I'm trying to use al_draw_text but it wont work with numbers and i'm not sure how to convert to const char*

Try this instead: https://liballeg.org/a5docs/trunk/font.html#al_draw_textf

that didnt make a difference it's still asking for a const char

The const char pointer is the format string, the values are added as extra arguments after that. Look at the examples here:
https://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdio/printf/

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdlib/itoa/

if using c++, http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/sstream/stringstream/

but what does stringstream actually do? it doesnt seem to convert to const char*

It works just like std cout
https://github.com/jmasterx/Agui/blob/master/demo/AguiCalc/AguiCalc/Calculator.cpp#L292

it will output a std string which you can do .c_str() to get a const char*

you can << whaterver you want.

Like

std::stringstream ss;

ss << "I ate" << 22 << "Hot Dogs";
al_draw_text(ss.str().c_str());

Drawing an int would look like this:

al_draw_textf(my_font, my_color, x_pos, y_pos, 0, "Here it is: %d", my_value);

Or replace %d with %f to draw a float or double, etc.