If you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
- F. Scott FITZGERALD
At the age of twenty-three, I was a drug addict. In 1982, for the fourth year in a row, my New Year's resolution was to get off drugs. That year my commitment to abstinence lasted less than two days. I had started experimenting with marijuana six years earlier, and I quickly went on to more potent, even life-threatening, drugs. I tried it all - LSD, hashish, pills, PCP and other drugs that fry the brain.
In my early teens it had been easy to say no when friends offered me drugs. I had a good life, and I had seen enough anti-drug films in elementary school to know that drugs would ruin it. Besides, drums were my high. There's no doubt I was born to be a drummer. While I was still very young, my mother gave me a pair of drumsticks to keep the prints of my pounding fingers off the furniture, and when I was thirteen, my father gave me a drum set of my own.
During my senior year in high school I asked some friends who used drugs if I could try smoking some pot. They were happy to let me try. I didn't see colors, hallucinate, or get sick, as I always thought I would. As a matter of fact, I really didn't feel anything. My friends assured me that I would have to smoke it a few times before I'd feel something.
By the time I was twenty, I needed more and more money to support my drug habit. Somehow, I was able to land a job at a large bank. Even when I was high, I functioned well enough to hold on to my job, so I regularly got loaded on breaks and during the lunch hour. But as I got to know the people I worked with, I noticed that without the need for drugs, they seemed so free, so peaceful, and so normal that I wanted to be like them. Yet I couldn't. Maybe it was too late.
Enhancement or hindrance?
One day after I had smoked marijuana a few more times, I started playing my drums. It sure seemed to me that I was playing better than I ever had. They came alive under my sticks! That convinced me that pot was a good thing and - for the sake of my music - I smoked more. It wasn't long before my taste in music changed from the top ten hits to heavy metal, and soon I was deep into the dark side of the music world.
Drumming in a heavy metal band brought lots of other drugs my way. PCP is a powerful drug that people smoke to get a heroin-like high. I knew that it fries a brain quicker than anything else around, but I didn't care. My goal was to be a better drummer.
Instead, I quickly found that it slurred my speech and screwed up my motor skills. Even though I was taking all different kinds of drugs, it was easy to pinpoint the cause of my problems. Playing the drums was the most important thing in my life, and I knew that I had to stop messing with PCP. It took a few weeks to wean myself, but amazingly, I was able to kick the habit. However, I was still addicted to high-end marijuana and cocaine. I considered them lightweight compared to PCP, and they didn't hurt my drumming. So I thought, no harm done.
Becoming a monster
For a long time I was blind to the mood-altering effect the drugs had on me. I went through many girlfriends, even having several at the same time. Still, I became paranoid when I suspected any of them of two-timing me. If I even thought that one of them was involved with another guy, I would fly into a jealous rage. I was becoming a monster.
By the time I was twenty, I needed more and more money to support my drug habit. Somehow, I was able to land a job at a large bank. Even when I was high, I functioned well enough to hold on to my job, so I regularly got loaded on breaks and during the lunch hour. But as I got to know the people I worked with, I noticed that without the need for drugs, they seemed so free, so peaceful, and so normal that I wanted to be like them. Yet I couldn't. Maybe it was too late.
Then one day a friend invited me to a series of free rock concerts at some church. At the first two, I went out to the parking lot to get high during intermission and before I went home. At the third concert I was able to listen to a few of the songs and hear what the pastor said. Certain words stuck, but there was one sentence that pounded in my head: Jesus will change you from the inside out. That's what the pastor kept saying to us. Was that possible? Could I really change and actually become like my friends at work?
Who touched me?
Right at that moment, I felt the lightest touch of a gentle hand over my heart. I looked to my right and left and even turned around, but there was no one near me. Who had touched me?
When the pastor invited people to stay after, I responded. As I followed the people who wanted to talk with me about God, I was very much on guard. But I quickly realized that there was nothing to fear. They were sincere, kind people who never asked me for money or tried to force anything down my throat or draw me into their church. They even told me to find a church that I was comfortable with and to read the Bible to find out about Jesus for myself. Then someone prayed with me. I was scared, but I knew that submitting my whole life to Jesus was the right thing to do.
That's when the miracle happened. Right there, Jesus made Himself real to me and removed my drug addiction. That was the night I met God. I went home a new person, healed of a habit that had controlled every day of my life for six years. In answer to one heartfelt prayer, God just took it away. The power of that moment suddenly gave me a new longing for a relationship with Him.
That's when the miracle happened. Right there, Jesus made Himself real to me and removed my drug addiction. That was the night I met God. I went home a new person, healed of a habit that had controlled every day of my life for six years. In answer to one heartfelt prayer, God just took it away. The power of that moment suddenly gave me a new longing for a relationship with Him.
Two weeks later, I was talking with an old friend from my drug days. As we talked, I became upset with his vulgar language. Then it hit me. I had been known for having the worst mouth. Every sentence that came out had a string of foul words in it. But since that prayer at the church, I hadn't said one single swear word. Jesus had already started changing me from the inside out, just as that pastor had said He would. And that wasn't all. He also started changing things that I didn't even know needed changing.
A new neighborhood, a new life.
Almost immediately my parents moved to a new neighborhood a few miles away, which allowed me to make new friends and walk away from the old ones. I'm married today to a wonderful lady and have three lively teenagers who love jesus too. I'm happily working in a job i enjoy and every Monday on my lunch hour I lead a Bible study at work. I've developed some incredible Christian friendships, and I'm constantly learning more about God and how much He cares about me. Drugs haven't tempted me for so many years that I sometimes wonder why I had to literally fry my brain before I came to know real freedom.
It's been twenty years since I've picked up the drumsticks, but I have a new passion in life. Once a month,I go to Juvenile Hall to speak to the kids there, many who are addicted to drugs. What an amazing miracle it is to have them come up to me and pour out their lives, their struggles, and their addictions. As I tell them about the hope, the new beginning, and the freedom that Jesus gave me, I see the life of one child after another transformed-all because of God's life-changing message of love. He really does change us from the inside out!
How can I experience that "inside-out" change in my life?
If you have a desire to know God personally and have him change you, too, from the inside out, it all starts with inviting God from the outside, in.
I would like to suggest that you simply pray the following prayer and ask God to do just that in your life.
Dear God, I know that I am a sinner and I ask you to forgive me for all the things I have done wrong in my life. I believe Jesus died on the cross for me. I thank you for His sacrifice and free gifts of forgiveness and freedom from all guilt. I ask you now to come into my life to be my Lord and my Savior so that you can change me from the inside out and give me eternal life.
In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen."
If you have just repeated the above prayer and said it sincerely to God, the Bible says, you are now in Christ, and you are new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! Welcome into the kingdom of God!
(Ed. Note: This article has been edited and reprinted by permission from "The Day I Met God: Extraordinary Stories of Life-Changing Miracles" by Jim & Karen Covell and Victorya Michaels Rogers, Multnomah publishers)
