(This is the Testamony of one of the life Altering events in my history, I read this as a devotional for my Pastoral Care class, on the day we discussed Substance Abuse) Fall 2009

            All throughout out high school I suffered from depression and darkness. I found a break from the reality with friends that showed me a way that was outside of my pain. I began using drugs at a time a deep pain and displacement from my friends in family; I was living in Houston for a period of time. And when I moved there the only people who reached out to be my friend was the Ravers (or party Kids). I learned a new way of life from them, a life that consisted of partying and debauchery. I was the only person in my new found group who had a car, and a cash flow, which made me the key to taping into the height of the drug world in Houston. I used EX, and speed, and took all kinds of pills and had no care for what it was doing to me. When I moved back to Dallas I continued my life on this path, hating the world, hating those that had it better than me (or so I thought) Hating the very things that were slowly taking over my life. When I graduated I had a GPA that was just enough to survive and get a diploma. (Because simply passing was what really mattered) I moved out with in a month of graduation and found comfort in new friends, some were straight edge some were not. I found myself taking pills, and eating shrooms, but still there was a desire to be outside of the pain that was there with in me. Nothing I was doing would satisfy me. Long before I had decided that I would never do Acid, Coke, or Heroin… those things were addictive, you could lose yourself in those drugs. “I’ll just stick to the other stuff and keep myself out of trouble” I thought. After a summer semester at a community college I found that despite my 4.0 ; my classes were getting in the way of my partying. I dropped out and took a job to help pay bills and pay for my recreational activities.

            Soon enough I was bailing out my friends who were being held hostage by a drug dealer. They had been smoking ice and couldn’t pay. Once I bailed them out one of my closest friends offered me some ice to pay me back, not sure what it was and still searching for my escape I accepted. Despite I had just seen for myself what this path looked like. I began smoking meth with them occasionally still keeping my regular work hours and pretend to go to school when I spoke to my family. As I became more of a regular user, my friend increased and changed. I had a new group of people I spent time with who were opening up the doors to a new way of life. I moved out of my apartment when the student apartments discovered I was no longer a student and back in with my parents. Under the facade of working a full time job I never came home. I sank deeper and deeper into the blackness. I lived for the high. I longed for the next bowl, I waited from pay check to pay check. Realizing that most people who do meth get really skinny I begin to compulsively eat, as to hide from the outside world what I was doing. That’s right; I was a meth addict that gained weight.   I found myself with a group of friends that were “intellectual drug addicts”.  We would smoke, then once high we would read the dictionary and quiz each other on the words, do art, discuss God and religion, talk about how it was ok that we were getting messed up more often because we weren’t like ‘other users’. Those people had a problem. I was just enjoying my life a little. Slowly, but steadily a weekends only…. became a few nights a week, …. Then, only in the evenings turned into week long binges without sleep. Finally I was at the point I was slipping a meth pipe into my purse, so I could hit it and stay awake at work. My cash flow was no longer enough. So I thought I would do a few deals here and there to help support the habit.

I was standing at the edge, my old friends had quit talking to me because I “changed” whatever that meant?!? And the darkness was creeping back in. It was no longer about having fun and reading the dictionary, or writing letters to our friends in jail cause they had been busted, or about recreation, it was about survival… Life without the high was no longer an option.  I needed the drugs, I needed the escape from who I was becoming, and most of all I needed a way out.

I started to watch all of my friends slip over the edge, the point of no return. Some died, some went to jail. And we all were starting to turn on each other. I was out in a shady part of town, making some connection to sell some stuff to get money for another bag, (I smoked all of the one I had bought the night before). When I found myself on the phone losing it with my best friend at the time. She had stolen $100’s from me and my back up supply, that was supposed to hold me over till this deal was done. When I was bitching at her on the phone asking what the hell she was thinking, she told me “that’s the way these things go, you should know better than to let people know where your shit is… its not my fault…” Infuriated I took off ready to drive back and beat her ass, when flashing lights went off behind me. In that sobering moment I realized what was about to happen. I was done for… I was going to jail and it was game over. My parents would find out, my life would be destroyed with a criminal record, and I was never going get that bowl I need.

But something else happened that night, God strolled up to my window and taped on the glass.

He said to me “Young lady, what are you doing?”

“Excuse me??” I said.

He reply “ do you know where you are? This is the wrong part of town for you to be in, there are all kinds of evil people out here. People who will hurt you, or cause you to hurt yourself. Don’t you think that maybe you should go HOME?”

I just stared at him. WHAT?!?! Didn’t he know that I was those people? Didn’t he know that I was hurting myself? Didn’t he know that if he was gona do his job right, he should search my car, and take me to jail?

I stared at him a long time, and I just looked into his eyes and said as honestly as I could “ I’m lost,”

and God said to me, “well maybe I can help you find your way….”

I drove away that night realizing that I too was standing at the point of no return. This was my chance. God spoke to me through that man and ask me what I was doing. I drove home that night. I didn’t go back to the place where I was headed, I dint go back to the “friends” that had stolen my shit, I didn’t go back…. and a decided on that long drive home, That despite what I thought I needed from the other end of a pipe, what I really had need was to admit that somewhere along that dimly lit path, I had got lost. But luckily someone in the universe cared enough to point me in the direction of home.