehab facility in Arizona where he was seeking treatment. “I believed that he died for my sins, and there was a moment when that clicked that the pain just kind of went away.”

After going back to college and graduating from Liberty University in Virginia, he started a catering company and threw himself into barbecue. He shunned ingredients like gluten, dairy and seed oils that he said threw his body out of whack.

“He’s very particular about what he eats,” French said. “Not that barbecue is the healthiest thing, but the meats and the things that he serves are made in a natural and healthful manner.”

Today, Adams says he doesn’t eat barbecue very often himself, though he does taste it while he works. Adams uses beef from Pineland Farms in Pennsylvania that was raised without hormones or antibiotics.

Earlier this year, his father took him on a trip to Texas, where his own dad was born. It was like their own barbecue pilgrimage to some of the best barbecue stops in the nation. Many are open just for a few hours, one or two days a week, closing the moment they sell out. At some, customers literally camp out the night before to ensure their place in line. To Texans, there’s a sense of pride and community that forms in line. It’s part of the experience Adams wanted to bring home.

Adams spent the first half of this year perfecting his barbecue stand. He bought camping chairs and umbrellas to make it more comfortable for people waiting in line, just as they’d seen done in Texas. Adams converted a cluster of bushes into a mini beach with several tons of sand.

Then they opened the doors. “We’re at the corner of Joppa and Perring Parkway,” he said in a deadpan video posted to Instagram. He pointed out the closest landmarks: Jerry’s Chevrolet, Savers and Home Depot. Somehow the clip picked up more than 100,000 views on Instagram. French recalled his reaction to the video’s success, laughing: “Dyson, you’ve got 16 parking spots, buddy, what are you gonna do?”

What he would do is get to work in his deliberate, purposeful way. Slathering the meat with salt and pepper and loading into the smoker. Then making all the sides, from the macaroni and cheese to the collards and dairy-free banana pudding. He works through the night to get it all done. He gets some help once service begins, including from guys he met in his day job as a substitute teacher and lacrosse coach. For a few hours, the line doesn’t stop, and neither does Adams, who slices the brisket and rings a cowbell whenever someone orders a beef rib. And then comes cleanup.

“It’s kind of like everything has prepared me,” he said. “If you go three months of not sleeping at all, you know your body’s capable of doing much more than you actually think.”

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or behavior, call or text 988 to contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.