FROM AN ADDICT TO A CHRISTIAN! by Bryan Smathers

You might say in a way that drugs and alcohol use saved my life.  How can that be possible, you might ask.  I can say that because my use of drugs and alcohol finally led me to the Lord which in turn saved my life.  Let me explain.    I am the oldest of four kids that my parents had.  I have a sister ten months younger than I and a brother seven years younger.  I also have a brother who passed away thirty years ago at the age of nine, only six days before his tenth birthday.    Growing up, I didn’t see much of my dad who was in the Army, and away much of the time.  My formative years were spent with an overbearing mother who would leave (sometimes for days) telling me I was in charge of my younger brother and sister (my baby brother was not born yet).    Tremendous pressure was put on me from around the age of seven, through my teen-age years.  If anything went wrong, I was physically and verbally abused by my mother.  I was always told that I was the oldest, and therefore, should set a good example for my other siblings.  I was to be responsible for them while she basicly ran around.

This treatment by my mother eventually caused in me severe depression, a sense of worthlessness, self-doubt and anxiety.    To cope with my situation, I started drinking beer at about the age of sixteen.  It started with school friends and then family members.  At this point, drugs, I thought was too dangerous to try.  Including Marijuana.    Eventually, my drinking turned to harder stuff.  Meanwhile, the abusive treatment continued at home.    No one knew of my drinking except for a few family members and the so-called friends I was drinking with.    Finally, at age seventeen, I graduated high school and left home thinking I could leave my mother and the past behind.  I was still depressed, and felt lousy after many years of abuse.  My drinking escalated, and at the age of twenty-one, smoked marijuana for the first time.    I wasn’t serious about my drinking or smoking pot I thought.  I just needed it to help me cope.  As time went on, I drank more and more.  I now added pills to my marijuana intake.  I can handle it, I thought.  Besides, when I was drunk and high was the only time I felt good about myself.  I loved that feeling and I wanted more.  Still, I had feelings of worthlessness that crept into my thoughts every single day.  So I got drunk and high every single day.  It was a cycle that was driving me crazy.    Soon thoughts of suicide entered my head.  Eventually, I began to act on them.  I once bought a bottle of aspirin to try and overdose with and called my dad to say goodbye.  The police were called and I was forcibly taken to the hospital and forced to drink charcoal to offset the pills I had taken.    Another time, I tried to hang myself, but the cord I used  to place around my neck broke.  Somebody was trying to tell me something but I wasn’t listening.  Soon, I began cutting.  My arms and legs looked like hamburger after I was done.  I’ll die from blood loss, I thought, but the cuts weren’t deep enough.    At this point, my drinking was so bad that my refrigerator was completely stacked with beer and I would panic if it got half low, thinking it would run out.  It never did, but that was my insane thinking.    I still never thought I had a drug or alcohol problem.  I was an addict and didn’t know it.I was always aware of God.  I knew there was a God, but I felt He, like everyone else didn’t care about me.  How wrong I was.    The turning point came for me at the age of thirty-six.  A cousin of mine had moved away from the area and attended a church where she lived.  I would visit on the weekends and go to church with her family (Just to see what it was like).   CLICK TO CONTINUE!